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Title: Betty Gordon in Washington

Author: Alice B. Emerson

Release Date: November, 2004 [EBook #6853]
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[This file was first posted on February 2, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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BETTY GORDON IN WASHINGTON

OR

Strange Adventures in a Great City

BY

ALICE B. EMERSON




CONTENTS


CHAPTER

I     THE GORED COW

II    HOSPITALITY UNDER DIFFICULTIES

III   BOB HAS GREAT NEWS

IV    AT THE VENDUE

V     CONSEQUENCES

VI    THE RUNAWAY MISSED

VII   A BELATED LETTER

VIII  GOOD-BY TO BRAMBLE FARM

IX    NEW FRIENDS

X     FELLOW TRAVELERS

XI    A SERIOUS MIX-UP

XII   STRAIGHTENING THINGS OUT

XIII  WASHINGTON MONUMENT

XIV   LIBBIE IS ROMANTIC

XV    OFF TO INVESTIGATE

XVI   WHAT HALE HAD TO TELL

XVII  MORE SIGHTSEEING

XVIII BETTY UNDERSTANDS

XIX   AN UNEXPECTED MEETING

XX    MUTUAL CONFIDENCES

XXI   THE ACCIDENT

XXII  BEING RESCUED

XXIII ANOTHER RESCUE

XXIV  BOB IS CLEARED

XXV   FUTURE PLANS




BETTY GORDON IN WASHINGTON




CHAPTER I

THE GORED COW


For lack of a better listener, Betty Gordon addressed the saucy
little chipmunk that sat on the top rail of the old worn fence and
stared at her with bright, unwinking eyes.

"It is the loveliest vase you ever saw," said Betty, busily sorting
the tangled mass of grasses and flowers in her lap. "Heavy old
colonial glass, you know, plain, but with beautiful lines."

The chipmunk continued to regard her gravely.

"I found it this morning when I was helping Mrs. Peabody clean the
kitchen closet shelves," the girl went on, her slim fingers selecting
and discarding slender stems with fascinating quickness. "It was on
the very last shelf, and was covered with dust. I washed it, and
we're going to have it on the supper table to-night with this bouquet
in it. There! don't you think that's pretty?"

She held out the flowers deftly arranged and surveyed them proudly.
The chipmunk cocked his brown head and seemed to be withholding his
opinion.

Betty put the bouquet carefully down on the grass beside her and
stretched the length of her trim, graceful self on the turf, burying
her face luxuriously in the warm dry "second crop" of hay that had
been raked into a thin pile under the pin oak and left there
forgotten. Presently she rolled over and lay flat on her back,
studying the lazy clouds that drifted across the very blue sky.

"I'd like to be up in an airplane," she murmured drowsily, her
eyelids drooping. "I'd sail right into a cloud and see--What was that?"

She sat up with a jerk that sent the hitherto motionless chipmunk
scurrying indignantly up the nearest tree, there to sit and shake his
head angrily at her.

"Sounds like Bob!" said Betty to herself. "My goodness, that was Mr.
Peabody--they must be having an awful quarrel!"

The voices and shouts came from the next field, separated from her
by a brook, almost dry now, and a border of crooked young willow
trees grown together in an effective windbreak.

"Anybody who'll gore a cow like that isn't fit to own a single dumb
creature!" A clear young voice shaking with passion was carried by
the wind to the listening girl.

"When I need a blithering, no-'count upstart to teach me my
business, I'll call on you and not before," a deeper, harsh voice
snarled. "When you're farming for yourself you can feed the
neighbors' critters on your corn all you've a mind to!"

"Oh, dear!" Betty scrambled to her feet, forgetting the bouquet so
carefully culled, and darted in the direction of the willow hedge. "I
do hope Mr. Peabody hasn't been cruel to an animal. Bob is always so
furious when he catches him at that!"

She crossed the puttering little brook by the simple expedient of
jumping from one bank to the other and scrambled through the willow
trees, emerging, flushed and anxious-eyed, to confront a boy about
fourteen years old in a torn straw hat and faded overalls and a tall,
lean middle-aged man with a pitchfork in his hands.

"Well?" the latter grunted, as Betty glanced fearfully at him. "What
did you come for? I suppose you think two rows of corn down flat is
something to snicker at?"

They stood on the edge of a flourishing field of corn, and,
following the direction of Mr. Peabody's accusing finger, Betty
Gordon saw that two fine rows had been partially eaten and trampled.

"Oh, that's too bad!" she said impulsively, "What did it--a stray
cow?"

"Keppler's black and white heifer," answered Mr. Peabody grimly.
"Bob here is finding fault with me because I didn't let it eat its
head off."

"No such thing!" Bob Henderson was stung into speech. "Because the
poor creature didn't get out fast enough to suit you--and you
bewildered her with your shouting till she didn't know which way to
turn--you jabbed her with the pitchfork. I saw the blood! And I say
nobody but an out and out coward would do a thing like that to a dumb
animal."

"Oh!" breathed Betty again, softly. "How could you!"

"Now I've heard about enough of that!" retorted Mr. Peabody angrily.
"If you'd both attend to your own business and leave me to mind mine,
we'd save a lot of time. You, Bob, go let down the bars and turn that
critter into the road. Maybe Keppler will wake up and repair his
fences after all his stock runs off. You'd better help him, Betty. He
might step on a grub-worm if you don't go along to watch him!"

Bob strode off, kicking stones as he went, and Betty followed
silently. She helped him lower the bars and drive the cow into the
road, then put the bars in place again.

"Where are you going?" she ventured in surprise, as Bob moodily
trudged after the animal wending an erratic way down the road.

"Going to take her home," snapped Bob, "Peabody would like to see
Keppler have to get her out of the pound, but I'll save him that
trouble. You can go on back and read your book."

"Just because you're mad at Mr. Peabody is no reason why you should
be cross to me," said Betty with spirit. "I wasn't reading a book,
and I'm coming with you. So there!"

Bob laughed and told her to "come on." He was seldom out of sorts
long. Indeed, of the two, Betty had the quicker temper and cherished
a grudge more enduringly.

"Just the same, Betty," Bob announced, as he skillfully persuaded
the cow to forego the delights of a section of particularly sweet
grass and proceed on her course, "I'm about through. I can't stand it
much longer; and lately I've been afraid that in a rage I might
strike Mr. Peabody with something and either kill him or hurt him
badly. Of course, I wouldn't do it if I stopped to think, but when he
gets me furious as he did to-day, I don't stop to think."

"Well, for mercy's sake, Bob Henderson," ejaculated Betty in an
instant alarm, "don't kill him, whatever you do. Then you'd be put in
prison for life!"

"All right," agreed Bob equably, "I won't kill him--just nick him in
a few places--how will that do?"

"But I'm really serious," insisted Betty. "Don't let the cow turn up
that lane. Think how awful you would feel if you were sent to prison,
Bob."

Bob took refuge in a masculine stronghold.

"If that isn't just like a girl!" he said scornfully. "Who said I
was going to prison? I merely say I don't want to lose my temper and
do something rash, and you have me convicted and sentenced for life.
Gee, Betty, have a little mercy!"

Betty's lips trembled.

"I can't bear to think of you going away and leaving me here," she
faltered. "I'm not going to stay either, Bob, not one minute after I
hear from Uncle Dick. I'm sure if the Benders knew how things were
going, they would think we had a right to leave. I had the loveliest
letter from Mrs. Bender this morning--but it had been opened."

Bob switched an unoffending flower head savagely.

"You come out of that!" he shouted to the perverse cow that seemed
determined to turn to the left when she was plainly asked to turn to
the right. "Wait a minute, Betty; here's Fred Keppler."

The half-grown boy who accosted them with "What are you doing with
our cow?" grinned fatuously at Betty, showing several gaps in a row
of fine teeth.

"Keep your cow at home where she belongs," directed Bob
magnificently. "She's been making her dinner off our corn."

"Oh, gee," sighed the boy nervously. "I'll bet old Peabody was in a
tearing fury. Look, Bob, something's tore her hide! She must have
been down in the blackberry bushes along the brook."

"Well, see that it doesn't happen again," commanded Bob, gracefully
withdrawing by walking backward. "Corn that's as high as ours is
worth something, you know."

"You never told him about the pitchfork," said Betty accusingly, as
soon as Fred Keppler and the cow were out of earshot. "You let him
think it was blackberry bushes that scratched her like that."

"Well, his father will know the difference," grinned Bob cheerfully.
"Why should I start an argument with Fred? Saving the cow from the
pound ought to be enough, anyway. Mr. Keppler has had to buy more
than one animal out before this; he will not pay attention to his
fences."

Betty sat down on a broad boulder and leaned up against an old
hickory tree.

"Stone in my shoe," she said briefly. "You'll have to wait just a
minute, Bob."

Bob sat down on the grass and began to hunt for four leaf clovers,
an occupation of which he never tired.

"Do you think Mr. Peabody opened your letter?" he asked abruptly.

Betty paused in the operation of untying her shoe.

"Who else would?" she said thoughtfully. "It wasn't even pasted
together again, but slit across one end, showing that whoever did it
didn't care whether I noticed it or not. I'll never mail another
letter from that box. I'll walk to Glenside three times a day first!"

"Well, the only thing to do is to clear out," said Bob firmly.
"You'll have to wait till you hear from your uncle, or at least till
the Benders get back. We promised, you know, that we wouldn't run
away without telling them, or if there wasn't time, writing to them
and saying where we go. That shows, I think, that they suspected
things might get too hot to be endured."

"I simply must get a letter from Uncle Dick or go crazy," sighed
Betty feverishly. She put on her shoe and stood up. "I wish he would
come for me himself and see how horrid everything is."




CHAPTER II

HOSPITALITY UNDER DIFFICULTIES


Betty Gordon had come to Bramble Farm, as Mr. Peabody's home was
known, early in the summer to stay until her uncle, Richard Gordon,
should be able to establish a home for her, or at least know enough
of his future plans to have Betty travel with him. He was interested
in mines and oil wells, and his business took him all over the country.

Betty was an orphan, and this Uncle Dick was her only living
relative. He came to her in Pineville after her mother's death and
when the friends with whom she had been staying decided to go to
California. He remembered Mrs. Peabody, an old school friend, and
suggested that Betty might enjoy a summer spent on a farm. These
events are related in the first book of this series, called "Betty
Gordon at Bramble Farm."

That story tells how Betty came to the farm to find Joseph Peabody a
domineering, pitiless miser, his wife Agatha, a drab woman crushed in
spirit, and Bob Henderson, the "poorhouse rat," a bright intelligent
lad whom the Peabodys had taken from the local almshouse for his
board and clothes. Betty Gordon found life at Bramble Farm very
different from the picture she and her uncle had drawn in
imagination, and only the fact that her uncle's absence in the oil
fields had prevented easy communication with him had held her through
the summer.

Once, indeed, she had run away, but circumstances had brought her
and Bob to the pleasant home of the town police recorder, and Mr. and
Mrs. Bender had proved themselves true and steadfast friends to the
boy and girl who stood sorely in need of friendship. It was the
Benders who had exacted a promise from both Bob and Betty that they
would not run away from Bramble Farm without letting them know.

Betty had been instrumental in causing the arrest of two men who had
stolen chickens from the Peabody farm, and at the hearing before the
recorder something of Mr. Peabody's characteristics and of the
conditions at Bramble Farm had been revealed.

Anxious to have Betty and Bob return, Joseph Peabody had practically
agreed to treat them more humanely, and for a few weeks, during which
the Benders had gone away for their annual vacation, matters at
Bramble Farm had in the main improved. But they were gradually
slipping back to the old level, and this morning, when Peabody had
gored the cow with his pitchfork, Bob had thought disgustedly that it
was useless to expect anything good at the hands of the owner of
Bramble Farm.

As he and Betty tramped back after delivering the cow, Bob's mind
was busy with plans that would free him from Mr. Peabody and set him
forward on the road that led to fortune. Bob included making a
fortune in his life work, having a shrewd idea that money rightly
used was a good gift.

