could be sent for thirty-two cents to Milton, so she had divided what she wished to say in two equal parts! The second half of her message, however, because of the mistake of the filing clerk at the telegraph office in Oakhurst, did not arrive at the Corner House for several hours after the first half of the message.
Ruth Kenway meanwhile grew almost frantic as she considered the possible misfortune that might have overtaken Luke Shepard. She grew quite as “extracted” – to quote Dot – as Mrs. Pinkney was about the absence of Sammy.
“Well,” Agnes finally declared, “if I felt as you do about it I would not wait to hear from Mr. Howbridge. I’d start right now. Here’s the time table. I’ve looked up the trains. There is one at ten minutes to one – twelve-fifty. I’ll call Neale and he’ll drive you down to the station. You might have gone with the children if that telegram had come earlier.”
Agnes was not only practical, she was helpful on this occasion. She packed Ruth’s bag – and managed to get into it a more sensible variety of articles than Sammy Pinkey had carried in his!
“Now, don’t be worried about us,” said Agnes, when Ruth, dressed for departure, began to speak with anxiety about domestic affairs, including the continued absence of the little girls. “Haven’t we got Mrs. McCall – and Linda? You do take your duties so seriously, Ruth Kenway.”
“Do you think so?” rejoined Ruth, smiling rather wanly at the flyaway sister. “If anything should happen while I am gone – ”
“Nothing will happen that wouldn’t happen anyway, whether you are at home or not,” declared the positive Agnes.
Ruth made ready to go in such a hurry that nobody else in the Corner House save Agnes herself realized that the older sister was going until the moment that Neale O’Neil drove around to the front gate with the car. Then Ruth ran into Aunt Sarah’s room to kiss her good-bye. But Aunt Sarah had always lived a life apart from the general existence of the Corner House family and paid little attention to what her nieces did save to criticise. Mrs. McCall was busy this day preserving – “up tae ma eyen in wark, ma lassie” – and Ruth kissed her, called good-bye to Linda, and ran to the front door before any of the three actually realized what was afoot.
Agnes ran with her to the street. At the gate stood a dark-faced, brilliantly dressed young woman, with huge gold rings in her ears, several other pieces of jewelry worn in sight, and a flashing smile as she halted the Kenway sisters with outstretched hand.
“Will the young ladies let me read their palms?” she said suavely. “I can tell them the good fortune.”
“Oh, dear me!” exclaimed Agnes, pushing by the Gypsy. “We can’t stop to have our fortunes told now.”
Ruth kept right on to the car.
“Do not neglect the opportunity of having the good fortune told, young ladies,” said the Gypsy girl shrewdly. “I can see that trouble is feared. The dark young lady goes on a journey because of the threat of ill fortune. Perhaps it is not so bad as it seems.”
Agnes was really impressed. Left to herself she actually would have heeded the Gypsy’s words. But Ruth hurried into the car, Neale reached back and slammed the tonneau door, and they were off for the station with only a few minutes to catch the twelve-fifty train.
“There!” ejaculated Agnes, standing at the curb to wave her hand and look after the car.
“The blonde young lady does not believe the Gypsy can tell her something that will happen – and in the near future?”
“Oh!” exclaimed Agnes. “I don’t know.” And she dragged her gaze from the car and looked doubtfully upon the dark face of the Gypsy girl which was now serious.
The latter said: “Something has sent the dark young lady from home in much haste and anxiety?”
The question was answered of course before it was asked. Any observant person could have seen as much. But Agnes’s interest was attracted and she nodded.
“Had your sister,” the Gypsy girl said, guessing easily enough at the relationship of the two Corner House girls, “not been in such haste, she could have learned something that will change the aspect of the threatened trouble. More news is on the way.”
Agnes was quite startled by this statement. Without explaining further the Gypsy girl glided away, disappearing into Willow Street.
Agnes failed to see, as the Gypsy quite evidently did, the leisurely approach of the telegraph messenger boy with the yellow envelope in his hand and his eyes fixed upon the old Corner House.
Agnes ran within quickly. She was more than a little impressed by the Gypsy girl’s words, and a few minutes later when the front doorbell rang and she took in the second telegram addressed to Ruth, she was pretty well converted to fortune telling as an exact science.
Sammy Pinkney had marched out of the house late at night, as his mother suspected, lugging his heavy extension-bag, with a more vague idea of his immediate destination than was even usual when he set forth on such escapades.
To “run away” seemed to Sammy the only thing for a boy to do when home life and restrictions became in his opinion unbearable. It might be questioned by stern disciplinarians if Mr. and Mrs. Pinkney had properly punished Sammy after he had run away the first few times, the boy would not have been cured of his wanderlust.
Fortunately, although Sammy’s father was stern enough, he very well knew that this desire for wandering could not be beaten out of the boy. Merely if he were beaten, when he grew big enough to fend for himself in the world, he would leave home and never return rather than face corporal punishment.
“I was just such a kid when I was his age,” admitted Mr. Pinkney. “My father licked me for running away, so finally I ran away when I was fourteen, and stayed away. Sammy has less reason for leaving home than I had, and he’ll get over his foolishness, get a better education than I obtained, and be a better man, I hope, in the end. It’s in the Pinkney blood to rove.”
This, of course, while perhaps being satisfactory to a man, did not at all calm Sammy’s mother. She expected the very worst to happen to her son every time he disappeared; and as has been shown on this occasion, the boy’s absence stirred the community to its very dregs.
Had Mrs. Pinkney known that after tramping as far as the outskirts of the town, and almost dropping from exhaustion, Sammy had gone to bed on a pile of straw in an empty cow stable, she would have been even more troubled than she was.
Sammy, however, came to no harm. He slept so soundly in fact on the rude couch that it was mid-forenoon before he awoke – stiff, sore in muscles, clamorously hungry, and in a frame of mind to go immediately home and beg for breakfast.
He had more money tied up in his handkerchief, however, than he had ever possessed before when he had run away. There was a store in sight at the roadside not far ahead. He hid his bag in the bushes and bought crackers, ham, cheese, and a big bottle of sarsaparilla, and so made a hearty if not judicious breakfast and lunch.
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