CHAPTER VI – THE GYPSY’S WORDS
That very forenoon after the two smallest girls had set out on their drive with Scalawag a telegram came to the old Corner House for Ruth.
As Agnes said, a telegram was “an event in their young sweet lives.” And this one did seem of great importance to Ruth. It was from Cecile Shepard and read:
“Arrived Oakhurst. They will not let me see Luke.”
Aside from the natural shock that the telegram itself furnished, Cecile’s declaration that she was not allowed to see her brother was bound to make Ruth Kenway fear the worst.
“Oh!” she cried, “he must be very badly hurt indeed. It is much worse than Cecile thought when she wrote. Oh, Agnes! what shall I do?”
“Telegraph her for particulars,” suggested Agnes, quite practically. “A broken wrist can’t be such an awful thing, Ruthie.”
“But his back! Suppose he has seriously hurt his back?”
“Goodness me! That would be awful, of course. He might grow a hump like poor Fred Littleburg. But I don’t believe that anything like that has happened to Luke, Ruthie.”
Her sister was not to be easily comforted. “Think! There must be something very serious the matter or they would not keep his own sister from seeing him.” Ruth herself had had no word from Luke since the accident.
Neither of the sisters knew that Cecile Shepard had never had occasion to send a telegram before and had never received one in all her life.
But she learned that a message of ten words 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.
At least, this picnic meal cured the slight attack of homesickness which he suffered. He was no longer for turning back. The whole world was before him and he strode away into it – lugging that extension-bag.
While his troubled mother was showing Agnes Kenway the unmistakable traces of his departure for parts unknown, Sammy was trudging along pretty contentedly, the bag awkwardly knocking against his knees, and his sharp eyes alive to everything that went on along the road.
Sammy had little love for natural history or botany, or anything like that. He suffered preparatory lessons in those branches of enforced knowledge during the school year.
He did not care a bit to know the difference between a gray squirrel and a striped chipmunk. They both chattered at him saucily, and he stopped to try a shot at each of them with his gun.
To Sammy’s mind they were legitimate game. He visualized himself building a fire in a fence corner, skinning and cleaning his game and roasting it over the flames for supper. But the squirrel and the chipmunk visualized quite a different outcome to the adventure and they refused to be shot by the amateur sportsman.
Sammy struck into a road that led across the canal by a curved bridge and right out into a part of the country with which he was not at all familiar. The houses were few and far between, and most of them were set well back from the road.
Sometimes dogs barked at him, but he was not afraid of watch dogs. He did not venture into the yards or up the private lanes. He had bought enough crackers and cheese to make another meal when he should want it. And there were sweet springs beside the road, or in the pastures where the cattle grazed.
Few vehicles passed him in either direction. It was the time of the late hay harvest and everybody was at work in the fields – and usually when he saw the haymakers at all, they were far from the road.
He met no pedestrians at all. Being quite off the line of the railroad, there were no tramps on this road, and of course there was nothing else to harm the boy. His mother, in her anxiety, peopled the world with those that would do Sammy harm. In truth, he was never safer in his life!
But adventure? Why, the world was full of it, and Sammy Pinkney expected to meet any number of exciting incidents as he went on.
“Sammy,” Dot Kenway once said, “has just a wunnerful ’magination. Why! if he sees our old Sandyface creeping through the grass after a poor little field mouse, Sammy can think she’s a whole herd of tigers. His ’magination is just wunnerful!”
CHAPTER VII – THE BRACELET AGAIN TO THE FORE
While Sammy’s sturdy, if short, legs were leaving home and Milton steadily behind him, Dot and Tess were driving Scalawag, the calico pony, to Penny & Marchant’s store, and later to Mr. Howbridge’s house to deliver the note Ruth had entrusted to them.
Their guardian had always been fond of the Kenway sisters – since he had been appointed their guardian by the court, of course – and Tess and Dot could not merely call at Mr. Howbridge’s door and drive right away again.
Besides, there were Ralph and Rowena Birdsall. The Birdsall twins had of late likewise come under Mr. Howbridge’s care, and circumstances were such that it was best for their guardian to take the twins into his own home.
Having two extremely active and rather willful children in his household had most certainly disturbed Mr. Howbridge out of the rut of his old existence. And Ralph and Rowena quite “turned the ‘ouse hupside down,” to quote Hedden, Mr. Howbridge’s butler.
The moment the twins spied Tess and Dot in the pony phaeton they tore down the stairs from their quarters at the top of the Howbridge house, and flew out of the door to greet the little Corner House girls.
