he says that the old house on the main farm is in good enough shape for us to live there this summer, while he builds a bigger house. And you shall all come with us – all you eight girls – the Brilliant Octette of Briarwood Hall.
“And Bob will get Helen’s brother, and Busy Izzy; and Belle shall invite her brothers if she likes, and – ”
“Say! are you figuring on having a standing army there?” demanded Mercy.
“That’s all right. There is room. The old garret has been made over into two great dormitories – ”
“And you’ve been keeping all this to yourself, Madge Steele?” cried Helen. “What a nice girl you are. It sounds lovely.”
“And your mother and father will wish we had never arrived, after we’ve been there two days,” declared Heavy. “By the way, do they know I eat three square meals each day?”
“Yes. And that if you are hungry, you get up in your sleep and find the pantry,” giggled The Fox.
“Might as well have all the important details understood right at the start,” said Heavy, firmly.
“If you’ll all say you’ll come,” said Madge, smiling broadly, “we’ll just have the lov-li-est time!”
“But we’ll have to write home for permission,” Lluella Fairfax ventured.
“Of course we shall,” chimed in Helen.
“Then do so at once,” commanded the senior. “You see, this will be my graduation party. No more Briarwood for me after this June, and I don’t know what I shall do when I go to Poughkeepsie next fall and leave all you ‘Infants’ behind here – ”
“Infants! Listen to her!” shouted Belle Tingley. “Get out of here!” and under a shower of sofa pillows Madge Steele had to retire from the room.
Ruth slipped away easily after that, for the other girls were gabbling so fast over the invitation for the early summer vacation, that they did not notice her departure.
This was the hour she had promised to meet the strange girl in whom she had taken such a great interest the night before – it was between the two morning recitation hours.
She ran down past the end of the dormitory building into the head of the long serpentine path, known as the Cedar Walk. The lines of closely growing cedars sheltered her from observation from any of the girls’ windows.
The great bell in the clock tower boomed out ten strokes as Ruth reached the muddy road at the end of the walk. Nobody was in sight. Ruth looked up and down. Then she walked a little way in both directions to see if the girl she had come to meet was approaching.
“I – I am afraid she isn’t going to keep her word,” thought Ruth. “And yet – somehow – she seemed so frank and honest – ”
She heard a shrill, but low whistle, and the sound made her start and turn. She faced a thicket of scrubby bushes across the road. Suddenly she saw a face appear from behind this screen – a girl’s face.
“Oh! Is it you?” cried Ruth, starting in that direction.
“Cheese it! don’t yell it out. Somebody’ll hear you,” said the girl, hoarsely.
“Oh, dear me! you have a dreadful cold,” urged Ruth, darting around the clump of brush and coming face to face with the strange girl.
“Oh, that don’t give me so much worry,” said the Raby girl. “Aw – My goodness! Is that for me?”
Ruth had unfolded a paper covered parcel she carried. There were sandwiches, two apples, a piece of cake, and half a box of chocolate candies. Ruth had obtained these supplies with some difficulty.
“I didn’t suppose you would have any breakfast,” said Ruth, softly. “You sit right down on that dry log and eat. Don’t mind me. I – I was awake most all night worrying about you being out here, hungry and alone.”
The girl had begun to eat ravenously, and now, with her mouth full, she gazed up at her new friend’s face with a suddenness that made Ruth pause.
“Say!” said the girl, with difficulty. “You’re all right. I seen you come down the path alone, but reckoned I’d better wait and see if you didn’t have somebody follerin’ on behind. Ye might have give me away.”
“Why! I told you I would tell nobody.”
“Aw, yes – I know. Mebbe I’d oughter have believed ye; but I dunno. Lots of folks has fooled me. Them Perkinses was as soft as butter when they came to take me away from the orphanage. But now they treat me as mean as dirt – yes, they do!”
“Oh, dear me! So you haven’t any mother or father?”
“Not a one,” confessed the other. “Didn’t I tell you I was took from an orphanage? Willie and Dickie was taken away by other folks. I wisht somebody would ha’ taken us all three together; but I’m mighty glad them Perkinses didn’t git the kids.”
She sighed with present contentment, and wiped her fingers on her skirt. For some moments Ruth had remained silent, listening to her. Now she had for the first time the opportunity of examining the strange girl.
It had been too dark for her to see much of her the night before. Now the light of day revealed a very unkempt and not at all attractive figure. She might have been twelve – possibly fourteen. She was slight for her age, but she might be stronger than she appeared to Ruth. Certainly she was vigorous enough.
She had black hair which was in a dreadful tangle. Her complexion was naturally dark, and she had a deep layer of tan, and over that quite a thick layer of dirt. Her hands and wrists were stained and dirty, too.
She wore no hat, raw as the weather was. Her ragged dress was an old faded gingham; over it she wore a three-quarter length coat of some indeterminate, shoddy material, much soiled, and shapeless as a mealsack. Her shoes and stockings were in keeping with the rest of her outfit.
Altogether her appearance touched Ruth Fielding deeply. This Raby girl was an orphan. Ruth remembered keenly the time when the loss of her own parents was still a fresh wound. Supposing no kind friends had been raised up for her? Suppose there had been no Red Mill for her to go to? She might have been much the same sort of castaway as this.
“Tell me who you are – tell me all about yourself – do!” begged the girl of the Red Mill, sitting down beside the other on the log. “I am an orphan as well as you, my dear. Really, I am.”
“Was you in the orphanage?” demanded the Raby girl, quickly.
“Oh, no. I had friends – ”
“You warn’t never a reg’lar orphan, then,” was the sharp response.
“Tell me about it,” urged Ruth.
“Me an’ the kids was taken to the orphanage just as soon as Mom died,” said the girl, in quite a matter-of-fact manner. “Pa died two months before. It was sudden. But Mom had been sickly for a long time – I can remember. I was six.”
“And how old are you now?” asked Ruth.
“Twelve and a half. They puts