"Where do you suppose your uncle is?" he asked Betty, coming out of
a reverie wherein he bade Bramble Farm and all the dwellers there
with a single exception a cold and haughty farewell.

"Why, I imagine he is in Washington," returned Betty confidently.
"His last letter was from there, though two days ago a postal came
from Philadelphia. I think likely he went up to see his lawyer and
get his mail. You know it was held there while he was out West. I
hope he has all my letters now, and last night I wrote him another,
asking him if I couldn't leave here. I said I'd rather go to the
strictest kind of a boarding school; and so I would. I'll mail the
letter this afternoon in Glenside."

"It's too long a walk for you to take on a hot afternoon," grumbled
Bob. "I'm going over to Trowbridge, and I'll mail it there for you."

Betty pulled the letter from her blouse pocket and handed it to him.

"Where's Trowbridge?" she asked, as they came in sight of the
boundary line of Bramble Farm and sighted Mr. Peabody in conversation
with the mail carrier at the head of the lane. "Can I go with you?"

"We'd better hurry," suggested Bob, quickening his steps.
"Trowbridge is four miles beyond Laurel Grove. You've never been
there. No, you can't go, Betty, because I have to ride the sorrel. I
suppose in time old Peabody will buy another wagon, but no one can
tell when that will come to pass."

The wagon house had burned one night, and the master of Bramble Farm
could not bring himself to pay out the cash for even a secondhand
wagon. As a result, the always limited social activities of the farm
were curtailed to the vanishing point.

"What are you going for?" persisted Betty, who had her fair share of
feminine curiosity with the additional excuse that interesting events
were few and far between in her present everyday life.

Bob grinned.

"Going to a vendue," he announced. "Now how much do you know?"

Betty tossed her head, and elevated her small, freckled nose.

"A vendue?" she repeated. "Why, a vendue is a--a--what is it, Bob?"

"A sale," said Bob. "Some farmer is going to sell out and Peabody
wants a wagon. So I have to ride that horse fourteen miles and back
--and he has a backbone like a razor blade!--to buy a wagon; that is,
if no one bids over me."

"And Mr. Peabody won't pay more than six dollars; he said so at the
supper table last night," mourned Betty. "You'll never be able to buy
a wagon for that. I wish I could go, too. Bob, I never saw a country
vendue. Please, can't I?"

"You cannot," replied Bob with unaccustomed decision. Betty usually
wheedled him into granting her requests. "Haven't I just told you
there is nothing to go in? If you see yourself perched on that raw-boned
nag with me, I don't, that's all. But I tell you what; there's
a sale to-morrow at a farm this side of Glenside--I'll take you to
that, if you like. I guess Peabody will let me off, seeing as how
there are wagons advertised. We can easily walk to Faulkner's place."

This promise contented Betty, and she ate her dinner quietly. Bob
rode off on the old horse directly after dinner, and then for the
first time Betty noticed that Mrs. Peabody seemed worried about
something.

"Don't you feel well? Won't you go upstairs and lie down and let me
do the dishes?" urged the girl. "Do, Mrs. Peabody. You can have a
nice, long rest before it's time to feed the chickens."

"I feel all right," said Mrs. Peabody dully. "Only--well, I found
this card from the new minister back of the pump this morning. It's a
week old, and he says he's coming out to call this afternoon. There's
no place in the house I can show him, and I haven't got a decent
dress, either."

Betty swallowed her first impulse to say what she thought of a
husband who would make no effort to see that his wife received her
mail, and instead turned her practical mind to consideration of the
immediate moment. The so-called parlor was hopeless she knew, and she
dismissed it from the list of possibilities at once. It was a
sparsely furnished, gloomy room, damp and musty from being tightly
closed all summer, and the unpainted, rough boards had never been
carpeted.

"There's the porch," said Betty suddenly. "Luckily that's shady in
the afternoon, and we can bring out the best things to make it look
used. You let me fix it, Mrs. Peabody. And you can wear--let me see,
what can you wear?"

Mrs. Peabody waited patiently, her eyes mirroring her explicit faith
in Betty's planning powers.

"Your white shirtwaist and skirt," announced the girl at length.
"They're both clean, aren't they? I thought so. Well, I'll lend you a
ribbon girdle, and you can turn in the high neck so it will be more
in style. You'll see, it will look all right."

While Mrs. Peabody washed her dishes with more energy than usual
because she had a definite interest in the coming hours, Betty flew
to the shabby room that was titled by courtesy the parlor. She flung
up the windows and opened the blinds recklessly. She would take only
the plain wooden chair and the two rockers, she decided, for the
stuffed plush furniture would look ridiculous masquerading as summer
furnishings. The sturdy, square table would fit into her scheme, and
also the small rug before the blackened fireplace.

She dashed back to the kitchen and grabbed the broom. She did not
dare scrub the porch floor for fear that it would not dry in time,
but she swept it carefully and spread down the rug. Then one by one,
and making a separate trip each time, she carried out the table and
the chairs. With a passing sigh for the bouquet abandoned in the
field and probably withered by this time, she managed to get enough
flowers from the overgrown neglected garden near the house to fill
the really lovely colonial glass vase she had discovered that morning.

"It looks real pretty," pronounced Mrs. Peabody, when she was
brought out to see the transformed corner of the porch. "Looks as if
we used it regular every afternoon, doesn't it? Do you think it will
be all right not to ask him in, Betty?"

"Of course," said Betty stoutly. "Don't dare ask him in! If he wants
a drink of water, call me, and I'll get it for him. You must be
sitting in your chair reading a magazine when he comes and he'll
think you always spend your afternoons like that."

"I'll hurry and get dressed," agreed Mrs. Peabody, giving a last
satisfied glance at the porch. "I declare, I never saw your beat,
Betty, for making things look pretty."

Betty needed that encouragement, for when it came to making Mrs.
Peabody look pretty in the voluminous white skirt and stiff
shirtwaist of ten years past, the task seemed positively hopeless.
Betty, however, was not one to give in easily, and when she had
brushed and pinned her hostess's thin hair as softly as she could
arrange it, and had turned in the high collar of her blouse and
pinned it with a cameo pin, the one fine thing remaining to Mrs.
Peabody from her wedding outfit, adding a soft silk girdle of gray-blue,
she knew the improvement was marked. Mrs. Peabody stared at
herself in the glass contentedly.

"I didn't know I could look that nice," she said with a candor at
once pathetic and naive. "I've been wishing he wouldn't come, but now
I kinda hope he will."

Betty gently propelled her to the porch and established her in one
of the rocking chairs with a magazine to give her an air of leisure.

"You'll come and talk to him, won't you?" urged Mrs. Peabody
anxiously. "It's been so long since I've seen a stranger I won't know
what to say."

"Yes, you will," Betty assured her "I'll come out after you've
talked a little while. He won't stay long, I imagine, because he will
probably have a number of calls to pay."

"Well, I hope Joseph stays out of sight," remarked Joseph Peabody's
wife frankly. "Of course, in time the new minister will know him as
well as the old one did; but I would like to have him call on me like
other parishioners first."




CHAPTER III

BOB HAS GREAT NEWS


The new minister proved to be a gentle old man, evidently retired to
a country charge and, in his way, quite as diffident as Mrs. Peabody.
He was apparently charmed to be entertained on the porch, and saw
nothing wrong with the neglected house and grounds. His near-sighted
eyes, beaming with kindness and good-will, apparently took comfort
and serenity for granted, and when Betty came out half an hour after
his arrival, carrying a little tray of lemonade and cakes, he was
deep in a recital of the first charge he had held upon his graduation
from the theological seminary forty years before.

"There, that's over!" sighed Mrs. Peabody, quite like the
experienced hostess, when the minister's shabby black buggy was well
on its way out of the lane. "You're dreadful good, Betty, to help me
through with it. He won't come again for another six months--it takes
him that long to cover his parish, the farms are so far apart. Let me
help you carry back the chairs."

Betty longed to suggest that they leave them out and use the porch
as an outdoor sitting room, but she knew that such an idea would be
sure to meet with active opposition from the master of Bramble Farm.
Long before he came in to supper that night the chairs had been
restored to their proper places and Mrs. Peabody had resumed the gray
wrapper she habitually wore. Only the vase of flowers on the table
was left to show that the afternoon had been slightly out of the
ordinary. That and the tray of glasses Betty had unfortunately left
on the draining board of the sink, intending to wash them with the
supper dishes.

"Whose glasses, and what's been in 'em?" demanded Mr. Peabody
suspiciously. "There's sugar in the bottom of one of 'em. You haven't
been making lemonade?" He turned to his wife accusingly.

Bob had not come home yet, and there was only Ethan, the hired man,
Betty, and the Peabodys at the supper table.

"I made lemonade," said Betty quietly. "Those are my own glasses I
bought in Glenside, and the sugar and lemons were mine, too. So were
the cakes."

This silenced Peabody, for he knew that Betty's uncle sent her money
from time to time, and though he fairly writhed to think that she
Could spend it so foolishly, he could not interfere.

As soon as it was dark the Peabody household retired, to save
lighting lamps, and this evening was no exception. Betty learned from
a stray question Mrs. Peabody put to Ethan, the hired man, that Bob
was not expected home until ten or eleven o'clock. There was no
thought of sitting up for him, though Betty knew that in all
likelihood he would have had no supper, having no money and knowing
no one in Trowbridge.

She was not sleepy, and having brushed and braided her hair for the
night, she threw her sweater over her dressing gown and sat down at
the window of her room, a tin of sardines and a box of crackers in
her lap, determined to see to it that Bob had something to eat.

There was a full moon, and the road lay like a white ribbon between
the silver fields. Betty could follow the lane road out to where it
met the main highway, and now and then the sound of an automobile
horn came to her and she saw a car speed by on the main road. Sitting
there in the sweet stillness of the summer night, she thought of her
mother, of the old friends in Pineville, and, of course, of her
uncle. She wondered where he was that night, if he thought of her,
and what would be his answer to her letter.

"Is that a horse?" said Betty to herself, breaking off her reverie
abruptly. "Hark! that sounds like a trotting horse."

She was sure that she could make out the outlines of a horse and
rider on the main road, but it was several minutes before she was
positive that it had turned into the lane. Yes, it must be Bob. No
one else would be out riding at that hour of the night. Betty glanced
at her wrist-watch--half-past ten.

The rhythmic beat of the horse's hoofs sounded more plainly, and
soon Betty heard the sound of singing. Bob was moved to song in that
lovely moonlight, as his sorry mount was urged to unaccustomed spirit
and a feeling of freedom.

  "When in thy dreaming,
   moons like these shall shine again,
  And, daylight beaming,
  prove thy dreams are vain."

Bob's fresh, untrained voice sounded sweet and clear on the night
air, and to Betty's surprise, tears came unbidden into her eyes. She
was not given to analysis.

"Moonlight always makes me want to cry," she murmured, dashing the
drops from her eyes. "I hope Bob will look up and know that I'm at
the window. I don't dare call to him."

But Bob, who had stopped singing while still some distance from the
house, clattered straight to the barn.

Betty hurried over to her lamp, lit it, and set it on the window sill.

"He'll see it from the barn," she argued wisely, "and know that I am
not asleep."

Her reasoning proved correct, for in a few minutes a well-known
whistle sounded below her window. She blew out the light and leaned
out.

"Oh, Betty!" Bob's tone was one of repressed excitement. "I've got
something great to tell you."

"Have you had any supper?" demanded Betty, more concerned with that
question than with any news. "I've something for you, if you're
hungry."

"Hungry? Gee, I'm starved!" was the response. "I didn't dare stop to
ask for a meal anywhere, because I knew I'd be late getting home as
it was. The horse was never cut out for a saddle horse; I'm so stiff
I don't believe I can move to-morrow. Where's the eats?"

"Here. I'll let it down in a moment," answered Betty, tying a string
to the parcel. "Sorry it isn't more, Bob, but the larder's getting
low again."

Bob untied the can and cracker box she lowered to him, and Betty
pulled in the string to be preserved for future use.

"Thanks, awfully," said Bob. "You're a brick, Betty. And, say, what
do you think I heard over in Trowbridge?"

