at the fountain?”
“Gettin’ a drink. Was that any harm?” demanded the girl, sharply. “I’d found some dry pieces of bread the cook had put on top of a box there by the back door. I reckoned she didn’t want the bread, and I did.”
“Oh, dear me!” whispered Ruth.
“And dry bread’s dry eatin’,” said the strange girl. “I had ter have a drink o’ water to wash it down. And jest as I got down into that little place where I seed the fountain this afternoon – ”
“Oh, my, dear!” gasped Ruth. “Have you been lurking about the school all that time and never came and asked good old Mary Ann for something decent to eat?”
“Huh! mebbe she’d a drove me off. Or mebbe she’d done worse to me,” said the other, quickly. “They beat me again day ’fore yesterday – ”
“Who beat you?” demanded Ruth.
“Them Perkinses. Now! don’t you go for to tell I said that. I don’t want to go back to ’em – and their house ain’t such a fur ways from here. If that cook – or any other grown folk – seen me, they’d want to send me back. I know ’em!” exclaimed the girl, bitterly. “But mebbe you’ll be decent about it, and keep your mouth shut.”
“Oh! I won’t tell a soul,” murmured Ruth. “But I’m so sorry. Only dry bread and water – ”
“Huh! it’ll keep a feller alive,” said this strangely spoken girl. “I ain’t no softie. Now, you lemme go, will yer? My! but you are strong.”
“I’ll let you go. But I do want to help you. I want to know more about you —all about you. But if Tony comes – ”
“That’s his lantern. I see it. He’s a-comin’,” gasped the other, trying to wriggle free.
“Where will you stay to-night?” asked Ruth, anxiously.
“I gotter place. It’s warm and dry. I stayed there las’ night. Come! you lemme go.”
“But I want to help you – ”
“‘Twon’t help me none to git me cotched.”
“Oh, I know it! Wait! Meet me somewhere near here to-morrow morning – will you? I’ll bring some money with me. I’ll help you.”
“Say! ain’t you foolin’?” demanded the other, seemingly startled by the fact that Ruth wished to help her.
“No. I speak the truth. I will help you.”
“Then I’ll meet you – but you won’t tell nobody?”
“Not a soul?”
“Cross yer heart?”
“I don’t do such foolish things,” said Ruth. “If I say I’ll do a thing, I will do it.”
“All right. What time’ll I see you?”
“Ten o’clock.”
“Aw-right,” agreed the strange girl. “I’ll be across the road from that path that’s bordered by them cedar trees – ”
“The Cedar Walk?”
“Guess so.”
“I shall be there. And will you?”
“Huh! I kin keep my word as well as you kin,” said the girl, sharply. Then she suddenly broke away from Ruth and ran. Tony Foyle came blundering around the corner of the house and Ruth, much excited, slipped away from the brush clump and ran as fast as she could to meet Madge Steele.
“Oh! is that you, Ruth?” exclaimed the senior, when Ruth ran into her arms. “Tony’s out. We had better go back to bed, or he’ll report us to Mrs. Tellingham in the morning. I don’t know where the strange girl could have gone.”
Ruth did not say a word. Madge did not ask her, and the girl of the Red Mill allowed her friend to think that her own search had been quite as unsuccessful. But, as Ruth looked at it, it was not her secret.
CHAPTER III – SADIE RABY’S STORY
Ruth did not sleep at all well that night. Luckily, Helen had nothing on her mind or conscience, or she must have been disturbed by Ruth’s tossing and wakefulness. The other two girls in the big quartette room – Mercy Curtis and Ann Hicks – were likewise unaware of Ruth’s restlessness.
The girl of the Red Mill felt that she could take nobody into her confidence regarding the strange girl who said her name was Raby. Perhaps Ruth had no right to aid the girl if she was a runaway; yet there must be some very strong reason for making a girl prefer practical starvation to the shelter of “them Perkinses.”
Bread and water! The thought of the child being so hungry that she had eaten discarded, dry bread, washed down with water from the fountain in the campus, brought tears to Ruth’s eyes.
“Oh! I wish I knew what was best to do for her,” thought Ruth. “Should I tell Mrs. Tellingham? Or, mightn’t I get some of the girls interested in her? Dear Helen has plenty of money, and she is just as tender-hearted as she can be.”
Yet Ruth had given her promise to take nobody into her confidence about the half-wild girl; and, with Ruth Fielding, “a promise was a promise!”
In the morning, there was soon a buzz of excitement all over the school regarding the strange happening at the fountain on the campus. One girl whispered it to another, and the tale spread like wildfire. However, the teachers and the principal did not hear of the affair.
Ruth’s lips, she decided, were sealed for the present regarding the mysterious girl who had pushed Sarah Fish into what Heavy declared was “her proper element.” The wildest and most improbable stories and suspicions were circulated before assembly hour, regarding the Unknown.
There was so much said, and so many questions asked, in the quartette room where Ruth was located, that she felt like running away herself. But at mail time Madge Steele burst into the dormitory “charged to the muzzle,” as The Fox expressed it, with a new topic of conversation.
“What do you think, girls? Oh! what do you think?” she cried. “We’re going to live at Sunrise Farm.”
“Ha! you ask us a question and answer it in the same breath,” said Mercy, with a snap. “Now you’ve spilled the beans and we don’t care anything about it at all.”
“You do care,” declared Madge. “I ask you first of all, Mercy. I invite every one of you for the last week in June and the first two weeks of July at Sunrise Farm – ”
“Oh, wait!” exclaimed Mary Cox, otherwise “The Fox.” “Do begin at the beginning. I, for one, never heard of Sunrise Farm before.”
“I – I believe I have,” said Ruth slowly. “But I don’t suppose it can be the same farm Madge means. It is a big stock farm and it’s not many miles from Darrowtown where I – I used to live once. That farm belonged to a family named Benson – ”
“And a family named Steele owns it now,” put in Madge, promptly.
