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CHAPTER XVII – THE BLACK DOUGLASS

“Oh, don’t frighten her, Mr. Steele!” begged Ruth, still holding the half wild girl. “You would not send her back to those awful people?”

“Tut, tut! I am no ogre, I hope,” exclaimed the gentleman, rather put out of countenance at this outburst. “I only mean the child well. Doesn’t she understand?”

“I won’t go back to them Perkinses, I tell you!” cried Sadie, with a stamp of her foot.

“It is not my intention to send you back. I mean to look up your record and the record of the people you were placed with – Perkins, is it? The authorities of the institution that had the care of you, should be made to be more careful in their selection of homes for their charges.

“No. I will keep you here till I have had the matter sifted. If those – those Perkinses, as you call them, are unfit to care for you, you shall certainly not go back to them, my girl.”

Sadie looked at him shrewdly. “But I don’t want to stay here, Mister,” she blurted out.

“My girl, you are not of an age when you should be allowed to choose for yourself. Others, older and wiser, must choose for you. I would not feel that I was doing right in allowing you to run wild again – ”

“I gotter see the twins – I jest gotter see ’em,” said Sadie, faintly.

“And whether that Caslon is fit to have charge of you,” bitterly added Mr. Steele, “I have my doubts.”

“Oh, surely, you will let her see her little brothers?” cried Ruth, pleadingly.

“We will arrange about that – ahem!” said Mr. Steele. “But I will communicate at once – by long distance telephone – with the matron of the institution from which she came, and they can send a representative here to talk with me – ”

“And take me back there?” exclaimed Sadie. “No, I sha’n’t! I sha’n’t go! So there!”

“Hoity-toity, Miss! Let’s have no more of it, if you please,” said the gentleman, sternly. “You will stay here for the present. Don’t you try to run away from me, for if you do, I’ll soon have you brought back. We intend to treat you kindly here, but you must not abuse our kindness.”

It was perhaps somewhat puzzling to Sadie Raby – this attitude of the very severe gentleman. She had not been used to much kindness in her life, and the sort that is forced on one is not generally appreciated by the wisest of us. Therefore it is not strange if Sadie failed to understand that Mr. Steele really meant to be her friend.

“Come away, Sadie,” whispered Ruth, quite troubled herself by the turn affairs had taken. “I am so sorry – but it will all come right in the end – ”

“If by comin’ right, Miss, you means that I am goin’ to see them twins, you can jest bet it will all come right,” returned Sadie, gruffly, when they were out in the hall. “For see ’em I will, an’ him, nor nobody else, won’t stop me. As for goin’ back to them Perkinses, or to the orphanage, we’ll see ‘bout that,” added Sadie, to herself, and grimly.

Ruth feared very much that Mr. Steele would not have been quite so stern and positive with the runaway, had it not been for his dislike for the Caslons. Had Sadie’s brothers been stopping with some other neighbor, would Mr. Steele have delayed letting the runaway girl go to see them?

“Oh, dear, me! If folks would only be good-natured and stop being so hateful to each other,” thought the girl of the Red Mill. “I just know that Mr. Steele would like Mr. Caslon a whole lot, if they really once got acquainted!”

The rain had ceased falling by this time. The tempest had rolled away into the east. A great rainbow had appeared and many of the household were on the verandas to watch the bow of promise.

It was too wet, however, to venture upon the grass. The paths and driveway glistened with pools of water. And under a big tree not far from the front of the house, it was discovered that a multitude of little toads had appeared – tiny little fellows no larger than one’s thumbnail.

“It’s just been rainin’ toads!” cried one of the younger Steele children – Bennie by name. “Come on out, Ruthie, and see the toads that comed down with the rainstorm.”

Tom Cameron had already come up to speak with Sadie. He shook hands with the runaway girl and spoke to her as politely as he would have to any of his sister’s friends. And Sadie, remembering how kind he had been to her on the occasion when the tramps attacked her near Cheslow, responded to his advances with less reluctance than she had to those of some of the girls.