"Don't talk so loud!" cautioned Betty. "What, Bob?"

"Why, the poorhouse farm is this side of the town," said Bob,
munching a cracker with liveliest manifestations of appreciation.
"Coming back to-night--that's what made me late--Jim Turner, who's
poormaster now, called me in. Said he had something to tell me. It
seems there was a queer old duffer spent one night there a while back
--Jim thought it must have been a month ago. He has a secondhand
bookshop in Washington, and he came to the poorhouse to look at some
old books they have there--thought they might be valuable. They
opened all the records to him, and Jim says he was quite interested
when he came to my mother's name. Asked a lot of questions about her
and wanted to see me. Jim said he was as queer as could be, and all
they could get out of him was that maybe he could tell me something
to interest me. He wouldn't give any of the poorhouse authorities an
inkling of what he knew, and insisted that he'd have to see me first."

"Where is he?" demanded Betty energetically. "I hope you didn't come
away without seeing him, Bob. What's his name? How does he look?"

"His name," said Bob slowly, "is Lockwood Hale. And he went back to
Washington the next day."

Betty's air castles tumbled with a sickening slump.

"Bob Henderson!" she cried, remembering, however, to keep her voice
low. "The idea! Do you mean to tell me they let that man go without
notifying you? Why I never heard of anything so mean!"

"Oh, I'm not important," explained Bob, quite without bitterness.
"Poorhouse heads don't put themselves out much for those under 'em
--though Jim Turner's always treated me fair enough. But Lockwood Hale
had to go back to Washington the next day, Betty. There honestly
wasn't time to send for me."

"Perhaps they gave him your address," said Betty hopefully. "But,
oh, Bob, you say he was there a month ago?"

Bob nodded unhappily.

"He hasn't my address," he admitted. "Jim says he meant to give it
to him, but the old fellow left suddenly without saying a word to any
one. Jim thought maybe he had the name in mind and would write
anyway. I'd get it, you know, if it went to the poorhouse. But I
guess Hale's memory is like a ragbag--stuffed with odds and ends that
he can't get hold of when he wants 'em. No, Betty, I guess the only
thing for me to do is to go to Washington."

"Well, if you don't go to bed, young man, I'll come down there and
help you along," an angry whisper came from the little window up
under the roof. "You've been babbling and babbling steady for half an
hour," grumbled the annoyed Ethan. "How do you expect me to get any
sleep with that racket going on? Come on up to bed before the old man
wakes up."

Thankful that it was Ethan instead of Mr. Peabody, Bob gathered up
his sardines and the remnants of the crackers and tiptoed up the
attic stairs to the room he shared with the hired man.

Betty hastily slipped into bed, and though Bob's news had excited
her, she was tired enough to fall asleep readily.

In the morning she watched her chance to speak to Bob alone, and
when she heard him grinding a sickle in the toolhouse ran out to tell
him something.

"You must let me lend you some money, Bob," she said earnestly. "I
know you haven't enough to go to Washington on. I've been saving,
thanks to your advice, and I have more than I need. Besides, I could
borrow from the Guerins or the Benders. You will take some, won't you?"

"I have enough, really I have," insisted Bob. "You know Dr. Guerin
sold every one of those charms I carved, and I haven't spent a cent.
It's all buried in a little canvas bag under the rose bush, just like
a movie. I hate to take money from a girl, Betty."

"Don't be silly!" Betty stamped her foot angrily. "It's only a loan,
Bob. And you'd feel cheap, wouldn't you, if you had to come back
after you ran away because you didn't have enough money? You take
this, and you can pay it back as soon as you please after you have
seen the old bookstore man."

She pushed a tight little wad of money into the boy's perspiring hand.

"All right," he capitulated. "I'll borrow it. I would like to know I
had enough. Sure I'm not crippling you, Betsey?"

Betty shook her head, smiling.

"I've enough to buy a ticket to Washington," she assured him.
"That's all we need, isn't it, Bob? Oh, how I wish Uncle Dick would
send for me!"




CHAPTER IV

AT THE VENDUE


"You, Bob!"

The shout awakened Betty at dawn the next morning, and running to
the window she saw Bob disappear into the barn, Mr. Peabody close on
his heels.

"Oh, goodness, I suppose he's scolding about something," sighed the
girl. "There always is something to find fault about. I hope Bob will
keep his temper, because I want him to be able to take me to the
vendue this afternoon."

Joseph Peabody came into breakfast in a surly frame of mind, a
mental condition faithfully reflected in the attitude of his hired
man who jerked back his chair and subsided into it with a grunt.
Betty's irrepressible sense of humor pictured the dog (the Peabodys
kept no dog because the head of the house considered that dogs ate
more than they were worth) tucking his tail between his legs and
slinking under the table as a port in the storm. The dog, she
decided, glancing at Mrs. Peabody's timid face, was all that was
needed to set the seal on a scene of ill-nature and discomfort.

Bob, when he came in late with the milk pails, wore a black scowl
and set his burden down with a crash that spilled some of the
precious fluid on to the oilcloth top of the side table.

"Be a little more careful with that," growled Mr. Peabody, taking
the last piece of ham, which left nothing but the fried potatoes and
bread for Bob's breakfast. "The cows are going dry fast enough
without you trying to waste the little they give."

Bob, looking as though he could cheerfully fling the contents of
both pails over his employer, sullenly began to pump water into the
hand basin. This habit of "washing up" at the kitchen sink while a
meal was in progress always thoroughly disgusted Betty, and Bob
usually performed his ablutions on the back porch. This morning he
was evidently too cross to consider a second person's feelings.

"Always ready enough to throw out what doesn't belong to you," went
on Mr. Peabody grumbling. "Born in the poorhouse, you're in a fair
way to die there. If I didn't watch you every minute, you'd waste
more than I can save in a year."

Bob, his face buried in the roller towel, lost his temper at this
point.

"Oh, for Pete's sake, shut up!" he muttered.

But Mr. Peabody had heard. With a quickness that surprised even his
wife, for ordinarily he slouched his way around, he sprang from his
chair, reached the side of the unconscious Bob, and soundly boxed his
ears twice.

"I'll take no impudence from you!" he cried, enraged. "Here, come
back!" he yelled, as Bob started for the door. "You come back here
and sit down. When you don't come to the table, it will be because I
say so. Sit down, I say!"

Bob, his face livid, his ears ringing, dropped into a chair at the
table. Ethan continued to eat stolidly, and Betty kept her eyes
resolutely fastened on her plate.

"Just for that, you stay home from the Faulkner sale!" announced Mr.
Peabody who was more than ordinarily loquacious that morning. "I'll
find something for you to do this afternoon that'll keep your hands
busy, if not your tongue. Eat your breakfast. I'll have no mincing
over food at my table."

Poor Bob, who had often been forbidden a meal as punishment, now
mechanically tried to eat the unappetizing food placed before him.
Betty was terribly disappointed about the sale, for she had set her
heart on going. There were few pleasures open to her as a member of
the household at Bramble Farm, and, with the exception of the Guerin
girls in town, she had no girl friends her own age. Bob had proved
himself a sympathetic, loyal chum, and he alone had made the summer
endurable.

"Don't care!" she cried, to console the boy, as Peabody and his
helper went out of the house to begin the field work for the day.
"Don't care, Bob. I really don't mind not going to the sale."

Mrs. Peabody was in the pantry, straining the milk.

"We're going," whispered Bob. "You meet me right after dinner at the
end of the lane. I'm sick of being knocked around, and I think Jim
Turner will be at the sale. I want to see him. Anyway, we're going."

"But--but Mr. Peabody will be furious!" ventured Betty. "You know
what a scene he will make, Bob. Do you think we had better go?"

"You needn't," said Bob ungraciously. "I am."

"Of course, if you go, so will I," replied Betty, swallowing a sharp
retort. Bob was badgered enough without a contribution from her.
"Perhaps he will not miss us--we can get back in time for supper."

Immediately after dinner at noon Mr. Peabody sent Bob out to the hay
loft to pitch down hay for the balers who were expected to come and
set up their machine that night, ready for work the next day. He
could not have selected a meaner job, for the hay loft was stifling
in the heat of the midday sun which beat down on the roof of the
barn, and there were only two tiny windows to supply air. Mr. Peabody
himself was going up in the woods to mark trees for some needed fence
rails.

Bob departed with a significant backward glance at Betty, which sent
her flying upstairs to get into a clean frock. Mrs. Peabody
manifested so little interest in her activities that the girl
anticipated no difficulty in getting safely out of the house. As it
happened, her hostess made the way even easier.

"If you're going to Glenside, Betty," she remarked dully, stopping
in the doorway of Betty's room as the girl pulled on her hat, "I wish
you'd see if Grimshaw has any meat scraps. Joseph might get me a bit
the next time he goes over. Just ask how much it is, an' all--the
hens need something more than they're getting."

Betty knew that Joseph Peabody would never buy meat scraps for his
wife's hens. Indeed, she had priced stuff several times at Mrs.
Peabody's request and nothing had ever come of it. But she agreed to
go to Grimshaw's if she got that far in her walk, and Mrs. Peabody
turned aside into her own room without asking any questions.

"Gee! thought you never were coming," complained Bob, when the slim
figure in the navy serge skirt and white middy met him at the end of
the lane road. "The sale starts at one sharp, you know, and we'll
miss the first of it. Lots of 'em will come in overalls, so I'll be
in style."

Before they had walked very far they were overtaken by a rattling
blackboard, drawn by a lean, raw-boned white horse and driven by a
cheerful farmer's wife who invited them to "hop in," an invitation
which they accepted gratefully. She was going to the Faulkner vendue,
she informed them, and her heart was set on three wooden wash tubs
and seven yards of ingrain carpet advertised in the list of household
goods offered for sale.

"My daughter's going to set up for herself next fall," she said
happily, "and that ingrain will be just the thing for her spare room."

When they reached the Faulkner farm, a rather commonplace group of
buildings set slightly in a hollow, they found teams and automobiles
of every description blocking the lane that led to the house.

Bob tied the white horse to an unoccupied post for the woman, and
she hastened away, worried lest the ingrain carpet be sold before she
could reach the crowd surrounding the auctioneer.

Betty, for whom all this was a brand-new experience, enjoyed the
excitement keenly. She followed Bob up to the front porch of the
house where the household effects were being put up for sale, Bob
explaining that the live stock would be sold later.

"Well, look who's here!" cried a hearty voice, as a man, moving
aside to give Betty room, allowed the person standing next to him to
see the girl's face. "Betty Gordon! And Bob, too! Not thinking of
going to farming, are you?"

Gray-haired, kindly-faced Doctor Guerin shook hands cordially, and
kept a friendly arm across Bob's thin shoulders.

"Friends of yours coming home next Tuesday," he said, smiling as one
who knows he brings pleasant news. "The Benders are due in Laurel
Grove. Mrs. Guerin had a postal card last night."

Betty was glad to hear this, for she did not want Bob to leave
Bramble Farm without seeking the advice of the fine young police
recorder who had been so good to them and whose friendship both she
and Bob valued as only those can who need real friends.

"I came to bid on a secretary," Doctor Guerin confided presently.
"It's the only good thing in the whole house. Rest of the stuff is
nothing but trash. That antique dealer from Petria is here, too, and
I suspect he has his eye on the same piece. Don't you want to bid for
me Bob, to keep him in the dark?"

Bob was delighted to do the doctor a service, and when the mahogany
secretary was put up for sale the few other bidders soon dropped out,
leaving the field to the Petria dealer and the lad in the faded
overalls. The dealer, of course, knew that Bob must represent some
buyer, but he could not decide for whom he was bidding, and so was in
the dark as to how high his opponent would go. Had he known that
Doctor Hal Guerin was bidding against him, he would have been
enlightened, for the doctor's collection of antiques was really
famous and the envy of many a professional collector.

"I suppose some rube wants the desk for his sitting room," thought
the Petria man lazily, his eye, keen as it was, failing to see the
doctor in the crowd. "Let him have it, and I'll buy it from him for
ten dollars more before he leaves the sale. He can't resist turning
over his money quick like that."

