Ruth Fielding Down East Part 8

But Ruth's skirt still flapped about the child's thin shanks.

Miss Timmins, breathing threatenings and slaughter, raced down the hall in pursuit. Ruth followed, begging for quarter for the terrified child.

But the housekeeper went through the open window after Bella, although in a more conventional manner, paying no heed to Ruth's plea. The frightened girl, however, escaped her aunt's clutch by slipping off the borrowed skirt and descending the trumpet-vine trellis by the kitchen door.

"Do let her go, Miss Timmins!" begged Ruth, as the panting woman, carrying Ruth's skirt, returned to the window where the girl of the Red Mill stood.

"She is scared to death. She was doing no harm."

"I'll thank you to mind your own business, Miss," snapped Miss Timmins hotly. "I declare! A girl growed like you running 'round in men's overalls--or, what be them things you got on?"

At this criticism Ruth Fielding fled, taking the skirt and Jennie's shirt-waist with her. But Aunt Kate was aroused now and the four women of the automobile party swiftly slipped into their negligees and appeared in the hall again, to meet Tom and Colonel Marchand who came from their room only partly dressed.

The critical Miss Timmins had darted downstairs, evidently in pursuit of her unfortunate niece. The guests crowded to the back window.

"Where did she go?" demanded Tom, who had heard some explanation of the early morning excitement. "Is she running away?"

"What a child!" gasped Aunt Kate.

"My waist!" moaned Jennie.

"Look at Ruth's skirt!" exclaimed Helen.

"I do not care for the skirt," the girl of the Red Mill declared. "It is Bella."

"Her aunt will about give her those 'nevergetovers' she spoke of,"

chuckled Tom.

"_Ma foi!_ look you there," exclaimed Colonel Marchand, pointing through the window that overlooked the rear premises of the hotel.

At top speed Miss Timmins was crossing the yard toward the big hay barn.

Bella had taken refuge in that structure, and the housekeeper's evident intention was to harry her out. The woman grasped a clothes-stick with which she proposed to castigate her niece.

"The cruel thing!" exclaimed Helen, the waters of her sympathy rising for Bella Pike now.

"There's the poor kid!" said Tom.

Bella appeared at an open door far up in the peak of the haymow. The hay was packed solidly under the roof; but there was an air s.p.a.ce left at either end.

"She has put herself into the so-tight corner--no?" suggested the young Frenchman.

"You've said it!" agreed Tom. "Why! it's regular movie stunts. She's come up the ladders to the top of the mow. If auntie follows her, I don't see that the kid can do anything but jump!"

"Tom! Never!" cried Ruth.

"He is fooling," said Jennie.

"Tell me how she can dodge that woman, then," demanded Tom.

"Ah!" murmured Henri Marchand. "She have arrive'."

Miss Timmins appeared at the door behind Bella. The spectators heard the girl's shriek. The housekeeper struck at her with the clothes stick. And then----

"Talk about movie stunts!" shouted Tom Cameron, for the frightened Bella leaped like a cat upon the haymow door and swung outward with nothing more stable than air between her and the ground, more than thirty feet below!

CHAPTER VIII

THE AUCTION BLOCK

Helen Cameron and Jennie Stone shrieked in unison when Miss Susan Timmins'

niece cast herself out of the haymow upon the plank door and swung as far as the door would go upon its creaking hinges. Ruth seized Tom's wrist in a nervous grip, but did not utter a word. Aunt Kate turned away and covered her eyes with her hands that she might not see the reckless child fall--if she did fall.

"Name of a name!" murmured Henri Marchand. "_Au secours!_ Come, Tom, _mon ami_--to the rescue!"

He turned and ran lightly along the hall and down the stairs. But Tom went through the window, almost as precipitately as had Bella Pike herself, and so over the roof of the kitchen ell and down the trumpet-vine trellis.

Tom was in the yard and running to the barn before Marchand got out of the kitchen. Several other people, early as the hour was, appeared running toward the rear premises of Drovers' Tavern.

"See that crazy young one!" some woman shrieked. "I know she'll kill herself yet."

"Stop that!" commanded Tom, looking up and shaking a threatening hand at Miss Timmins.

For in her rage the woman was trying to strike her niece with the stick, as Bella clung to the door.

"Mind your own business, young man!" snapped the virago. "And go back and put the rest of your clothes on. You ain't decent."

Tom was scarcely embarra.s.sed by this verbal attack. The case was too serious for that. Miss Timmins struck at the girl again, and only missed the screaming Bella by an inch or so.

Helen and Jennie screamed in unison, and Ruth herself had difficulty in keeping her lips closed. The cruel rage of the hotel housekeeper made her quite unfit to manage such a child as Bella, and Ruth determined to interfere in Bella's behalf at the proper time.

"I wish she would pitch out of that door herself!" cried Helen recklessly.

Tom had run into the barn and was climbing the ladders as rapidly as possible to the highest loft. Scolding and striking at her victim, Miss Susan Timmins continued to act like the mad woman she was. And Bella, made desperate at last by fear, reached for the curling edges of the shingles on the eaves above her head.

"Don't do that, child!" shrieked Jennie Stone.

But Bella scrambled up off the swinging door and pulled herself by her thin arms on to the roof of the barn. There she was completely out of her aunt's reach.

"Oh, the plucky little sprite!" cried Helen, in delight.

"But--but she can't get down again," murmured Aunt Kate. "There is no scuttle in that roof."

"Tom will find a way," declared Ruth Fielding with confidence.

"And my Henri," put in Jennie. "That horrid old creature!"