For it must be confessed that many of the young people looked upon the runaway askance. She was so different from themselves!

Now that she was clean, and her hair brushed and tied with one of Ruth’s own ribbons, and she was dressed neatly, Sadie Raby did not look much different from the girls about her on the wide porch; but when she spoke, her voice was hoarse, and her language uncouth.

Had she been plumper, she would have been a pretty girl. She was tanned very darkly, and her skin was coarse. Nevertheless, given half the care these other girls had been used to most of their lives, and Sadie Raby would have been the equal of any.

Ruth came strolling back to the veranda, leaving Bennie watching the toads – which remained a mystery to him. He was a lively little fellow of six and the pet of the whole family.

As it chanced, he was alone out there on the drive, and the others were now strolling farther and farther away from him along the veranda. The boy ran out farther from the house, and danced up and down, looking at the rainbow overhead.

Thus he was – a pretty sight in the glow of the setting sun – when a sudden chorus of shouts and frightened cries arose from the rear of the house.

Men and maids were screaming. Then came the pounding of heavy hoofs.

Around the curve of the drive charged a great black horse, a frayed and broken lead-rope hanging from his arching neck, his eyes red and glowing, and his sleek black body all a-quiver with the joy of his escape.

“The Black Douglass!” ejaculated Tom Cameron, in horror, for the great horse was charging straight for the dancing child in the driveway.

It was the most dangerous beast upon Sunrise Farm – indeed, almost the only savage creature Mr. Steele had retained when he bought out the former owner of the stock farm and his stud of horses.

The Black Douglass was a big creature, with an uncertain temper, and was handled only by the most careful men in Mr. Steele’s employ. Somehow, on this occasion, the brute had been allowed to escape.

Spurring the gravel with his iron shod hoofs, the horse galloped straight at little Bennie. The child, suddenly made aware of his peril by the screams of his brothers and sisters, turned blindly, staggered a few steps, and fell upon his hands and knees.

Mr. Steele rushed from the house, but he was too far away. The men chasing the released animal were at a distance, too. Tom Cameron started down the steps, but Helen shrieked for him to return. Who was there to face the snorting, prancing beast?

There was a flash of a slight figure down the steps and across the sod. Like an arrow from a strong bow, Sadie Raby darted before the fallen child. Nor was she helpless. The runaway knew what she was about.

As she ran from the veranda, she had seized a parasol that was leaning against one of the pillars. Holding this in both hands, she presented it to the charging horse, opening and shutting it rapidly as she advanced.

She leaped across Bennie and confronted the Black Douglass. The flighty animal, seeing something before him that he did not at all understand, changed his course with a frightened snort, and dashed off across the lawn, cutting out great clods as he ran, and so around the house again and out of sight.

Mr. and Mrs. Steele were both running to the spot. The gentleman picked up the frightened Bennie, but handed him at once to his mother. Then he turned and seized the girl by her thin shoulders.

“My dear girl! My dear girl!” he said, rather brokenly, turning her so as to face him. “That was a brave thing to do. We can’t thank you enough. You can’t understand – ”

“Aw, it warn’t anything. I knowed that horse wouldn’t jump at us when he seen the umbrel’. Horses is fools that way,” said Sadie Raby, rather shamefacedly.

But when Mrs. Steele knelt right down in the damp gravel beside her, and with one arm around Bennie, put the other around the runaway and hugged her – hugged her tight– Sadie was quite overcome, herself.

Madge Steele was crying frankly. Bobbins came rushing upon the scene, and there was a general riot of exclamation and explanation.

“Say! you goin’ to let me see my brothers now?” demanded the runaway, who had a practical mind, if nothing more.

“Bob,” said his father, quickly, “you have the pony put in the cart and drive down there to Caslon’s and bring those babies up here.”

“Aw, Father! what’ll I tell Caslon?” demanded the big fellow, hesitatingly.