So when the auctioneer boomed "Sold for forty dollars," and in
answer to his request for the buyer's name Bob said clearly, "Doctor
Guerin," in his own language, the man from Petria was "just plain
sick."

After the household things were sold--and Betty noted with
satisfaction that the three tubs and the ingrain carpet went to the
woman who had so coveted them--she and Bob went out to the barn and
watched the horses and cows, wagons, harnesses and farm machinery
sold. It was an absorbing and colorful scene, and the boy and girl,
fascinated, lingered till the last item was checked off. Then, with a
start, Bob heard a farmer announce that it was half past five.

"Oh dear!" sighed Betty nervously, "you ought to be milking this
minute. Oh, Bob, let's not go home! Couldn't we stay overnight with
Doctor Guerin?"

"Now don't you be afraid, there won't anything happen to scare you,"
responded Bob soothingly. It must be confessed that the knowledge of
the little sum of money tucked away under the rosebush gave him a
bolder outlook on the future.

Hiram Keppler, who owned the farm just beyond the Peabody place,
gave them a lift as far as their lane, and as they hurried down the
road Betty tried her best to master her dread of the coming
interview. She had not a doubt but that Bob's absence would have been
noticed. Looking ahead fearfully, she saw a sight that confirmed her
worst forebodings.

Joseph Peabody stood at the barnyard gate, a horsewhip in his hand




CHAPTER V

CONSEQUENCES


"Oh, Bob!" Betty clutched the boy's sleeve in a panic. "And the
balers have come!"

"So!" began Mr. Peabody, in tones of cold fury. "That's the way you
carry out my orders! Not one forkful of hay pitched down, and the men
ready to go to work to-morrow. You miserable, sneaking loafer, where
have you been?"

"To the vendue," said Bob defiantly.

"Flatly refuse to mind, do you? Well, I'll give you one lesson you
won't forget!" the man reached over and gripped Bob by his shirt
collar. Struggling violently, he was pulled over the five-barred gate.

"I'll learn you!" snarled Peabody, raising the whip.

Betty sprang up on the gate, her eyes blazing.

"How dare you!" she cried, her voice shaking with anger. "How dare
you strike him! I'll scream till some one comes if you touch him.
Those men at the barn won't stand by and see you beat a boy."

"Hoity toity!" sputtered the amazed farmer, confronting the angry
girl in the middy blouse with the blazing cheeks and tangled dark
braids.

Bob tried to pull himself free, but was brought up short by a quick
twist.

"I'm not through with you," Peabody informed him grimly. He glanced
quickly toward the barn and observed the men watching him covertly.
It was the better part of discretion, something told him, not to flog
the boy before so many witnesses.

"I'm through with you!" declared Bob through clenched teeth. "I'm
going! You've had all out of me you're going to get. Let go of me!"

For answer, Peabody tightened his hold on the worn shirt collar.

"Is that so?" he drawled. "Let me tell you, Mr. Smarty, you'll go
out to that barn and pitch down the hay you were supposed to do this
afternoon or you'll go back to the poorhouse. You can take your
choice. The county has a place for incorrigible boys, and if you go
far enough you'll land in the reform school. Are you going out to the
barn or not?"

"I'll go," agreed Bob sullenly.

"Then see that you do. And you needn't bother to stop for supper
--you've several hours' lost time to make up," said Peabody nastily.
"Now go!"

He shook the boy till his teeth rattled and then released him with a
powerful sling that sent him spinning into the dust. Bruised and
shaken, Bob picked himself up and started for the barn.

"You hold your tongue a bit better, or something'll come your way,"
said Peabody shortly, eyeing Betty with disfavor and turning on his
heel at a shout of "Ho, Boss!" from the foreman of the balers.

"Hateful!" cried Betty stormily, climbing down from the gate. "He's
the most absolutely hateful man that ever lived! I wonder if he could
send Bob back to the poorhouse?"

The same thought was troubling Bob, she found, when after supper she
went out to the barn and climbed the loft ladder to see him. She had
brought him some bread and water, the latter contributed by the
Peabody pump and the bread saved from Betty's own meal.

"Do you know, Betty," confided the boy, wiping the heavy
perspiration from his face with a distressingly hot looking red
cotton handkerchief, "I've been thinking over what old Peabody said.
He might take it into his head to send me back to the poorhouse. He
really needs a younger boy, one he can slam about more. I'm getting
so I can fight back. I don't fancy hanging on here till he makes up
his mind to get another boy, and running away from the poorhouse
isn't a simple matter. I'd better make the plunge while there's good
swimming."

It was stifling in the loft, and Betty felt almost giddy. She sat at
the top of the ladder, her feet hanging over the edge of the floor
and regarded Bob anxiously.

"Well, perhaps you had better go early next week," she said
judiciously. "It would be dreadful if he did return you to the
poorhouse."

"Therefore, I'm going to-night," announced Bob coolly. "There's an
eleven-thirty train from Glenside that will make some sort of
connection with the southern local at the Junction. Wish me luck,
Betty!"

"To-night!" gasped Betty in dismay. "Oh, Bob! don't go to-night.
Wait just one night more, ah, please do!"

Betty had the truly feminine horror of quick decisions, and she was
frankly upset by this determination of Bob's. Even as she pleaded she
knew he had made up his mind and that it was useless to ask him to
change it.

"I don't see how you can go--you're not ready," she argued
feverishly. "Your shirts are on the line; I saw them. You're dead
tired after all this work, and it's a long walk to Glenside. Wait
just till to-morrow, Bob, and I won't say a word."

"No, I'm going to-night," said Bob firmly. "I haven't so much
packing to do that it will take me over fifteen minutes. I'll help
myself to the shirts on the line as I go in. By to-morrow morning
I'll be as far away from Bramble Farm as the local can take me."

"But--but--I'll miss you so!" protested Betty, the catch in her
voice sounding perilously close to tears. "What shall I ever do all
alone in this hateful place!"

"Oh, now, Betty!" Bob put a clumsy hand on her shoulder in an effort
to comfort her. "Don't you care--you'll be going to Washington as
soon as you get word from your uncle. Maybe I'll be there when you
come, and we'll go sightseeing together."

"Are you going right to Washington?" asked Betty, drying her eyes.
"And are you sure you have enough money?"

"Oceans of cash," Bob assured her cheerfully. "That's right, brace
up and smile. Think what it will mean to have one peaceful breakfast,
for the last week Peabody has ragged me every meal. Sure I'm going to
Washington to dig out a few facts from this Lockwood Hale. Now I'll
throw down a little more hay for good measure and we'll go on in.
Mustn't rouse suspicions by staying out too long. Peabody will
probably sit up for me to come in to-night."

Betty waited till the hay was pitched down, then followed Bob to the
main floor of the barn.

"Couldn't I walk just a little way with you?" she asked wistfully.
"How soon are you going to start? I could go as far as the end of the
lane."

"I'd rather you went to bed and to sleep," said Bob kindly. "You
couldn't very well traipse around at night, Betty, and I'm not going
till it is good and dark. There's no moon to-night, and you might
have trouble getting back to the house."

"Well--all right," conceded Betty forlornly. "There doesn't seem to
be anything I can do. Whistle under my window, please do, Bob. I'll
be awake. And I could say good-by. I won't make a fuss, I promise."

The boy's packing was of the simplest, for he owned neither suitcase
nor trunk, and his few belongings easily went into a square of old
wrapping paper. He had earned them, few as they were, and felt no
compunctions about taking them with him.

After the bundle was tied up he waited a half hour or so, purely as
a precaution, for the Peabody household went to bed with the chickens
and, with the possible exception of Mrs. Peabody, slumbered heavily.
Bob slipped down the stairs, waking no one, unfastened the heavy
front door, never locked and only occasionally, as to-night, bolted
with a chain, and stepped softly around to the bush where his
precious tin box was buried.

This box was Bob's sole inheritance from his mother, and he had only
a vague knowledge of the papers entrusted to it. Among the yellowed
slips was the marriage certificate of his parents, and he knew that
there were one or two letters. When Joseph Peabody had taken him from
the poorhouse, the lad had buried the box for safekeeping, and during
the three or four years he had been with Mr. Peabody had never taken
it up.

It was not buried very deeply, and he easily uncovered it, smoothing
down the earth to hide the traces of his hasty excavating. He went
around to Betty's window and whistled softly, half hoping that she
might be asleep.

"Hello, Bob dear!" she called instantly, leaning from the window,
her vivid face so alight with affection and hope for him that it was
a pity he could not see her clearly. "I'm wishing you the best of
luck, and I hope the old bookstore man has splendid news for you. You
wait for me in Washington."

"I will!" whispered Bob heartily. "And you tell Mr. Bender, won't
you? He'll understand. I'll write him the first chance I get, and Doc
Guerin, too. Good-by, Betty--I--I--"

To his surprise and confusion, Bob suddenly choked.

"Here's something to take with you," said Betty softly, dropping a
little packet that landed at his feet. "Good-by, Bob. I just know
things will turn out all right for you."

The dark head was withdrawn, and Bob, picking up the little package,
turned and began his long walk to the Glenside station. A hoot-owl
screeched at mournful intervals, and the night sounds would have
tried a city lad's nerves in that long dark stretch that led him
finally to the station. But Bob could identify every sound, and
nature had always proved kind to him, far kinder than many of the
people he had known. He trudged along sturdily, and, twenty minutes
before the train was due, found himself the solitary passenger on the
Glenside platform.

He stood under the uncertain rays of the lamp to examine the parting
gift Betty had given him. Tucked under half a dozen chocolate wafers
was a five dollar bill folded into the tiniest possible wad. The
choky feeling assailed Bob again.

"She certainly is some girl!" he thought with mixed gratitude and
admiration.




CHAPTER VI

THE RUNAWAY MISSED


Bob's absence was not discovered till breakfast time, for Ethan, who
was a sound sleeper, when he woke and saw Bob's empty cot, supposed
the boy had risen earlier than usual and gone to the barn. Mr.
Peabody, too, took it for granted that the boy was milking, and it
was not until they were seated at the table and half way through the
meal that anything out of the ordinary was suspected.

"Why in tarnation doesn't that good for nothing bring in the milk?"
grumbled Mr. Peabody. "I declare he gets later and later every
morning. The balers will be over to start work at seven, and if he
thinks he's going to spend half an hour dawdling over his breakfast
after they get here, he's much mistaken."

The men who were to bale the hay had slept at the adjoining farm,
according to the agreement made, and would be at Bramble Farm for
dinner and supper and to spend that night.

"You're finished, Ethan. Go hurry him up," ordered Joe Peabody.
"Send him in here flying and turn the cows out to pasture."

"He hasn't milked!" Ethan cleared the porch steps at a single bound
and burst into the kitchen, shouting this intelligence. Excitement
was scarce in Ethan's life, and he enjoyed the pleasurable sensation
of carrying unusual tidings, even if unpleasant. "The barn door was
shut and the cows were bellowing their heads off. Not a one of 'em's
been milked!"

"I want to know!" said Joseph Peabody stupidly. "Was he in bed when
you came down, Ethan?"

"No, he wasn't," answered the hired man. "I thought he'd gone on
out. Do you suppose something's happened to him?"

Mr. Peabody stepped to the porch and gave a quick glance at the
bench where the milk pails were usually left to air and dry. They
were there, just as they had been left the night before.

"I think he's cleared out!" he announced: grimly. "Betty, do you
know what this young scoundrel is up to?"

Betty's eyes brimmed over, and she flung herself blindly into Mrs.
Peabody's arms which closed around her, though that good woman was
unaccustomed to demonstrations of affection.

"There, there." She tried to soothe the girl, for Betty's convulsive
sobbing really alarmed her.

"Don't you go to feel bad, dearie. If Bob's gone, he's gone, and
that's all there is to it."

Peabody, milk pail in hand, motioned to Ethan to go out and begin
milking.

"That isn't all there is to it, not by a long shot!" he growled at
his wife. "If I get my hands on that boy he'll rue the day he ever
set foot off this farm. He'll go back to the poorhouse and there
he'll stay till he's of age."

