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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. “It’s the very same farm. It’s a big place – five hundred acres. It’s on a big, flat-topped hill. Father has been negotiating for the other farms around about, and has gotten options on most of them, too. He’s been doing it very quietly.

“Now 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 us out to work at twelve anyhow, so them Perkinses got me,” explained the child. “I was pretty sharp and foxy when we went to the orphanage. The kids was only two and a half – ”

“Both of them?” cried Ruth.

“Yep. They’re twins, Willie and Dickie is. An’ awful smart – an’ pretty before they lopped off their curls at the orphanage. I was glad Mom was dead then,” said the girl, nodding. “She’d been heart-broke to see ’em at first without their long curls.

“I dunno now – not rightly – just what’s become of ’em,” went on the girl. “Mebbe they come back to the orphanage. The folks that took ’em was nice enough, I guess, but the man thought two boys would be too much for his wife to take care of. She was a weakly lookin’ critter.

“But the matron always said they shouldn’t go away for keeps, unless they went together. My goodness me! they’d never be happy apart,” said the strange girl, wagging her head confidentially. “And they’re only nine now. There’s three years yet for the matron to find them a good home. Ye see, folks take young orphans on trial. I wisht them Perkinses had taken me on trial and then had sent me back. Or, I wisht they’d let the orphans take folks on trial instead of the other way ’round.”

“Oh, it must be very hard!” murmured Ruth. “And you and your little brothers had to be separated?’

“Yep. And Willie and Dickie liked their sister Sade a heap,” and the girl suddenly “knuckled” her eyes with her dirty hand to wipe away the tears. “Huh! I’m a big baby, ain’t I? Well! that’s how it is.”

“And you really have run away from the people that took you from the orphanage, Sadie?”

“Betcher! So would you. Mis’ Perkins is awful cross, an’ he’s crosser! I got enough – ”

“Wouldn’t they take you back at the orphanage?”

“Nope. No runaways there. I’ve seen other girls come back and they made ’em go right away again with the same folks. You see, there’s a Board, or sumpin’; an’ the Board finds out all about the folks that take away the orphans in the first place. Then they won’t never own up that they was fooled, that Board won’t. They allus say it’s the kids’ fault if they ain’t suited.”

Suddenly the girl jumped up and peered through the bushes. Ruth had heard the thumping of horses’ hoofs on the wet road.

“My goodness!” gasped Sadie Raby. “Here’s ol’ Perkins hisself. He’s come clean over this road to look for me. Don’t you tell him – ”

She seized Ruth’s wrist with her claw-like little hand.

“Don’t you be afraid,” said Ruth. “And take this.” She thrust a closely-folded dollar bill into the girl’s grimy fingers. “I wish it was more. I’ll come here again to-morrow – ”

The other had darted into the woods ere she had ceased speaking. Somebody shouted “Whoa!” in a very harsh voice, and then a heavy pair of cowhide boots landed solidly in the road.

“I see ye, ye little witch!” exclaimed the harsh voice. “Come out o’ there before I tan ye with this whip!” and the whip in question snapped viciously as the speaker pounded violently through the clump of bushes, right upon the startled Ruth.

CHAPTER IV – “THEM PERKINSES”

It was a fact that Ruth crouched back behind the log, fearful of the wrathful farmer. He was a big, coarse, high-booted, red-faced man, and he swung and snapped the blacksnake whip he carried as though he really intended using the cruel instrument upon the tender body of the girl, whose figure he had evidently seen dimly through the bushes.

“Come out ’o that!” he bawled, striding toward the log, and making the whiplash whistle once more in the air.

Ruth leaped up, screaming with fear. “Don’t you touch me, sir! Don’t you dare!” she cried, and ran around the bushes out in to the road.

The blundering farmer followed her, still snapping the whip. Perhaps he had been drinking; at least, it was certain he was too angry to see the girl very well until they were both in the road.

Then he halted, and added:

“I’ll be whipsawed if that’s the gal!”

“I am not the girl – not the girl you want – poor thing!” gasped Ruth. “Oh! you are horrid – terrible – ”

“Shut up, ye little fool!” exclaimed the man, harshly. “You know where Sade is, then, I’ll be bound.”

“How do you know – ?”

“Ha! ye jest the same as told me,” he returned, grinning suddenly and again snapping the whip. “You can tell me where that runaway’s gone.”

“I don’t know. Even if I did, I would not tell you, sir,” declared Ruth, recovering some of her natural courage now.

“Don’t ye sass me – nor don’t ye lie to me,” and this time he swung the cruel whip, until the long lash whipped around her skirts about at a level with her knees. It did not hurt her, but Ruth cringed and shrieked aloud again.

“Stop yer howling!” commanded Perkins. “Tell me about Sade Raby. Where’s she gone?”

“I don’t know.”

“Warn’t she right there in them bushes with you?”

“I shan’t tell you anything more,” declared Ruth.

“Ye won’t?”

The brute swung the blacksnake – this time in earnest. It cracked, and then the snapper laid along the girl’s forearm as though it were seared with a hot iron.