“Tell him – tell him – ” For a moment, it was true, that Mr. Steele was rather put to it for a reply. He found Ruth beside him, plucking his sleeve.

“Let me go with Bobbins, sir,” whispered the girl of the Red Mill. “I’ll know what to say to Mr. and Mrs. Caslon.”

“I guess you will, Ruth. That’s right. You bring the twins up here to see their sister.” Then he turned and smiled down at Sadie, and there were tears behind his eyeglasses. “If I have my way, young lady, your coming here to Sunrise Farm will be the best thing – for you and the twins – that ever happened in your young lives!”

CHAPTER XVIII – SUNDRY PLANS

Perhaps Sadie Raby would have been just as well pleased had Mr. Steele allowed her to go to the Caslons’ to see her brothers, instead of having them brought up the hill to Sunrise Farm. The gentleman, however, did not do this because he disliked Caslon; Sadie had saved Bennie from what might have been certain death, and the wealthy Mr. Steele was quite as grateful as he was obstinate.

He was determined to show his gratitude to the friendless girl in a practical manner. And the object of his gratitude would include her two little brothers, as well. Oh, yes! Mr. Steele proposed to make Sadie Raby glad that she had saved Bennie from the runaway horse.

The other girls and boys, beside the members of the Steele family, were anxious now to show their approval of Sadie’s brave deed. The wanderer was quite bewildered at first by all the attention she received.

She was such a different looking girl, too, as has been already pointed out, from the miserable little creature who had been found by Mr. Steele in the shrubbery, that it was not hard to develop an interest in Sadie Raby.

Encircled by the family and their young visitors on the veranda, Sadie again related the particulars of her life and experience – and it was a particularly sympathetic audience that listened to her. Mr. Steele drew out a new detail that had escaped Ruth, even, in her confidences with the strange child.

Although the “terrible twins” were unable to remember either father or mother – orphan asylums are not calculated to encourage such remembrances in infant minds – Sadie, as she had once said to Ruth, could clearly remember both her parents.

And although they had died in distant Harburg, where the children had been put into the orphanage, Sadie remembered that the family had removed to that city, soon after the twins were born, from no less a place than Darrowtown!

“Me, I got it in my head that mebbe somebody would remember pa and mom in Darrowtown, and would give me a chance. That’s another reason I come hiking clear over here,” said Sadie.

“We’ll hunt your friends up – if there are any,” Mr. Steele assured her.

Sadie looked at him shrewdly. “Say!” said she, “you treat me a whole lot nicer than you did a while ago. Do folks have to do somethin’ for your family before you forget to be cross with them?”

It certainly was a facer! Mr. Steele flushed a little and scarcely knew what to say in reply to this frank criticism. But at that moment the two-wheel cart came into sight with the pony on the trot, and Ruth and the twins waving their hands and shouting.

The meeting of the little chaps with their runaway sister was touching. The three Raby orphans were very popular indeed at Sunrise Farm just then.

Mr. Steele frankly admitted that this might be a case where custom could be over-ridden, and the orphanage authorities ignored.

“Whether those Perkins people she was farmed out to, were as harsh as she says – ” he began, when Ruth interrupted eagerly:

“Oh, sir! I can vouch for that. The man was an awful brute. He struck me with his whip, and I don’t believe Sadie told a story when she says he beat her.”

“I wish I’d been there,” ejaculated Tom Cameron, in a low voice, “when the scoundrel struck you, Ruth. I would have done something to him!”

“However,” pursued Mr. Steele, “the girl is here now and near to Darrowtown, which she says is her old home. We may find somebody there who knew the Rabys. At any rate, they shall be cared for – I promise you.”

“I know!” cried Ruth, suddenly. “If anybody will remember them, it’s Miss Pettis.”

“Another of your queer friends, Ruth?” asked Madge, laughing.

“Why – Miss True Pettis isn’t queer. But she knows about everybody who lives in Darrowtown, or who ever did live there – and their histories from away back!”

“A human encyclopedia,” exclaimed Heavy.

