Chapter 6 SEEKING THE TRAIL

"I might have known that! I might have known it!" Ruth exclaimed when she heard this. "And if I'd only written you or Uncle Jabez about her, maybe you would have kept her till I came. I wanted to help that girl," and Ruth all but shed tears.

"Deary, deary me!" cried Aunt Alvirah. "Tell me all about it, my pretty."

So Ruth related all she knew about the half-wild girl whose acquaintance she had made at Briarwood Hall under such peculiar circumstances. And she told just how Sadie looked and all about her.

"Yes," agreed Aunt Alvirah. "That was the trampin' gal sure enough. She was honest, jest as you say. But your uncle had his doubts. However, she looked better when she went away from here."

"I'm glad of that," Ruth said, heartily.

"You know one o' them old dresses of yours you wore to Miss Cramp's school-the one Helen give you?" said old Aunt Alvirah, hesitatingly.

"Yes, indeed!" said Ruth. "And how badly I felt when the girls found out they were 'hand-me-downs.' I'll never forget them."

"One of them I fitted to that poor child," said Aunt Alvirah. "The poor, skinny little thing. I wisht I could ha' kep' her long enough to put some flesh on her bones."

Ruth hugged the little old woman. "You're a dear, Aunty! I bet you fixed her up nice before she went away."

"Wal, she didn't look quite sech a tatterdemalion," granted Aunt Alvirah. "But I was sorry for her. I am allus sorry for any young thing that's strayin' about without a home or a mother. But natcherly Jabez wouldn't hear to keepin' her after the cleanin' was done. It's his nearness, Ruthie; he can't help it. Some men chew tobacco, and your Uncle Jabez is close. It's their nater. I'd ruther have a stingy man about, than a tobacco chewin' man-yes, indeed I had!"

Ruth laughed and agreed with her. Yet she was very sorry that Sadie Raby, "the tramping girl," had been allowed to move on without those at the Red Mill, who had sheltered her, discovering her destination.

She learned that Sadie had gone to Cheslow-at least, in that direction-and when Helen came spinning along in one of her father's cars from Outlook that afternoon, and wanted to take Ruth for a drive, the latter begged to ride "Cheslowward."

"Besides, we both want to see Dr. Davison-and there's Mercy's mother. And Miss Cramp will be glad to see me, I know; we'll wait till her school is out," Ruth suggested.

"You're boss," declared her chum. "And paying calls 'all by our lonesomes' will be fun enough. Tom's deserted me. He's gone tramping with Reno over toward the Wilkins Corner road-you know, that place where he was hurt that time, and you and Reno found him," Helen concluded.

This was "harking back" to the very first night Ruth had arrived at Cheslow from her old home at Darrowtown. But she was not likely to forget it, for through that accident of Master Tom Cameron's, she had met this very dear friend beside her now in the automobile.

"Oh, dear me! and the fun we used to have when we were little girls-'member, Ruthie?" demanded Helen, laughing. "My! isn't it warm? Is my face shiny?"

"Just a little," admitted Ruth.

"Never can keep the shine off," said Helen, bitterly. "Here! you take the wheel and let me find my powder-paper. Tom says he believes I smoke cigarettes and roll them myself," and Helen giggled.

Ruth carefully changed seats with her chum, who immediately produced the booklet of slips from her vanity case and rubbed the offending nose vigorously.

"Have a care, Helen! you'll make it all red," urged Ruth, laughing. "You do go at everything so excitedly. Anybody would think you were grating a nutmeg."

"Horrid thing! My nose doesn't look at all like a nutmeg."

"But it will-if you don't look out," laughed Ruth. "Oh, dear, me! here comes a big wagon. Do you suppose I can get by it safely?"

"If he gives you any room. There! he has begun to turn out. Now, just skim around him."

Ruth was careful and slowed down. This did not suit the fly-away Helen. "Come on!" she urged. "We'll never even get to the old doctor's house if you don't hurry."

She began to manipulate the levers herself and soon they were shooting along the Cheslow road at a speed that made Ruth's eyes water.

They came safely to the house with the green lamps before it, and ran in gaily to see their friend, Dr. Davison. For the moment the good old gentleman chanced to be busy and waved them into the back office to wait until he was free.