Betty sat up, pushing the tumbled hair from her hot forehead.

"I'm glad Bob ran away!" she cried recklessly. "He's gone where you
won't catch him, either. You never treated him fairly, and you know
it."

Peabody banged the kitchen door by way of relieving his feelings,
but the latch did not fasten so that he heard Betty's next sentence
addressed to his wife.

"I'm only waiting for a letter from Uncle Dick," confided Betty.
"Then I'm going to Washington. Things will never be any different
here, Mrs. Peabody; you've said so yourself. I wish Uncle Dick would
hurry and write. It's been a good while since I heard." And there was
a catch in the girl's voice.

The man slouched off the porch, a peculiar smile on his lean, shrewd
face. One hand, thrust into his ragged coat pocket, rested on a
letter there. As he felt it beneath his fingers, his crafty eyes
brightened with a gleam of mockery.

Mrs. Peabody may have been curious about Bob's departure, but she
asked no questions, somewhat to Betty's surprise.

"I'm glad she doesn't ask me," thought Betty, helping mechanically
in the preparations for dinner which were more elaborate than usual
because of the presence of the three balers. "Bob must be half way to
Washington by now, and I don't believe they have the slightest idea
he is headed for there." The Peabodys, she reasoned, knew nothing of
Lockwood Hale, and of the attraction the capital of the country held
for the orphan lad.

Betty insisted on doing a fair share of the extra work after the
noon meal, and then ran upstairs to get ready to go over to Glenside.
She wanted to tell the Guerins that Bob had gone, and from their
house she knew she could telephone to those other good friends, the
Benders. Laurel Grove was too far to walk, even for a practised hiker
like Betty.

To her dismay, as she left the house, Mr. Peabody joined her and
fell into step.

"I'll go as far as Durlings with you," he announced affably, Durling
being their neighbor on the south, his farm lying along the road in
the direction of Glenside. "Sorry the horses haven't shoes, Betty, or
you might drive."

Betty shot him a suspicious glance. The three horses never were
shod, except when a certain amount of traveling had to be done on the
stone road. In all the weeks she had spent at Bramble Farm a horse
had never been offered for her convenience, and all of her trips to
town had been either afoot, or taken with Bob in the rattling,
shabby, one-horse work wagon.

"Where did you say Bob was going?" came next.

Betty bit her lip.

"I didn't say," she said evenly. "I--I don't think it's fair to ask
me."

"But you know," snapped Mr. Peabody. "I guess I have a right to know
where he's gone. I'm responsible for him. I've got papers that show
it. The poorhouse folks are going to ask me what becomes of him. You
just tell me where he went, and I'll satisfy 'em. I won't follow him
and try to bring him back, Betty. He's too old for that. Making his
bed, he'll have to lie on it. I won't follow him."

The girl twisted her handkerchief nervously. She was not afraid of
the man. That is, she feared no physical violence at his hands, but
he was capable, she knew, of forcing her back to the farm and locking
her up in her room till she furnished him with the required
information. And what harm could it do Bob? It was not likely that
Peabody could find the boy in a large city.

"He won't be made to come back," repeated her tormentor.

"I wish I could believe you," said Betty pitifully.

She looked so young and helpless, trying to pit her girlish
intelligence and strength against the wily miser, that another man
would have been ashamed to press her. Not so Peabody--he had always
considered that he was entitled to whatever he could get from others,
information, cash, or work, it mattered not.

They were approaching the Durling farm now, and suddenly Betty's
pointed chin lifted.

"I won't tell you!" she said firmly. "I do know where Bob went, but
he was perfectly justified in leaving a place where he was treated
worse than a dog. You would do him no good--I'm sure of that. And if
the poorhouse authorities make a fuss about his running off, I'll
tell them what he had to endure."

Joseph Peabody's mouth dropped in astonishment. He had seen Betty
lose her temper before, but she had never so openly defied him.

"You think you're high and mighty," he sneered. "Let me tell you,
Miss, there's more ways than one of getting what you want in this
world. Joe Peabody isn't checkmated very often, and it takes more
than an impudent girl to do it. I'm going into Lem Durling's and
telephone Jim Turner, the poormaster. I kind of surmise he can give
me a line on the direction Bob's taken."

Betty walked on, disdaining to answer, her head very high in the air
but her heart in her shoes. Jim Turner would be sure to tell of
Lockwood Hale, and Mr. Peabody would be astute enough to guess that
Bob's destination was Washington.

When she reached Doctor Guerin's house, between the heat and the
dust and the long walk and her anxiety, she was in a highly excited
state, and the doctor's wife made her lie down on the couch and rest
before she would allow her to telephone to the Benders. Mrs. Bender's
sister answered the telephone. The recorder and his wife had made a
detour on their homeward trip that would extend their absence for
another week.

"Betty, you'll be ill if you're going to get all worked up like
this," scolded Mrs. Guerin, for Betty was crying as she hung up the
receiver. "I never saw you so unstrung, my dear. You won't be fit to
go to your uncle when he does send for you. I wonder if the doctor
hadn't better see you?"

Norma and Alice Guerin, two pretty girls, the former about Betty's
age, the latter a year or two older, looked at her anxiously. Betty
in tears was an unusual sight to them.

"I'm all right," gulped that young person, inwardly alarmed at the
thought of being too ill to travel when the word came. "I didn't
sleep very well last night, thinking of Bob. Is that the secretary he
bid on at the Faulkner sale?"

Knowing that the quickest way for Betty to get control of her nerves
was to forget her troubles, Mrs. Guerin entered into an enthusiastic
description of the beauties of the old desk, showing the secret
drawer and the half score of carved pigeonholes and dwelling on the
doctor's delight in securing such a treasure at a bargain. Mrs.
Guerin succeeded in having Betty more like her old self before Doctor
Hal Guerin came in from a round of calls.

He was delighted to see Betty, who was an especial favorite of his,
and much interested in her account of Bob's flight.

"Did the lad have money enough?" he growled. "I suppose he'd walk
before he'd borrow from me."

"He had enough," Betty assured him. "All the charms you sold for him
amounted to quite a lot, and he had saved every cent of that."

"And you probably helped him out," commented the doctor shrewdly.
"Well, well, the lad may yet whittle his way to fame and fortune."

He referred to Bob's knack for fashioning pretty and quaint little
wooden charms and pendants, which he polished to satin smoothness and
painted and stained in bright colors. Norma Guerin had worn one at
boarding school, and it was through her and her father that Bob had
secured a large number of orders which had netted him a tidy little
sum.

When the time came for Betty to go, the doctor insisted that he
would take her as far as the lane, and on the trip she told him that
as soon as she heard from her uncle she meant to pack her trunk and
leave for Washington.

"I don't like the idea of your making the journey alone," grumbled
Doctor Guerin; "but I don't see who there is to go with you. One
thing, Betty girl, brushing up against the Peabodys has given you a
practical fund of self-reliance. You're better fitted than Alice to
find your way about alone. Not that I would have chosen to have you
get your knocks just in the manner they've been handed to you, but
the results leave nothing to be desired. You're standing squarely on
your own feet, Betsey, and it's this summer's grilling training that
has done it."




CHAPTER VII

A BELATED LETTER


The hay was all baled by the next morning, and the balers, atop the
lumbering machine, caroled loudly if not musically as the fat horses
dragged them slowly up the lane. Neat bales of hay were piled high on
the barn floor, to be carted over to Hagar's Corners and loaded on a
freight car. That would be Ethan's job, and he grumbled at the
prospect of doing it without Bob's help.

Betty, coming in from the garden, stumbled over something in the
narrow entry. It was a man's coat--Mr. Peabody's, she recognized when
she picked it up and shook it slightly to free it from dust. A letter
fell from the pocket as she replaced it on the hook where it usually
hung, and, stopping to pick it up, she saw to her surprise that it
was addressed to her.

"From Washington!" she said aloud, deciphering the postmark. "And
mailed five days ago! He's carried it in his pocket ever since it
came!"

At first she feared it had been read, but evidently Mr. Peabody had
not troubled to open it; so hastily tearing the envelope, she read
the brief note. A check was enclosed for her, and Mr. Gordon
suggested that she go to Pineville and visit old friends there for a
week or two until his plans were definitely shaped.

"I know the Arnolds are in California," he wrote; "but the
Bensingers will be glad to have you, or any of your mother's old
friends. You do not have to stay one minute where you are unhappy."

Betty looked up as a shadow fell across the sunny floor. It was Mr.
Peabody, and he had the grace to show confusion when he saw the
letter in her hand.

Betty sprang to her feet.

"Why did you keep my letter?" she demanded hotly. "How did you dare
to hold back mail? This must have been in your coat pocket three or
four days. It was mailed five days ago!"

"Been rummaging in my coat pocket, have you?" sneered the farmer.

"I have not! The coat was on the floor, and I fell over it. The
letter fell out while I was trying to hang it up. No one has a right
to hold back another person's mail!"

"Now hold your horses," advised Peabody pacifically. "Who's been
holding back mail? If a body takes the mail out of the box and
carries it around in his coat a day or two, because he doesn't
remember it, that ain't such a crime that I ever knew. I just forgot
there was a letter for you."

Betty turned away in disgust and went out to her favorite apple tree
to think things over. She did not believe for one moment that Mr.
Peabody had forgotten her letter. Indeed, absent-mindedness was far
from being one of his traits. However, there was absolutely nothing
to be gained by arguing, and the way was now clear for her to leave
Bramble Farm. Surely the worst of her troubles were over.

"I might go to Pineville," she thought meditatively. "I'd love to
see the Bensingers again and the dear little house where we lived.
I'll pack this afternoon."

Betty was an orderly little person, and at her work that afternoon
she stopped frequently to sew on a button here, to mend a rip in this
garment or to whip a frayed edge that might mar an otherwise dainty
belonging. Singing softly over her task, a timid knock at her door
wakened the girl from a happy reverie.

"Come in, Mrs. Peabody," she called cheerfully. "Do sit down and
give me advice about where things should go. I thought I hadn't
bought anything this summer, but I seem to have a great deal more
stuff than I brought with me."

"You're packing then?" asked Mrs. Peabody, taking a chair near the
bed and regarding Betty oddly. "Are you really going, Betty?"

"Oh, yes," Betty answered matter-of-factly, "Uncle Dick wants me to
stop in Pineville and visit old friends for a bit. And there's no use
in pretending, Mrs. Peabody, that--that--"

"No, I suppose not," sighed the woman, understanding only too well.
"Land knows, if I could get away I'd have no misgivings about the
right of it. I'll miss you, though. You've been a sight of company
this summer, and no one could have been sweeter to me, Betty."

"Agatha!" came a stentorian shout from the front hall. "Are you
going to stay up there all day?"

"My stars, I forgot what I came up for!" Mrs. Peabody rose
hurriedly. "Joseph sent me up to tell you he wanted to ask you
something, Betty. And here I sit right down and him waiting there all
this time!"

Betty was far from concerned over Mr. Peabody's wasted time, but she
wondered uneasily what he could wish to ask her. Something connected
with Bob, doubtless. She followed Mrs. Peabody downstairs and found
the master of Bramble Farm striding up and down impatiently.

"Never saw the beat of women," he muttered. "Gabble, gabble, and an
hour right out of a day's work means nothing to 'em. Oh, here you
are, Miss. You know that gray alpaca coat of mine you took the letter
from this morning?"

"The coat the letter fell out of?" corrected Betty, knowing that
such quibbling was foolish On her part and might provoke serious
irritation in her questioner, yet unable to refrain. "Of course I
remember it; what about it?"

Peabody accepted her description of the coat. He was plainly excited
and nervous, and betrayed a curious disposition to conciliate Betty,
instantly detected in his change of tone.

"Did you pick up any other papers?" he asked quite politely. "Any
folded sheets, I mean, or a long envelope? I thought you might have
put them back of the clock or somewhere for safe keeping and
forgotten to mention them to me."