“Oh, Tessie and Dot!” cried Rowena, who looked exactly like her brother, only her hair was now grown long again and she no longer wore boy’s garments, as she had when the Kenways first knew her. “How nice to see you!”
“Where’s Sammy?” Ralph demanded. “Why didn’t he come along, too?”
“We’re glad to see you, Rowena and Rafe,” Tess said sedately.
But Dot replied eagerly to the boy twin:
“Oh, Rafe! what do you think? Sammy’s run away again.”
“Get out!”
“I’m going to,” said Dot, considering Ralph’s ejaculation of amazement an invitation to alight, and she forthwith jumped down from the step of the phaeton.
“You can’t mean that Sammy has run off?” cried Ralph. “Listen to this, Rowdy.”
“What a silly boy!” criticised his sister.
“I don’t know,” chuckled Ralph Birdsall. “’Member how you and I ran away that time, Rowdy?”
“Oh – well,” said his sister. “We had reason for doing so. But you know Sammy Pinkney’s got a father and a mother – And for pity’s sake, Rafe, stop calling me Rowdy.”
“And he’s got a real nice bulldog, too,” added Dot, reflectively considering any possibility why Sammy should run away. “I can’t understand why he does it. He only has to come back home again. I did it once, and I never mean to run away from home again.”
Meanwhile Tess left Ralph to hitch Scalawag while she marched up the stone steps of the Howbridge house to deliver Ruth’s note into Hedden’s hand, who took it at once to Mr. Howbridge.
Dot interested the twins almost immediately in another topic. Rowena naturally was first to spy the silver girdle around the Alice-doll’s waist.
“What a splendid belt!” cried Rowena Birdsall. “Is it real silver, Dot?”
“It – it’s fretful silver,” replied the littlest Corner House girl. “Isn’t it pretty?”
“Why,” declared Ralph after an examination, “it’s an old, old bracelet.”
“Well, it is old, I s’pose,” admitted Dot. “But my Alice-doll doesn’t know that. She thinks it is a brand new belt. But of course she can’t wear it every day, for half the time the bracelet belongs to Tess.”
This statement naturally aroused the twins’ curiosity, and when Tess ran back to join them in the front yard the story of the Gypsy basket and the finding of the bracelet lost nothing of detail by being narrated by both of the Corner House girls.
“Oh, my!” cried Rowena. “Maybe those Gypsies are just waiting to grab you. Gypsies steal children sometimes. Don’t they, Rafe?”
“Course they do,” agreed her twin.
Dot looked rather frightened at this suggestion, but Tess scorned the possibility.
“Why, how foolish,” she declared. “Dot and I were lost once – all by ourselves. Even Tom Jonah wasn’t with us. Weren’t we, Dot? And we slept out under a tree all night, and a nice Gypsy woman found us in the morning and took us to her camp. Didn’t she, Dot?”
“Oh, yes! And an owl howled at us,” agreed the smaller girl. “And I’d much rather sleep in a Gypsy tent than have owls howl at me.”
“The owl hooted, Dot,” corrected Tess.
“Well, what’s the difference between a hoot and a howl?” demanded Dot, rather crossly. She did so hate to be corrected!
“Well, of course,” said Rowena Birdsall thoughtfully, “if you are acquainted with Gypsies maybe you wouldn’t be scared. But I don’t believe they gave you this bracelet for nothing.”
“No,” agreed Dot quickly. “For forty-five cents. And we still owe Sammy Pinkney twenty-five cents of it. And he’s run away.”
So they got around again to the first exciting piece of news Tess and Dot had brought, and were discussing that when Mr. Howbridge came out to speak to the little visitors, giving them his written answer to Ruth’s note. He heard about Sammy’s escapade and some mention of the Gypsies.
“Well,” he chuckled, “if Sammy Pinkney has been carried off by the Gypsies, I sympathize with the Gypsies. I have a very vivid recollection of how much trouble Sammy can make – and without half trying.
“Now, children, give my note to Ruth. I am very sorry that Luke Shepard is ill. If he does not at once recover it may be well to bring him here to Milton. With his aunt only just recovering from her illness, it would be unwise to take the boy home.”
This he said more to himself than to the little girls. Because of their errand Tess and Dot could remain no longer. Ralph unhitched the pony and Tess drove away.
Around the very first corner they spied a dusty, rather battered touring-car just moving away. A big, dark man, with gold hoops in his ears, was driving it. There was a brilliantly dressed young woman in the tonneau, which was otherwise filled with boxes, baskets, a crate of fruit, and odd-shaped packages.
“Oh, Tess!” squealed Dot. “See there!”
“Oh, Dot!” rejoined her sister quite as excitedly. “That is the young Gypsy lady.”