“She’s a lovely lady,” said Ruth, quietly, “and she’ll do anything to help these unfortunate Rabys – be sure of that.”

The late dinner was announced, and by that time the twins, as well as Sadie, had become a little more used to their surroundings. Willie and Dickie had been put into “spandy clean” overalls and shirts before Mrs. Caslon would let them out of her hands. They were really pretty children, in a delicate way, like their sister.

With so many about the long dining table, the meals at the Steele home at this time were like a continuous picnic. There was so much talking and laughter that Mr. and Mrs. Steele had to communicate with signs, for the most part, from their stations at either end of the table, or else they must send messages back and forth by one of the waitresses.

The twins and Sadie were down at Mrs. Steele’s end of the table on this occasion, with the girls all about them. Ruth and the others took a lot more interest in keeping the orphans supplied with good things than they did in their own plates.

That is, all but Heavy; of course she wasted no time in heaping her own plate. The twins were a little bashful at first; but it was plain that Willie and Dickie had been taught some of the refinements of life at the orphanage, as both had very good table manners.

They had to be tempted to eat, however, and finally Heavy offered to run a race with them, declaring that she could eat as much as both of the boys put together.

Dickie was just as silent in his sister’s presence as usual, his communications being generally in the form of monosyllables. But he was faithful in echoing Willie’s sentiments on any and every occasion – noticeably at chicken time. The little fellows ate the fricassee with appetite, but they refused the nice, rich gravy, in which the cook had put macaroni. Mrs. Steele urged them to take gravy once or twice, and finally Sadie considered that she should come to the rescue.

“What’s the matter with you kids?” she demanded, hoarsely, in an attempt to communicate with them aside. “Ye was glad ’nough to git chicken gravy on Thanksgivin’ at the orphanage – warn’t ye?”

“Yes, I know, Sadie,” returned Willie, wistfully. “But they never left the windpipes in it – did they, Dickie?”

“Nope,” responded Dickie, feelingly, likewise gazing at the macaroni askance.

It set the table in a roar and finally Willie and Dickie were encouraged to try some of the gravy, “windpipes” and all!

“They’re all right,” laughed Busy Izzy, greatly delighted. “They’re one – or two – of the seven wonders of the world – ”

“Pooh!” interrupted Heavy, witheringly, “You don’t even know what the seven wonders of the world are.”

“I can tell you one thing they’re not,” grinned Busy Izzy. “They’re not a baseball team, for there’s not enough of them. Now will you be good?”

Madge turned her head suddenly and ran right into Belle Tingley’s elbow, as Belle was reaching up to settle her hair-ribbon.

“Oh, oh! My eye! I believe you poked it out, Belle. You have such sharp elbows,” wailed Madge.

“You’ll have to see Doc. Blodgett at Lumberton,” advised Heavy, “and get your eye tended to. He’s a great old doctor – ”

“Why, I didn’t know he was an eye doctor,” exclaimed Madge. “I thought he was a chiropodist.”

“He used to be,” Heavy returned, with perfect seriousness. “He began at the foot and worked up, you see.”

Amid all the fun and hilarity, Mr. Steele called them to order. This was at the dessert stage, and there were tall cones of parti-colored ice cream before them, with great, heaping plates of cake.

“Can you give me a moment’s attention, girls and boys?” asked their host. “I want to speak about to-morrow.”

“The ‘great and glorious,’” murmured Heavy.

“We’ve all promised to be good, sir,” said Tom. “No pistols, or explosives, on the place.”

“Only the cannon,” interposed Bobbins. “You’re going to let us salute with that; eh, Pa?”

“I’m not sure that I shall,” returned his father, “if you do not give me your attention, and keep silent. We are determined to have a safe and sane Fourth on Sunrise Farm. But at night we will set off a splendid lot of fireworks that I bought last week – ”

“Oh, fine, Pa! I do love fireworks,” cried Madge.