Betty looked her astonishment. Automatically her eyes traveled to
the clock which was pulled out of its place against the wall. So the
man had actually looked there, believing that out of chagrin she
might have concealed his papers from him!

"Nothing fell out of your pocket except my letter," she said
earnestly and with a quietness that carried conviction. "I saw
absolutely nothing else on the floor. If I had picked up other
papers, I should have returned them to you, of course."

Mrs. Peabody cleared her throat, usually a sign of coming speech on
the rare occasions when she did open her mouth in her husband's
presence.

"What you lost, Joseph?" she asked eagerly. "Something missing out
o' your pocket?"

"Yes, something out of my pocket!" said her husband savagely. "You
wouldn't know if I told you, but it's an unrecorded deed and worth a
good deal of money. And I'll bet I know who took it--that measly
runaway, Bob Henderson! By gum, he carried the coat up to the house
for me from the barn the day before he lit out. That's where it's
gone. I see his game! He'll try to get money out of me. But I won't
pay him a cent. No sir, I'll go to Washington first and choke the
deed out of his dirty pocket."

"Did Bob go to Washington?" quavered Mrs. Peabody, her mind seizing
on this concrete fact, the one statement she could understand in her
husband's monologue. "How'd you find out, Joseph?"

"Not through Betty," returned Peabody grimly. "She's willing to take
the scoundrel's part against honest folks any time. Jim Turner told
me. Leastways he told me of some old duffer who runs a crazy shop
down there, and he thinks Bob's gone looking him up to find out about
his parents. Just let him try blackmailing me, and he'll learn a
thing or two."

Betty had kept still as long as she could.

"Bob is no thief!" she said bravely. "You ought to be ashamed to
say such a thing about him. I know he didn't take your old deed. What
earthly use would it be to him? Besides, Bob would never touch a
thing that wasn't his!"

"I don't believe he would take anything, Joseph," urged Mrs. Peabody
with perfectly amazing temerity. As a rule she took neither side in a
controversy. "Besides, as the child says, what good would an
unrecorded deed do him? Unless--Joseph, have you bought the Warren
lots?"

"You tend to your housework, and I'll manage my own affairs,"
snapped Peabody, turning a dull brick red, however. "I meant to put
the thing in the safety deposit box over to the bank, and then that
sick cow took my mind completely off it. If Betty didn't take it, Bob
did. It's gone, and they're the only two that could have put hands on
it."

"I tell you that I haven't seen the deed," said Betty firmly. "And I
am equally certain that Bob never took it. He's the soul of honor,
whatever you may think, and he would no more take what wasn't his
than he would lie to you about it."

Peabody caught hold of her right hand suddenly.

"What you carrying?" he demanded suspiciously. "A trunk key? Looks
mighty funny, doesn't it, to be packing up with something pretty
valuable missing? The law would likely give me the right to search
your trunk."

"What a dreadful old man you are!" cried Betty, involuntarily,
shrinking from the sinister face that grinned malevolently into hers.
"You have no right to touch my trunk."

"Well, no call to look like that," muttered Peabody, turning toward
the door. "I knew that other young one took it, and I aim to make it
hot for him."

"Bob didn't take any deed!" stormed Betty to Mrs. Peabody, her
packing forgotten for the moment. "Why does he keep insisting Bob
stole it? And why, oh, why did that poorhouse man have to tell where
Bob had gone?"

Mrs. Peabody's natural curiosity had to be satisfied, and as it was
no longer a secret Betty told her of Lockwood Hale and Bob's
determination to find out more about himself.

"He doesn't want any deed," she finished scornfully. "Can't you make
Mr. Peabody see how foolish such an accusation is?"

Mrs. Peabody leaned against the kitchen table wearily.

"I know what he's thinking," she said dully. "I know more than I
want to know, Betty. Joseph has bought the Warren lots, and that
means he's got 'em for his own price. Old man Warren is in his dotage
and these lots have been surveyed and cut up into building plots on
the stone road over t'other side of Laurel Grove where the trolley's
coming through this spring. Joseph will probably sell 'em for three
times what he's paid for 'em. That's why he doesn't have the deed
recorded; Warren's children will get hold of it, and I doubt if the
sale would hold in court. Everybody knows the old father isn't
competent to handle his property. There was talk of having one of the
sons made his guardian some months ago. Joseph has just talked him
into selling. If he wasn't my husband, I should say the sale was a
plain swindle."




CHAPTER VIII

GOOD-BY TO BRAMBLE FARM


Betty was still mystified.

"What has Bob to do with it?" she urged. "I don't see how the deed
would be of any use to him; he couldn't claim the lots."

"No, he couldn't claim the lots," admitted Joseph Peabody's wife.
"But he could hold the deed and threaten to notify George Warren, if
Joseph didn't pay him a good round sum of money. Mind you, I'm not
saying he would do that, Betty, but he could. That's what Joseph
thinks he means to do."

"Well, I call that very silly," said Betty briskly. "Bob Henderson
isn't a thief or a blackmailer, whatever Mr. Peabody chooses to
think. That deed is probably in another coat pocket this minute, or
else he's lost it over in Glenside."

"I expect that worries him some, too," confided Mrs. Peabody. "He
would hate to have it known that he's bought the Warren lots. But I
guess it would have been better to have had the deed recorded than to
run the risk of losing it and the whole town likely to pick it up on
the street."

Before supper that night Betty had her trunk packed and her simple
belongings gathered up. She knew that Peabody was fully aware of her
intention to leave, but, as her board was paid for nearly a week in
advance, he could make no possible objection. It was sheer
perversity, she decided, that kept him from mentioning the subject to
her.

"I'm going to-morrow, Mr. Peabody," she said pleasantly at the
supper table, having waited till Ethan had gone to the barn to milk.
"What time would be most convenient to take my trunk over to Glenside
or to Hagar's Corners?"

"I'm not going to either place to-morrow," was the composed answer.
"Don't know exactly when I shall be going over again, either. Ethan
and me's got our hands full right here with the late-season
cultivating."

"But I have to get to the station," protested Betty. "I can walk, of
course, but some one will have to take my trunk. You met me at the
station when I came, or rather Bob did, you know. Why aren't you
willing to help me go now that the summer is nearly over?"

"You haven't done me so many favors that I should put myself out for
you," retorted Peabody sourly. "I don't care how you get to the
station, but none of my rigs go off this place to-morrow, that's
flat. And you haven't got that thieving nimble-fingers to plot and
plan with you now. You'll have to manage by yourself."

"What are you going to do, Betty?" asked Mrs. Peabody anxiously,
following the girl to the door after the meal was over. "You're not
going to walk to Glenside to-night to try to get a team to come after
you?"

"No, I'm only going over to Kepplers," replied Betty capably. "I'm
sure one of the boys will drive me over, if not to Glenside, to
Hagar's Corners, where I can get some kind of train for the Junction.
All the through trains stop at Hagar's Corners, don't they? I came
that way. Perhaps that station is better than Glenside, after all."

The walk across the fields tranquillized her, and she was able to
enlist the aid of the Keppler's oldest boy without entering into too
detailed an account of Mr. Peabody's shortcomings. Indeed, the
Kepplers, father and sons, having been the nearest neighbors to
Bramble Farm for eleven years, had a very fair idea of what went on
there.

"Sure, I'll take you, and the trunk, too," promised Fred Keppler
heartily. "Any time you say, Betty. There's a good train for
Pineville, not too many stops, at twelve-three. How about that?"

It was settled that he should come for her about half past ten, and
Betty walked home filled with thoughts of the little home town to
which she would be speeding on the morrow.

"If Uncle Dick knew the things I've had to endure, I'm sure he'd say
that I haven't lost my temper often, considering," she mused. "Is
that something sticking out of the mail box? Why. it is, and a
newspaper. I guess Mr. Peabody forgot to come down to the box to-day."

She opened the box and found the paper was addressed to her. The
familiar wrapper and type told her it was the _Pineville Post_, to
which she had subscribed when she left the town, and, tucking it under
her arm, she went on to the house, intending to read an hour or so
before going to bed.

Lighting the lamp in her room, Betty glanced toward her trunk
mechanically. She had left it locked, but the lid was now ajar. Had
some one been tampering with the lock?

"He's opened it!" she cried to herself, making a hasty examination.
"How did he dare! And look at the mess everything's in!"

Alas for Betty's hour of neat and careful packing! Dainty garments
were tossed about recklessly, her shoes rested on her clean
handkerchiefs, and it was plain that no attempt had been made to
conceal the fact that a heavy hand had thoroughly explored the
contents of the trunk.

"I'm only thankful he didn't break the lock," said Betty, trying to
find a ray of brightness. "Whatever he opened it with, nothing is
broken. I suppose the only thing to do is to take everything out and
do it all over. And to-morrow morning I'll sit on the top till Fred
Keppler comes."

Taking out her clothes and repacking was a tiresome job, and all
thoughts of reading well gone from Betty's mind when the task was
completed and the trunk locked for a second time. With the feeling
that, in view of what the next day might bring, she ought to go to
bed early, she began at once to prepare for bed. Brushing her thick,
dark hair, her eyes fell on the unopened paper.

"I suppose I'll be there to-morrow night," she thought, picking it
up and slitting the wrapper with a convenient nail file.

She opened and smoothed out the first page. The first words that
caught her attention, in large black headlines across four columns,
were:

  GYPSY BAND STRICKEN WITH SMALL-POX:

  WHOLE TOWN QUARANTINED!

Then followed the account of the discovery of illness among a band
of gypsies camped on the outskirts of Pineville, of the diagnosis of
smallpox, and of the strict quarantine immediately put in force. The
issue of the _Post_ was only two days old.

"Well, I never!" gasped Betty, doing some rapid thinking. "I'm glad
it didn't happen after I got there. I might be held up for weeks. I
can't stay here, that's certain. There's nothing to do but drive to
Glenside and take the train for Washington. I guess Fred will be
willing to change his plans."

She decided that she would say nothing to the Peabodys about the
alteration of her traveling schedule, fearing that if Mr. Peabody
heard she was going to Washington he might accuse her of a conspiracy
with Bob in connection with the lost deed.

Bright and early the next morning she was up, her pretty traveling
bag, the gift of her uncle, packed, her room in perfect order. There
was really no one or nothing to say good-by to, for she felt more
pity than affection for Mrs. Peabody, and the Bramble Farm animals
had been too unused to petting to respond readily to her overtures.
Betty, at the breakfast table, had a swift conviction that she would
be leaving with far different feelings if Bob had been there to stay
behind.

Mr. Peabody asked her no questions about her plans and stalked off
as usual to the barn with Ethan when he had finished the meal.

"I declare I'm going to miss you, Betty," said Mrs. Peabody once, in
the middle of the dishwashing, with which Betty insisted on helping.

That was a good deal for her to say, and the girl, who had a natural
longing to be missed, was grateful. And when Fred Keppler drove into
the yard, promptly at half-past ten, and went upstairs for her trunk--
for neither Peabody nor his hired man was in sight--Mrs. Peabody
kissed her warmly and with tears in her eyes.

"Hop right in, Betty," said Fred cordially. "Got a nice day for your
trip, haven't you? All fixed? All right, then."

He gathered up the reins and had turned the horse's head when,
apparently from the clouds, Mr. Peabody appeared on the scene.

"Long as you're going over to Hagar's Corners you won't mind giving
me a lift, will you?" he drawled. "I have an errand over at the
station, and it won't take me a minute. I can come right back with
you. Go on, Fred; I'll sit in here with the trunk and you and Betty
needn't mind me."

Without waiting for an invitation, he swung himself up on top of the
trunk, and smiled pleasantly. He was saving his own horse a long
drive and getting a necessary errand done at the expense of a
neighbor, always a desirable consummation in the Peabody mind.

Fred opened his mouth and closed it wordlessly. His father would
have known what to do, but fifteen-year-old Fred did not know how to
deal with such a display of assurance. There seemed nothing to do but
to take this unwelcome passenger to Hagar's Corners and back.