Ruth shrieked again. The pain was more than she could bear in silence. She turned to flee up the Cedar Walk, but Perkins shouted at her to stand.

“You try ter run, my beauty, and I’ll cut ye worse than that,” he promised. “You tell me about Sade Raby.”

Suddenly there came a hail, and Ruth turned in hope of assistance. Old Dolliver’s stage came tearing along the road, his bony horses at a hand-gallop. The old man, whom the girls of Briarwood Hall called “Uncle Noah,” brought his horses – and the Ark – to a sudden halt.

“What yer doin’ to that gal, Sim Perkins?” the old man demanded.

“What’s that to you, Dolliver?”

“You’ll find out mighty quick. Git out o’ here or you’ll git into trouble. Did he hurt you, Miss Ruth?”

“No-o – not much,” stammered Ruth, who desired nothing so much as to get way from the awful Mr. Perkins. Poor Sadie Raby! No wonder she had been forced to run away from “them Perkinses.”

“I’ll see you jailed yet, Sim, for some of your meanness,” said the old stage driver. “And you’ll git there quick if you bother Mis’ Tellingham’s gals – ”

“I didn’t know she was one ‘o them tony school gals,” growled Perkins, getting aboard his wagon again.

“Well, she is – an’ one ‘o the best of the lot,” said Dolliver, and he smiled comfortably at Ruth.

“Huh! whad-she wanter be in comp’ny of that brat ’o mine, then?” demanded Perkins, gathering up his reins.

“Oh! are you hunting that orphanage gal ye took to raise? I heard she couldn’t stand you and Ma Perkins no longer,” Dolliver said, with sarcasm.

“Never you mind. I’ll git her,” said Perkins, and whipped up his horses.

“Oh, dear, me!” cried Ruth, when he had gone. “What a terrible man, Mr. Dolliver.”

“Yah!” scoffed the old driver. “Jest a bag of wind. Mean as can be, but a big coward. Meanes’ folks around here, them Perkinses air.”

“But why were they allowed to have that poor girl, then?” demanded Ruth.

“They went a-fur off to git her. Clean to Harburg. Nobody knowed ’em there, I s’pose. Why, Ma Perkins kin act like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, if she wants to. But I sartainly am sorry for that poor little Sade Raby, as they call her.”

“Oh! I do pity her so,” said Ruth, sadly.

The old man’s eyes twinkled. Old Dolliver was sly! “Then ye do know suthin’ about Sade – jes’ as Perkins said?”

“She was here just now. I gave her something to eat – and a little money. You won’t tell, Mr. Dolliver?”

“Huh! No. But dunno’s ye’d oughter helped a runaway. That’s agin’ the law, ye see.”

“Would the law give that poor girl back to those ugly people?”

“I s’pect so,” said Dolliver, scratching his head. “Ye see, Sim Perkins an’ his wife air folks ye can’t really go agin’ – not much. Sim owns a good farm, an’ pays his taxes, an’ ain’t a bad neighbor. But they’ve had trouble before naow with orphans. But before, ’twas boys.”

“I just hope they all ran away!” cried Ruth, with emphasis.

“Wal – they did, by golly!” ejaculated the stage driver, preparing to drive on.

“And if you see this poor girl, you won’t tell anybody, will you, Mr. Dolliver?” pleaded Ruth.

“I jes’ sha’n’t see her,” said the man, his little eyes twinkling. “But you take my advice, Miss Fielding – don’t you see her, nuther!”

Ruth ran back to the school then – it was time. She could not think of her lessons properly because of her pity for Sadie Raby. Suppose that horrid man should find the poor girl!

Every time Ruth saw the red welt on her arm, where the whiplash had touched her, she wondered how many times Perkins had lashed Sadie when he was angry. It was a dreadful thought.

Although she had promised Sadie to keep her secret, Ruth wondered if she might not do the girl some good by telling Mrs. Tellingham about her. Ruth was not afraid of the dignified principal of Briarwood Hall – she knew too well Mrs. Grace Tellingham’s good heart.

She determined at least that if Sadie appeared at the end of the Cedar Walk the next day she would try to get the runaway girl to go with her to the principal’s office. Surely the girl should not run wild in the woods and live any way and how she could – especially so early in the season, for there was still frost at night.

When Ruth ran down the long walk between the cedar trees the next forenoon at ten, there was nobody peering through the bushes where Sadie Raby had watched the day before. Ruth went up and down the road, into the woods a little way, too – and called, and called. No reply. Nothing answered but a chattering squirrel and a jay who seemed to object to any human being disturbing the usual tenor of the woods’ life thereabout.

“Perhaps she’ll come this afternoon,” thought Ruth, and she hid the package of food she had brought, and went back to her classes.

In the afternoon she had no better luck. The runaway did not appear. The food had not been touched. Ruth left the packet, hoping sadly that the girl might find it.

The next morning she went again. She even got up an hour earlier than usual and slipped out ahead of the other girls. The food had been disturbed – oh, yes! But by a dog or some “varmint.” Sadie had not been to the rendezvous.