“The girls are as bad as the boys, Mother,” said Mr. Steele, shaking his head. “What I wanted to say,” he added, raising his voice, “was that we ought to invite these little chaps – these brothers of Sadie Raby – to come up at night to see our show.”

“Oh, let’s have all the fresh airs, Pa!” cried Madge, eagerly. “What a good time they’d have.”

“I – don’t – know,” said her father, soberly, looking at his wife. “I am afraid that will be too much for your mother.”

“Mr. Caslon has some fireworks for the children,” broke in Ruth, timidly. “I happen to know that. And Tom was going down to buy ten dollar’s worth more to put with what Mr. Caslon has.”

“Humph!” said Mr. Steele.

“You see, some of us thought we’d give the little folk a good time down there, and it wouldn’t bother you and Mrs. Steele, sir,” Ruth hastened to explain.

“Well, well!” exclaimed the gentleman, not very sharply after all, “if those Caslons can stand the racket, I guess mother and I can – eh, mother?”

“We need not have them in the house,” said Mrs. Steele. “We can put tables on the veranda, and give them ice cream and cake after the fireworks. Get the men to hang Chinese lanterns, and so forth.”

“Bully!” cried the younger Steeles, in chorus, and the visitors to Sunrise Farm were quite delighted, too, with this suggestion.

CHAPTER XIX – A SAFE AND SANE FOURTH?

Of course, somebody had to go to the Caslons and explain all this, and that duty devolved upon Ruth. Naturally, permission had to be sought of the farmer and his wife before the “fresh air kids” could be carried off bodily to Sunrise Farm.

It was decided that the ten dollars, of which Tom had taken charge, should be spent for extra bunting and lanterns to decorate with, and to buy little gifts for each of the fresh airs to find next his or her plate on the evening of the Fourth.

Therefore, Tom started again for Darrowtown right after breakfast, and Ruth rode with him in the high, two-wheeled cart.

Ruth had two important errands. One was in Darrowtown. But the first stop, at Mr. Caslon’s, troubled her a little.

How would the farmer and his wife take the idea of the Steeles suddenly patronizing the fresh air children? Were the Caslons anything like Mr. Steele himself, in temperament, Ruth’s errand would not be a pleasant one, she knew.

The orphans ran out shrieking a welcome when Tom drove into the yard of the house under the hill. Where were the “terrible twins”? Had their sister really come to see them? Were Willie and Dickie coming back to the orphanage at all?

These and a dozen other questions were hurled at Ruth. Some of the bigger girls remembered Sadie Raby and asked a multitude of questions about her. So the girl of the Red Mill contented herself at first with trying to reply to all these queries.

Then Mrs. Caslon appeared from the kitchen, wiping her hands of dish-water, and the old farmer himself came from the stables. Their friendly greeting and smiling faces opened the way for Ruth’s task. She threw herself, figuratively speaking, into their arms.

“I know you are both just as kind as you can be,” said Ruth, eagerly, “and you won’t mind if I ask you to change your program a little to-day for the youngsters? They want to give them all a good time up at Sunrise Farm.”

“Good land!” exclaimed Mrs. Caslon. “Not all of them?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Ruth, and she sketched briefly the idea of the celebration on the hill-top, including the presents she and Tom were to buy in Darrowtown for the kiddies.

“My soul and body!” exclaimed the farmer’s wife. “That lady, Mis’ Steele, don’t know what she’s runnin’ into, does she, Father?”

“I reckon not,” chuckled Mr. Caslon, wagging his head.

“But you won’t mind? You’ll let us have the children?” asked Ruth, anxiously.

“Why – ” Mrs. Caslon looked at the old gentleman. But he was shaking all over with inward mirth.

“Do ’em good, Mother – do ’em good,” he chuckled – and he did not mean the fresh air children, either. Ruth could see that.

“It’ll be a mortal shame,” began Mrs. Caslon, again, but once more her husband interrupted:

“Don’t you fuss about other folks, Mother,” he said, gravely. “It’ll do ’em good – mebbe – as I say. Nothin’ like tryin’ a game once by the way. And I bet twelve little tykes like these ’uns will keep that Steele man hoppin’ for a while.”