Betty, for her part, could have cried with vexation. Gone was her
chance of asking Fred to take her to Glenside, and with it the hope
of getting to Washington. She knew that after the noon train at
Hagar's Corners there were no more till four o'clock. She wanted to
say good-by to the Guerins and to cash her uncle's check. No wonder
she was assailed by a strong desire to tumble the satisfied Mr.
Peabody out head over heels.

The drive was taken almost in silence, each of the three busy with
his own thoughts. At the station Betty and her trunk were put down,
and then she had a few minutes to speak to Fred while Mr. Peabody was
talking to the freight agent, who was also the passenger agent, the
telegraph clerk and the janitor.

"Don't you want some money?" whispered Fred hurriedly. "Mother told
me to ask you. And she sent you this."

He thrust into her hands a box of lunch.

"I have a check I want to cash," said Betty nervously. "Will the
station agent do it, do you suppose? It's for fifty dollars. And,
Fred, Pineville is quarantined for smallpox and I want to go to
Washington, but I didn't want Mr. Peabody to know. Hush! Here he
comes now!"

Fred Keppler had what his fond mother called a "good head," and as
Peabody and the agent stopped in the station doorway to continue
their discussion he proceeded to bear out her theory by thrusting a
wad of bills into Betty's hand.

"Money for the calves," he explained. "Just fifty there. Haven't
seen Dad to turn it over to him. Give me the check and it will be all
right. And you ask Dan Gowdy, the agent, about trains. I guess he can
dope out a way to get you to Washington. You still have ten minutes."

"Good-by, and thank you heaps!" cried Betty warmly, shaking his
hand. "I don't know what I should have done without you, Fred!"




CHAPTER IX

NEW FRIENDS


Her hands filled with the bank bills Fred had thrust into them, her
bag under one arm and the lunch box under the other, Betty stood
forlornly on the platform and watched the horse and wagon out of
sight. Mr. Peabody had merely nodded to her by way of farewell, and
Betty felt that if she never saw him again there would be little to
regret. As a matter of fact, she was to meet him again and not under
much more favorable aspects. But of that she was happily ignorant.

The whistling of the lanky young station agent, who was covertly
staring at her under pretense of sweeping up the already neat boards
before the door, roused her. She remembered that she did not want to
go to Pineville.

"Why, I guess I can fix it up for you," said Dan Gowdy cheerfully,
when she had stated her predicament, withholding only the reason for
not telling Mr. Peabody. "Let me see--twelve-three stops at
Centertown. But you don't want to spend the night on the train. Going
from Centertown, you'd get to Washington about ten in the morning."

"I'd rather not sleep on the train," answered Betty timidly, hoping
that she was not unreasonable. Aside from the expense, she was not
used to traveling, and the idea of a night alone on the train for the
first time rather daunted her.

"Well, then--Wait a minute, I've got it!" shouted the agent
enthusiastically. "You buy a ticket up the line to Halperin. That's
quite a town, and the through trains all stop. My brother-in-law's
telegraph operator there, and I'll send him a message to look out for
you, and he and my sister will keep you over night. They've got a
pretty place right in the country--trolley takes you to the door--and
a baby that's named for me and some kid if I do say it. Then in the
morning you can take the seven-forty-five for Washington and get
there at five-fifty-two if it isn't late. How's that?"

"But your sister!" stammered Betty. "She doesn't know me. What will
she say?"

"She'll say you have eyes just like Juliet, the little sister who
died when she was about your age," declared Dan Gowdy gently. "Don't
you fret, Sister, she'll be glad to have you. Now here's your ticket,
and I'll talk to Steve as soon as you're on board the train. That's
her smoke now."

Betty was conscious that there was something else on her mind, but
it was not until she was seated in the train and had had her ticket
punched that she remembered. She had thanked kind Dan Gowdy rather
incoherently, though as warmly as she could, and had only half heard
his explanation that she was taking the 12:01 train up the line
instead of the 12:03 down, and it was no wonder that in the bustle of
boarding the train she had forgotten her intention of telegraphing to
her Uncle Dick. He had given her his address as the Willard Hotel,
and the letter was already six days old.

"But I really think in the morning will be better," decided Betty,
watching the flying landscape. "He wouldn't have given me the address
if he didn't expect to be there for some time. Before I take the
Washington train I'll telegraph him and let him know when to meet me."

The train made three stops before Halperin was reached, and Betty
stepped down to find herself before a pretty, up-to-date station
built of cream-colored brick, with a crowd of stylish summer folk
mingling on the platform with farmers and townspeople. Several
automobiles were backed up waiting for passengers, and there were one
or two old-fashioned hacks. A trolley car was rounding the street
corner, the motorman sounding his bell noisily.

"Betty Gordon, isn't it?" asked a pleasant voice.

A round-faced man was smiling down at her, a young man, Betty
decided, in spite of the white hair. His keen dark eyes were
pleasant, and he held out his hand cordially.

"Dan told me you had cornflowers on your hat," he said quizzically,
"and I, knowing that Dan calls all blue flowers cornflowers, picked
you out right away. Only they are forget-me-nots, aren't they?"

"They're supposed to be larkspur," answered Betty, laughing and
feeling at ease at once. "Perhaps the milliner didn't have a garden."

"Well, anyway, they're blue," said the brother-in-law comfortably.
"Don't suppose Dan told you my name?"

He was guiding her around the station toward the trolley tracks as
he spoke.

"He said the baby was named for him, but he didn't say what your
name was," admitted Betty dimpling.

"Just like him!" grinned her companion. "Dan's so all-fired proud of
that youngster he never lets a chance slip to tell we named him
Daniel Gowdy Brill. Though Dan senior usually forgets to add the
Brill."

"Does--does Mrs. Brill know I'm coming?" ventured Betty.

"She sure does! I telephoned her the minute I heard from Dan, and I
suspect she and the baby are sitting out on the fence now watching
for you to come along. Sorry I can't go with you, but I've just come
on duty. You tell the conductor to let you off at Brill's, and I'll
see you at supper to-night."

He helped her on the car, tipped his hat, and ran back to the
station, leaving Betty with the comfortable feeling that the Brills
were used to company and rather liked it.

She repeated her instructions to the conductor, who nodded silently,
and, after a quarter of an hour's ride, signaled to her that her
destination was reached. They had passed the town limits, and were in
the open country. Betty had noticed several farmhouses, of the
artistic remodeled type, evidently summer homes of the well-to-do, as
the car rattled along.

She saw one of these as she stepped from the trolley car, and also,
under a tree, a young woman holding a beautiful, rosy baby. These two
immediately swooped down upon her.

"I'm so glad you've come!" Mrs. Brill kissed her unaffectedly. "Kiss
Danny, too! Isn't he a nice baby? We waited lunch for you, and if
you're half as starved as we are--"

Still chattering, she led the way into the house. Mrs. Brill was an
elder sister of the Hagar's Corner's agent and very like him in face,
manner, and bright, cheery way of speaking. The house was tastefully
furnished, and a white-capped maid could be seen hovering over the
table as they went upstairs. Betty learned long afterward that Mr.
Brill's father was wealthy and idolized his son's wife, who had given
the younger man the ambition and spur his career had lacked until he
met and married her. It was lovely Rose Gowdy who persuaded Steve
Brill to take the job of telegraph operator, forgetting his
prematurely white hair, and she who encouraged him to work his way to
the top of the railroad business. Rose, and Rose's son, were given
all the credit of that ultimate success by the older Brill.

"I had a little sister once who looked just like you," said Mrs.
Brill, as she watched Betty smooth her hair at the mirror in the
chintz-hung guest room. "Her name was Juliet. Poor old Dan nearly
broke his heart when she died."

"He said something about her," replied Betty shyly. "Oh, look at
that cunning baby! He thinks he can eat his own foot!"

"He will, too, if he doesn't get his bottle soon," said the baby's
mother, rising. "Come, dear, we'll go down. Danny has his bottle in
his wheeler right in the dining-room."

The little maid served them a dainty meal, and the round-eyed baby
fell asleep as they ate and talked, lying in blissful content in a
white-enameled contrivance that was like a crib on four wheels, and
sucking quietly on his bottle.

"Now if you want to lie down, you may," said Mrs. Brill when they
had finished. "I'll be busy for the next couple of hours with two of
my neighbors who are planning a minstrel show for the country club.
They had already planned to come when Steve telephoned. If you're not
tired, perhaps you'll enjoy looking over our farm. Even if you've
spent your summer on one, you may find things to interest you."

Betty was not tired, and she had been longing to explore the belt of
green fields that encircled the old farmhouse. Hatless, but carrying
her sweater over her arm, she went happily out.

There was a small but well-kept poultry yard with some handsome
white leghorns lazily sunning themselves; a gentle-eyed Jersey cow
stood close to the first pair of bars; and a fat, lazy collie snoozed
under a cherry tree but declined to accompany Betty on her
explorations, though she petted and flattered and coaxed him with all
her powers of persuasion. He wagged his tail cordially and beamed
upon her good-naturedly, but as to getting up and walking about so
soon after dinner--well, he begged to be excused.

"You're a lazy thing!" said the girl indignantly, finally giving up
the task as hopeless and climbing the fence into a larger pasture.

Over in one corner of the field she spied something that quickened
her steps with pleasure. A baby colt, long-legged, sleek of head and
altogether "adorable" as Betty would have said, ambled more or less
ungracefully about enjoying the shade of a clump of trees and
sampling the grass at intervals.

"Oh, I do hope you're tame!" whispered Betty softly.

She was fond of animals, and Bramble Farm, with the exception of a
few lambs, had had no young life in its pastures and stables. The
little calves were always sold as early as possible that there might
be more milk for butter, and Betty was fairly aching to pet something.

She walked cautiously up to the colt, who sniffed at her
suspiciously, but stood his ground. He pricked his ears forward and
looked at her inquiringly.

"You dear!" said the girl quietly. "You little beauty! You wouldn't
mind if I patted you, would you?"

She put out one hand and touched the rough side of the little
animal. He stood perfectly still, and she stroked him for a minute or
two, speaking gently to him. Presently he nuzzled her playfully.

"Oh, you darling!" she cried delighted. "Wouldn't I love to take you
with me and have you for a pet! If you wouldn't grow any larger than
you are now, I'd take you everywhere just like a dog."

She had both arms around the colt's neck now, and he seemed to enjoy
being petted. All at once Betty thought she heard hoof-beats on the
ground, and at the same time the colt raised his head and whinnied.

Betty looked up and across the field toward the house. She stood
back from the colt and stared in dismay and astonishment at what she
saw.

Tearing across the ground, headed directly for her, was a fierce
animal with flashing red nostrils, huge mouth open wide and showing
two great rows of strong yellow teeth bared to the gums. Sparks
seemed to fly from the hoofs and a coarse black tail streamed in the
wind.

"Good gracious!" gasped Betty weakly. "That must be the colt's
mother!"

The colt whinnied again in welcome and delight, but Betty felt
rooted to the earth.




CHAPTER X

FELLOW TRAVELERS


It is sometimes said that in moments of danger one's whole life
passes swiftly in review through the mind, but Betty always declared
that she had just a single thought when it seemed that in another
moment she would be trampled under the mare's hoofs; she had not
telegraphed to her uncle and he would not know where she had gone.

The horse continued to cover the ground rapidly, and then, when it
had almost reached the terrified girl, fear lent sudden wings to
Betty's leaden feet. She turned and ran.

Speeding over the field toward the fence at the other end, she could
hear the steady pounding of the mare's hoofs, though she did not dare
to glance over her shoulder. Her thoughts worked busily, trying to
figure out a way to climb over or under the fence, and she had a
lively fear of those terrible teeth nipping her as she tried to
climb. As the fence seemed to her strained vision to rise suddenly
from the ground and come to meet her, a way to safety opened.

Before she began to run she had unconsciously stooped to gather her
sweater from the ground where she had dropped it, and now she turned
and waved the garment frantically in the furious animal's face.
Bewildered and confused, the mare stopped, and, as Betty continued to
flap the sweater, she turned and dashed back to her colt. Weakly the
girl tumbled over the fence and the adventure was over.