Old Mammy, who presided over the doctor's old-fashioned establishment, had spied the girls and almost immediately the tinkling of ice in a pitcher announced the approach of one of Mammy's pickaninny grandchildren with a supply of her famous lemonade and a plate of cakes.

"Mammy said you done git hungery waitin'," declared the grinning, kinky-haired child who presented herself with the refreshments. "An' a drink on one o' dese yere dusty days is allus welcome, misses."

Then she giggled, and darted away to the lower regions of the house, leaving the two chums to enjoy the goodies. Helen was cheerfully curious, and had to go looking about the big office, peeking into the bookcases, looking at the "specimens" in bottles along the shelf, trying to spell out and understand the Latin labels on the jars of drugs.

"Miss Nosey!" whispered Ruth, admonishingly.

"There you go! hitting my nose again," sighed Helen. And then she jumped back and almost screamed. For in fooling with the knob of a narrow closet door, it had snapped open, the door swung outward, and Helen found herself facing an articulated skeleton!

"Goodness gracious me!" exclaimed Helen.

"Oh, no," giggled Ruth. "It's not you at all. It's somebody else."

"Funny!" scoffed Helen. Then she laughed, too. "It's somebody the doctor's awfully choice of. Do you suppose it was his first patient?"

"Hush! Suppose he heard you?"

"He'd laugh," returned Helen, knowing the kindly old physician too well to be afraid of him in any case. "Now, behave! Don't say a word. I'm going to dress him up."

"What?" gasped Ruth.

"You'll see," said the daring Helen, and she seized an old hat of the doctor's from the top of the bookcase and set it jauntily upon the grinning skull.

"My goodness! doesn't he look terrible that way? Oh! I'll shut the door. He wiggles all over-just as though he were alive!"

Just then they heard the doctor bidding his caller good-bye, or Helen might have done some other ridiculous thing. The old gentleman came in, rubbing his hands, and with his eyes twinkling. He was a man who had never really grown old, and he liked to hear the girls tell of their school experiences, chuckling over their scrapes and antics with much delight.

"And how has my Goody Two-sticks gotten along this year?" he asked, for he was much interested in Mercy Curtis and her improvement, both physically and mentally. Had it not been for the doctor, Mercy might never have gotten out of her wheelchair, or gone to Briarwood Hall.

"She's going to beat us all," Helen declared, with enthusiasm. "Isn't she, Ruth?"

"She will if we don't work pretty hard," admitted the girl of the Red Mill, who was hoping herself to be finally among the first few members of her class at the Hall. "But I would rather see Mercy win first place, I believe, than anybody else-unless it is you, Helen."

"Don't you fret," laughed Helen. "You'll never see little me at the head of the class-and you know it."

The two friends did not bore the physician by staying too long, but after he bade them good-bye at the door, Helen ran down the path giggling.

"What do you suppose he'll say when he finds that hat on the skeleton?" she demanded, her eyes dancing.

"He'll say, 'That Helen Cameron was in here-that explains it!' You can't fool Dr. Davison," laughed Ruth.

Ruth had taken Helen into her confidence ere this about the strange runaway, Sadie Raby, and during their call at the doctor's, she had asked that gentleman if he had seen the tramping girl, after the latter had left the Red Mill. But he had not. Oddly enough, however, Ruth found some trace of Sadie at Mercy's house, where the girls in the automobile next went to call.

Mercy's mother had taken the girl in for a night, and fed her. The latter had asked Mr. Curtis about the trains going west, but he had sold Sadie no ticket.

"She was very reticent," Mrs. Curtis told Ruth. "She was so independent and capable-acting, in spite of her tender years, that I did not feel as though it was my place to try to stop her. She seemed to have some destination in view, but she would not tell me what it was."

"I wonder if that wasn't what Aunt Alvirah meant?" queried Ruth, thoughtfully, as she and Helen drove away. "That Sadie is awfully independent. I wish you had seen her."

"Maybe she's going to find her twin brothers that she told you about," suggested Helen. "I wish I had seen her."

"And maybe you've guessed it!" cried Ruth. "But that doesn't help us find her, for she didn't say where Willie and Dickie had been taken when they were removed from the orphanage."

"Gracious, Ruthie!" exclaimed her chum, laughing. "You're always worrying over somebody else's troubles."