Hoping against hope, Ruth Fielding tacked a note in an envelope to the log on which she and Sadie had sat side by side. That was all she could do, save to go each day for a time to see if the strange girl had found the note.

There came a rain and the letter was turned to pulp. Then Ruth Fielding gave up hope of ever seeing Sadie Raby again. Old Dolliver told her that the orphan had never returned to “them Perkinses.” For this Ruth might be thankful, if for nothing more.

The busy days and weeks passed. All the girls of Ruth’s clique were writing back and forth to their homes to arrange for the visit they expected to make to Madge Steele’s summer home – Sunrise Farm. The senior was forever singing the praises of her father’s new acquisition. Mr. Steele had closed contracts to buy several of the neighboring farms, so that, altogether, he hoped to have more than a thousand acres in his estate.

“And, don’t you dare disappoint me, Ruthie Fielding,” cried Madge, shaking her playfully. “We won’t have any good time without you, and you haven’t said you’d go yet!”

“But I can’t say so until I know myself,” Ruth told her. “Uncle Jabez – ”

“That uncle of yours must be a regular ogre, just as Helen says.”

“What does Mercy say about him?” asked Ruth, with a quiet smile. “Mercy knows him fully as well, and she has a sharp tongue.”

“Humph! that’s odd, too. She doesn’t seem to think your Uncle Jabez is a very harsh man. She calls him ‘Dusty Miller,’ I know.”

“Uncle Jabez has a prickly rind, I guess,” said Ruth. “But the meat inside is sweet. Only he’s old-fashioned and he can’t get used to new-fashioned ways. He doesn’t see any reason for my ‘traipsing around’ so much. I ought to be at the mill between schooltimes, helping Aunt Alvirah – so he says. And I am afraid he is right. I feel condemned – ”

“You’re too tender-hearted. Helen says he’s as rich as can be and might hire a dozen girls to help ‘Aunt Alviry’.”

“He might, but he wouldn’t,” returned Ruth, smiling. “I can’t tell you yet for sure that I can go to Sunrise Farm. I’d love to. I’ve always heard ’twas a beautiful place.”

“And it is, indeed! It’s going to be the finest gentleman’s estate in that section, when father gets through with it. He’s going to make it a great, big, paying farm – so he says. If it wasn’t for that man Caslon, we’d own the whole hill all the way around, as well as the top of it.”

“Who’s that?” asked Ruth, surprised that Madge should speak so sharply about the unknown Caslon.

“Why, he owns one of the farms adjoining. Father’s bought all the neighbors up but Caslon. He won’t sell. But I reckon father will find a way to make him, before he gets through. Father usually carries his point,” added Madge, with much pride in Mr. Steele’s business acumen.

Uncle Jabez had not yet said Ruth could go with the crowd to the Steeles’ summer home; Aunt Alvirah wrote that he was “studyin’ about it.” But there was so much to do at Briarwood as the end of the school year approached, that the girl of the Red Mill had little time to worry about the subject.

Although Ruth and Helen Cameron were far from graduation themselves, they both had parts of some prominence in the exercises which were to close the year at Briarwood Hall. Ruth was in a quartette selected from the Glee Club for some special music, and Helen had a small violin solo part in one of the orchestral numbers.

Not many of the juniors, unless they belonged to either the school orchestra or the Glee Club, would appear to much advantage at graduation. The upper senior class was in the limelight – and Madge Steele was the only one of Ruth’s close friends who was to receive her diploma.

“We who aren’t seniors have to sit around like bumps on a log,” growled Heavy. “Might as well go home for good the day before.”

“You should have learned to play, or sing, or something,” advised one of the other girls, laughing at Heavy’s apparently woebegone face.

“Did you ever hear me try to sing, Lluella?” demanded the plump young lady. “I like music myself – I’m very fond of it, no matter how it sounds! But I can’t even stand my own chest-tones.”

Preparations for the great day went on apace. There was to be a professional director for the augmented orchestra and he insisted, because of the acoustics of the hall, upon building an elevated extension to the stage, upon which to stand to conduct the music.

“Gee!” gasped Heavy, when she saw it the first time. “What’s the diving-board for?”

“That’s not a diving-board,” snapped Mercy Curtis. “It’s the lookout station for the captain to watch the high C’s.”

The bustle and confusion of departure punctuated the final day of the term, too. There were so many girls to say good-bye to for the summer; and some, of course, would never come back to Briarwood Hall again – as scholars, at least.

In the midst of the excitement Ruth received a letter in the crabbed hand of dear old Aunt Alvirah. The old lady enclosed a small money order, fearing that Ruth might not have all the money she needed for her home-coming. But the best item in the letter beside the expression of Aunt Alvirah’s love, was the statement that “Your Uncle Jabe, he’s come round to agreeing you should go to that Sunrise Farm place with your young friends. I made him let me hire a tramping girl that came by, and we got the house all rid up, so when you come home, my pretty, all you got to do is to visit.”

“And I will visit with her – the unselfish old dear!” Ruth told herself. “Dear me! how very, very good everybody is to me. But I am afraid poor Uncle Jabez wouldn’t be so kind if he wasn’t influenced by Aunt Alvirah.”