Garden of Eden before Adam and Eve wore any clothes?”
“Now, can you beat that?” demanded the housekeeper, of nobody in particular. “What won’t that young one get in her head!”
Meanwhile Ruth was helping Rosa Wildwood all she could, so that the girl from the South would be able to pass in the necessary examinations and stand high enough in the class to be promoted.
Housework certainly “told on” Rosa. Bob said “it jest seems t’ take th’ puckerin’ string all out’n her – an’ she jest draps down like a flower.”
“We’ll help her, Mr. Wildwood,” Ruth said. “But she really ought to have a rest.”
“Hi Godfrey!” ejaculated the coal heaver. “I tell her she kin let the housework go. We don’t have no visitors – savin’ an’ exceptin’ you, ma’am.”
“But she wants to keep the place decent, you see,” Ruth told him. “And she can scarcely do that and keep up with her studies – now. You see, she’s so weak.”
“Hi Godfrey!” exclaimed the man again. “Ain’t thar sech a thing as bein’ a mite too clean?”
But Bob Wildwood had an immense respect for Ruth; likewise he was grateful because she showed an interest in his last remaining daughter.
“I tell you, sir,” the oldest Corner House girl said, gravely. “Rosa needs a change and a rest. And all us girls are going to Pleasant Cove this summer. Will you let Rosa come down, too, for a while, if I pay her way and look out for her?”
The man was somewhat disturbed by the question. “Yuh see, Miss,” he observed, scratching his head thoughtfully, “she’s all I got. I’d plumb be lost ’ithout Rosa.”
“But only for a week or two.”
“I know. And I wouldn’t want tuh stand in her way. I crossed her sister too much – that’s what I did. Juniper was a sight more uppity than Rosa – otherwise she wouldn’t have flew the coop,” said Bob Wildwood, shaking his head.
Ruth, all tenderness for his bereavement, hastened to say: “Oh, you’ll find her again, sir. Surely you don’t believe she’s dead?”
“No. If she ain’t come to a bad end, she’s all right somewhar. But she’d oughter be home with her sister – and with me. Ye see, she was pretty – an’ smart. No end smart! She went off in bad comp’ny.”
“How do you mean, Mr. Wildwood?” asked Ruth, deeply interested.
“Travelin’ folks. They had a van an’ a couple team o’ mules, an’ the man sold bitters an’ corn-salve. The woman dressed mighty fine, an’ she took June’s eye.
“We follered ’em a long spell, me an’ Rosa. But we didn’t never ketch up to ’em. If we had, I’d sure tuck a hand-holt of that medicine man. He an’ his woman put all the foolishness inter Juniper’s haid.
“An’ Rosa misses her sister like poison, too,” finished Bob Wildwood, slowly shaking his head.
There seemed to be a mystery connected with the disappearance of Rosa’s sister, and Ruth Kenway was just as curious as she could be about it; but she stuck to her subject until Bob Wildwood agreed to spare his remaining daughter for at least a week’s visit to Pleasant Cove, while the Corner House girls would be there.
CHAPTER V – OFF FOR THE SEASIDE
The last hours of the school term were busy ones indeed. Even Tess had her troublesome “’zaminations.” At the study table on the last evening before her own grade had its closing exercises, Tess propounded the following:
“Ruthie, what’s a ’scutcheon?”
“Um – um,” said Ruth, far away.
“A what, child?” demanded Agnes.
“‘’Scutcheon?’”
“‘Escutcheon,’ she means,” chuckled Neale, who was present as usual at study hour.
“Well, what is it?” begged Tess, plaintively.
“Why?” demanded Ruth, suddenly waking up. “That’s a hard word for a small girl, Tess.”
“It says here,” quoth Tess, “that ‘There was a blot upon his escutcheon.’”
“Oh, yes – sure,” drawled Neale, as Ruth hesitated. “That must mean a fancy vest, Tess. And he spilled soup on it – sure!”
“Now Neale! how horrid!” admonished Ruth, while Agnes giggled.
“I do think you are all awful mean to me,” wailed Tess. “You don’t tell me a thing. You’re almost as mean as Trix Severn was to me to-day. I don’t want to go to her father’s hotel, so there! Have we got to, Ruthie?”
“What did she do to you, Tess?” demanded Agnes, with a curiosity she could not quench. For, deep as the chasm had grown between her and her former chum, she could not ignore Trix.
“She just turned up her nose at me,” complained Tess, “when I went by; and I heard her say to some girl she was with: ‘There goes one of them now. They pushed their way into our party, and I s’pose we’ve got to entertain them.’ Now, did we push our way in, Ruthie?”
Ruth was angry. It was not often that she displayed indignation, so that when she did so, the other girls – and even Neale – were the more impressed.
“Of course she was speaking of that wretched invitation she gave us to stay at her father’s hotel at Pleasant Cove,” said Ruth. “Well!”
“Oh, Ruthie! don’t say you won’t go,” begged Agnes.
“I’ll never go to that Overlook House unless we pay our way – be sure of that,” declared the angry Ruth.
“But we are going to the shore, Ruthie?” asked Tess.
“Yes.”
“Maybe Pearl Harrod will ask us again,” murmured Agnes, hopefully.
“I guess we can pay our way and be beholden to nobody,” said Ruth, shortly. “I will hire one of the tents, if nothing else. And we’ll start the very day after High closes, just as we planned.”
Despite the loss of her “soulmate,” Agnes was pretty cheerful. She was to graduate from grammar school; and although she was sorry to lose Miss Georgiana Shipman as a teacher, she was delighted to get out of “the pigtail classes,” as she rudely termed the lower grades.
“I’m going to do up my hair, Ruthie, whatever you say,” she declared, “just as soon as I get into high school next fall. I’m old enough to forget braids and hair-ribbons, I should hope!”
“Not yet, my child, not yet,” laughed Ruth. “Why! there are more girls in High who wear their hair down than up.”
“But I’m so big – ”
“You mean, you’d be big,” chuckled Neale, “if you were only rolled out,” for he was