“But his poor wife – ”

“Don’t you worry, Mrs. Caslon,” Ruth urged, but wishing to laugh, too. “We girls will take care of the kiddies, and Mrs. Steele sha’n’t be bothered too much.”

“Besides,” drawled Mr. Caslon, “the woman’s got a good sized family of her own – there’s six or seven of ’em, ain’t there?” he demanded of Ruth.

“Eight, sir.”

“But that don’t make a speck of difference,” the farmer’s wife interposed. “She’s always had plenty of maids and the like to look out for them. She don’t know – ”

“Let her learn a little, then,” said Mr. Caslon, good naturedly enough. “It’ll do both him and her good. And it’ll give you a rest for a few hours, Mother.

“Besides,” added Mr. Caslon, with another deep chuckle, “I hear Steele has been rantin’ around about takin’ the kids to board just for the sake of spitin’ the neighbors. Now, if he thinks boardin’ a dozen young’uns like these is all fun – ”

“Don’t be harsh, John,” urged Mrs. Caslon.

“I ain’t! I ain’t!” cried the farmer, laughing again. “But they’re bitin’ off a big chaw, and it tickles me to see ’em do it.”

It was arranged, therefore, that the orphans should be ready to go up to Sunrise Farm that afternoon. Then Ruth and Tom drove to Darrowtown. They had a fast horse, and got over the rough road at a very good pace.

Tom drove first around into the side street where Miss True Pettis’s little cottage was situated.

“You dear child!” was the little spinster’s greeting. “Are you having a nice time with your rich friends at Sunrise Farm? Tell me all about them – and the farm. Everybody in Darrowtown is that curious!”

Tom had driven away to attend to the errands he could do alone, so Ruth could afford the time to visit a bit with her old friend. The felon was better, and that fact being assured, Ruth considered it better to satisfy Miss Pettis regarding the Sunrise Farm folk before getting to the Raby orphans.

And that was the way to get to them, too. For the story of the tempest the day before, and the appearance of Sadie Raby, the runaway, and her reunion with the twins, naturally came into the tale Ruth had to tell – a tale that was eagerly listened to and as greatly enjoyed by the Darrowtown seamstress, as one can well imagine.

“Just like a book – or a movie,” sighed Miss Pettis, shaking her head. “It’s really wonderful, Ruthie Fielding, what’s happened to you since you left us here in Darrowtown. But, I always said, this town is dead and nothing really happens here!”

“But it’s lovely in Darrowtown,” declared Ruth. “And just to think! Those Raby children lived here once.”

“No?”

“Yes they did. Sadie was six or seven years old, I guess, when they left here. Tom Raby was her father. He was a mason’s helper – ”

“Don’t you tell me another thing about ’em!” cried Miss Pettis, starting up suddenly. “Now you remind me. I remember them well. Mis’ Raby was as nice a woman as ever stepped – but weakly. And Tom Raby —

“Why, how could I forget it? And after that man from Canady came to trace ’em, too, only three years ago. Didn’t you ever hear of it, Ruth?”

“What man?” asked Ruth, quite bewildered now. “Are – are you sure it was the same family? And who would want to trace them?”

“Lemme see. Listen!” commanded Miss Pettis. “You answer me about these poor children.”

And under the seamstress’s skillful questioning Ruth related every detail she knew about the Raby orphans – and Mr. Steele, in her presence, had cross-questioned Sadie exhaustively the evening before. The story lost nothing in Ruth’s telling, for she had a retentive memory.

“My goodness me, Ruthie!” ejaculated the spinster, excitedly. “It’s the same folks – sure. Why, do you know, they came from Quebec, and there’s some property they’ve fell heir to – property from their mother’s side – Oh, let me tell you! Funny you never heard us talkin’ about that Canady lawyer while you was livin’ here with me. My!”