“Oh-oo!” moaned Dot. “Have we got to give her back this fretful silver bracelet, Tessie?”
“We must try,” declared Tess firmly. “Ruth says so. Get up, Scalawag! Come on – hurry! We must catch them.”
The touring-car was going away from the pony-phaeton. Scalawag objected very much to going faster than his usual easy jog trot – unless it were to dance behind a band! He didn’t care to overtake the Gypsies’ motor-car.
And that car was going faster and faster. Tess stopped talking to the aggravating Scalawag and lifted up her voice to shout after the Gypsies.
“Oh, stop! Stop!” she called. “Miss – Miss Gypsy! We’ve got something for you! Why, Dot, you are not hollering at all!”
“I – I’m trying to,” wailed the smaller girl. “But I do so hate to make Alice give up her belt.”
The Gypsy turned his car into a cross street ahead and disappeared. When Scalawag brought the Corner House girls to that corner the car was so far away that the girls’ voices at their loudest pitch could not have reached the ears of the Romany folk.
“Now, just see! We’ll never be able to give that bracelet back if you don’t do your share of the hollering, Dot Kenway,” complained Tess.
“I – I will,” promised Dot. “Anyway, I will when it’s your turn to wear the bracelet.”
The little girls reached home again at a time when the whole Corner House family seemed disrupted. To the amazement of Tess and Dot their sister Ruth had departed for the mountains. Neale had only just then returned from seeing her aboard the train.
“And it’s too late to stop her, never mind what Mr. Howbridge says in this note,” cried Agnes. “That foolish Cecile! Here is the second half of her telegraph message,” and she read it aloud again:
“Until afternoon; will wire you then how he is.”
“Crickey!” gasped Neale, red in the face with laughter, and taking the two telegrams to read them in conjunction:
“Arrived Oakhurst. They will not let me see Luke until afternoon. Will wire you then how he is.”
“Isn’t that just like a girl?”
“No more like a girl than it is like a boy,” snapped Agnes. “I’m sure all the brains in the world are not of the masculine gender.”
“I stand corrected,” meekly agreed her friend. “Just the same, I don’t think that even you, Aggie, would award Cecile Shepard a medal for perspicuity.”
“Why —why,” gasped the listening Dot, “has Cecile got one of those things the matter with her? I thought it was Luke who got hurt?”
“You are perfectly right, Dottie,” said Agnes, before Neale could laugh at the little girl. “It is Luke who is hurt. But this Neale O’Neil is very likely to dislocate his jaw if he pronounces many such big words. He is only showing off.”
“Squelched!” admitted Neale good-naturedly. “Well, what do you wish done with the car? Shall I put it up? Can’t chase Ruth’s train in it, and bring her back.”
“You might chase the Gypsies,” suggested Tess slowly. “We saw them again – Dot and me.”
“Oh! The Gypsies? What do you think, Neale? I do believe there is something in that fortune-telling business,” Agnes cried.
“I bet there is,” agreed Neale. “Money for the Gypsies.”
But Agnes repeated what the Gypsy girl had said to Ruth and herself just as the elder Corner House girl was starting for the train.
“I saw that Gyp of course,” agreed Neale. “But, pshaw! she only just guessed. Of course there isn’t any truth in what those fortune tellers hand you. Not much!”
“There was something in that basket they handed Tess and me,” said Dot, complacently eyeing the silver girdle on the Alice-doll.
“Say! About that bracelet, Aggie,” broke in Neale. “Do you know what I believe?”
“What, Neale?”
“I believe those Gypsies must have stolen it. Then they got scared, thinking that the police were after them, and the women dropped it into the basket the kids bought, believing they could get the bracelet back when it was safe for them to do so.”
“Do you really suppose that is the explanation?”
“I am afraid the bracelet is ‘stolen goods.’ Perhaps the children had better not carry it away from the house any more. Or until we are sure. The police – ”
“Mercy me, Neale! you surely would not tell the police about the bracelet?”
“Not yet. But I was going to suggest to Ruth that she advertise the bracelet in the Milton Morning Post. Advertise it in the ‘Lost and Found’ column, just as though it had been picked up somewhere. Then let us see if the Gypsies – or somebody else – comes after it.”
“And if somebody does?”
“Well, we can always refuse to give it up until ownership is proved,” declared Neale.
“All right. Let’s advertise it at once. We needn’t wait for Ruth to come back,” said the energetic Agnes. “How should such an advertisement be worded, Neale?”
They proceeded to evolve a reading notice advertising the finding of the silver bracelet, which when published added not a little to the complications of the matter.