"She thought you were going to hurt Pinto," said Mrs. Brill, when
she heard the story. "Goodness, I certainly am glad you had the
presence of mind to shake your sweater at old Phyllis. Wouldn't it
have been dreadful if she had bitten you!"

The next morning, Betty said good-by to the hospitable family who
had been so wonderfully kind to her, and, much refreshed after a
luxurious hot bath and a night's sleep in the pretty guest room, took
the trolley car into town with Mr. Brill, who at the station door
bade her farewell in his capacity of host and two minutes later as
telegraph operator sent her message to Uncle Dick in Washington.

The 7:45 was on time to the minute, and as the long train pulled in
and the porter helped her on, Betty drew a long breath of relief.
Surely there could be no more delays and in a comparatively few hours
she might hope to be with her uncle and know the comfort of telling
him her experiences instead of trusting their recital to letters.

The train had been made up late the night before and many of the
passengers were still sleepy-eyed after restless hours in their
berths. A good many of them were at breakfast in the dining car, and
as there was no parlor car Betty had to take half a section already
occupied by a rather frowsy young woman with two small children.

"We take on a parlor car at Willowvale," the porter assured Betty,
only too sympathetically, for he had been waiting on the woman and
her children since the afternoon before. "I'll see that you get a
chair then, Miss."

Betty settled herself as comfortably as she could and opened her
magazine.

"Read to me?" suggested a little voice, and a sticky hand caressed
her skirt timidly.

"Now don't bother the lady," said the mother, trying to pull the
child away. "My land, if I ever live to get you children to your
grandmother's I'll be thankful! Lottie, stop making scratches on that
window sill!"

Lottie pursed her pretty mouth in a pout and drummed her small heels
discontentedly against the green plush of the seat.

Betty smiled into the rebellious blue eyes and was rewarded by a
sudden, radiant smile. She closed her magazine and found the mother
gazing at her with a look almost as childlike in its friendly
curiosity as her little daughter's.

"You've got a way with children, haven't you?" said the woman
wistfully. "I guess everybody on this train will be glad when we get
off. The children have been perfect torments, and Lottie cried half
the night. We're none of us used to traveling, and they're so mussed
up and dirty I could cry. At home I keep 'em looking as neat as wax.
We're going to see my husband's mother, and I know she'll think I
started with 'em looking like this."

Betty was far older than many girls her age in some things. She was
self-reliant and used to observing for herself, and she had a rich
fund of warm and ready sympathy that was essentially practical. She
saw that the mother of these lively, untidy children was very young,
hardly more than a girl, and worn-out and nervous as a result of
taking a long journey with no help and little traveling experience.
She was probably, and naturally, anxious that her children should
impress their father's mother favorably, and it took little
imagination to understand that in her home the young mother had been
used to praise for her excellent management. Betty, added to her
qualities of leadership and sound judgment, had a decided "knack"
with children. In Pineville she had been a general favorite with the
little ones, and many a mother had secretly marveled at the girl's
ability to control the most headstrong youngster. Now she seized the
opportunity presented to help a fellow-passenger.

"Have you had your breakfast?" she asked. "No? I thought not. Well,
I had mine before I got on the train. If you are willing to trust the
children with me, I'll amuse them while you go into the diner and
have a quiet meal. You'll feel much better then."

"Oh, it's been a nightmare!" confided the young mother with a sudden
rush of feeling. "Nobody ever told me what it would be like to travel
with two children. Lottie upset her milk and Baby spilled her supper
on the floor. And people just glare at me and never offer to help. It
will be heavenly to eat my breakfast without them, but I feel that
I'm imposing on you."

Betty managed to send her off convinced that everything was as it
should be, and to the mother's surprise the children snuggled down
like little mice to listen to the honorable and ancient story of the
Three Bears. By the time a rested and radiant mother came back to
them, for she had stolen a little time in the dressing room and
rearranged her fair hair and adjusted her trim frock, something she
had found it impossible to accomplish with two restless children
clinging to her skirts, Lottie and Baby were firm friends with Miss
Betty.

"I never knew any one as lovely as you are!" The gratitude of the
woman was touching. "I was just about crazy. My husband tipped the
porter, and he did try to look after me, but he didn't know what to
do. Usually there is a maid on this train, they told us, but she was
taken sick, and there wasn't time to get any one to fill her place.
Now don't let the children bother you. They had their breakfast
early, and I can read to them till we get to Willowvale where their
grandmother will meet us."

But Betty had not finished. She loved the feel of soft little arms
about her neck and there was not much connected with a baby's welfare
she did not know about. Many a Pineville baby she had washed and
dressed and fed as correctly as a model baby should be.

"Let me take them one at a time and tidy them up?" she suggested.
"They'll take to it kindly, because I am new and that will lend to
the washing a novelty. If we go in relays, we can't upset the whole
car."

So first with Lottie, and then with Baby, who seemed to be without
other name, Betty went into the dressing-room and there washed pink
and white faces and hands till they shone, and brushed silk locks
till they lay straight and shining. Clean frocks were forthcoming,
and two spick and span babies emerged to beam upon a transformed
world no longer seen through a veil of tears. This new friend could
tell the most wonderful stories, invent delightful games, and sing
dozens of foolish little rhymes in a low sweet voice that disturbed
no one and yet allowed every word to be distinctly understood.

Both children went to sleep during the morning, and then Betty heard
that Mrs. Clenning, as the mother introduced herself, lived in the
West and that this journey to Willowvale was the first she had taken
since the birth of the babies.

"My husband's mother is crazy to see them because they are her only
grandchildren," she explained. "I didn't want to come without Mr.
Clenning, but he couldn't get away for a couple of months. He is to
come after us and take us home. If he didn't, I'm sure I'd live East
the rest of my days, or at least till the children are grown up. I'll
never have the courage to try a long train trip with them again."

Before Willowvale was reached Betty helped Mrs. Clenning get her
wraps and bags together and tied the babies into bewitching white
bonnets with long fluted strings. The porter came for the bags, but
Betty carried the younger child to the car door and handed her down
to the mother, who had gone first with Lottie. She saw a tall,
stately, white-haired woman, dressed all in white from her shoes to
her hat, gather all three into her arms, and then went back to her
seat satisfied that the mother's troubles were over.

"Parlor car's ready, Miss," announced the porter, coming up to her.
"Shall I take you on in?"

Betty followed him, to be established comfortably on the shady side
of the car, with the window adjusted at the most comfortable height.
She did not hear the porter's comment to the conductor when he passed
him in the vestibule of the parlor car.

"That girl in seat fourteen, she's one perfect little lady," said
the dusky porter earnestly. "You jest observe her when you takes her
ticket. 'Member that lady with the two children what racketed all day
and all night? Well, she done fix those two kids up till you wouldn't
know 'em, and cheered their mother up, too. And all jest as pretty
and like a lady. That mighty fine lady in the red hat (I give her a
seat on the sunny side of the car a-purpose) wouldn't do nothing
yesterday when I axted her to hold a glass of milk while I went to
get a extra pillow. Said she wasn't going to be nursemaid to no
stranger's brats!"

So Betty was zealously looked after by the whole train crew, for the
story had spread, and the siege of Clenning had been a protracted one
with a corresponding fervency of gratitude for release; and at six
o'clock that night the attentive porter handed her down the steps to
the platform of the beautiful Union Station in Washington.

She had only her light traveling bag to carry, so she followed the
crowd through the gates, walking slowly and scanning the faces
anxiously in order that she might not pass her uncle. She did not
wish to go through the station out on the plaza, lest she make it
more difficult for him to find her, and she was keenly disappointed
that he had not been at the gate, for the train was half an hour late
and she had confidently expected him to be waiting. She took up her
stand near the door of the waiting room and scanned the eddying
circles of travelers that passed and repassed her.

"Something must have delayed him," she thought uneasily. "He
couldn't miss me even in a crowd, because he is so careful. I hope he
got the telegram."

She had turned to compare her wrist-watch with the station clock
when a voice at her back said half-doubtfully, "Betty?"




CHAPTER XI

A SERIOUS MIX-UP


"You are Betty, aren't you?" the girlish voice insisted, and this
time Betty identified it as belonging to a girl a year or two older
than herself who stood smiling uncertainly at her.

"Yes, of course I'm Betty," said Betty Gordon smiling.

The face of her questioner cleared.

"All right, girls," she called, beckoning to two others who stood a
little way off. "She's Betty. I was sure I hadn't make a mistake."

Betty found herself surrounded by three laughing faces, beaming with
good-will and cordiality.

"We must introduce ourselves," said the girl who had first spoken to
her. "This is Louise," pointing to a gray-eyed miss apparently about
Betty's age. "This is Esther." A girl with long yellow braids and
pretty even white teeth bobbed a shy acknowledgment. "And of course
I'm Roberta, Bobby for short."

"And if we don't hurry, we'll be late for dinner," suggested the
girl who had been called Louise. "You know Carter isn't as patient
as he once was; he hates to have to wait."

Bobby thrust her arm through Betty's protectingly.

"Come on, Betty," she said comfortably. "Never mind about your trunk
check. Carter will drive down after it early in the morning."

Betty's bewildered mind was vaguely appreciative of the wide sweep
of open plaza which lay before them as they came out on the other
side of the station, but before she could say a word she was gently
bundled into a handsome automobile, a girl on either side of her and
one opposite, and the grim-faced, silver-haired old chauffeur,
evidently slightly intolerant of the laughter and high spirits of his
young passengers, had started to thread his way through the lane of
taxicabs and private cars.

Betty was intensely puzzled, to put it mildly. Her uncle had
mentioned no girls in his letters to her, and even supposing that she
had missed some letters, it was hardly possible that he should not
have let fall an explanatory word or two from time to time.

"I thought Uncle Dick would come down to meet me," she said, voicing
her surprise at last.

"Oh, poor dear, his heart is almost broken to think he has to stay
cooped up in the house," answered Bobby, who seemed to be the general
spokesman. "But how stupid of us--of course you don't know that he
hurt his foot!"

"Is he hurt?" Betty half rose from her seat in alarm. "Is he badly
injured? When did it happen?"

Bobby pulled the excited girl down beside her.

"You see it happened only yesterday," explained Louise, finding her
voice with a rush. "You'd better believe we were frightened when they
brought him to the house in the ambulance. His foot has some little
bones broken in it, the doctor says, but he'll be all right in a
month or so. He has to hobble around on crutches till the bones knit."

"But it isn't serious, so don't look like that," urged Bobby. "Why,
Betty, your lips are positively white. We're so thankful it was his
foot and not his head--that would have been something to worry about."

"How--how did it happen?" gasped Betty, anxious and worried in spite
of these assurances. "Was he in an accident?"

"He was the whole accident," announced Bobby cheerfully. "You see
he's completely wrapped up in these new buildings they're putting up
on the outskirts. We'll take you out to see 'em while you're here and
perhaps you'll understand the construction, which is more than I do.
Anyway, the whole firm and every workman is absorbed in the
experiment, and they're burnt as red as the bricks from working
outdoors all day."

"Uncle Dick does love to be outdoors," murmured Betty.

"He sure does," agreed Bobby. "Well, nothing would do yesterday but
that he must climb up on the roof of one they've just started and
take a peek at the chimney. I guess it needed looking after, for the
whole thing tumbled over on him, coming down full-weight on his right
foot. Forcet, the foreman, had an awful time getting him down from
the roof, and instead of telephoning for the car, some nervous person
sent for the ambulance and scared us all into fits."

Betty blinked again. No mention of building houses had been made in
Uncle Dick's letters to her.

"Did he get my telegram?" she asked, leaning forward to look at a
monument they were passing.

"A little before noon," replied Bobby. "Louise and Esther and I had
such a violent argument as to which of us should come to meet you
that we didn't even dare draw lots; it seemed safer for us all to
come along."

Esther, who sat opposite Betty, had noticed her interest in the
Washington Monument.

"We're going to take you sightseeing to-morrow," she promised.
"Aren't we, Bobby? And I don't see why we don't go home by way of
Fort Myer. It doesn't take any longer, and dinner isn't till seven,
you know."

"All right." Bobby leaned forward and spoke to the chauffeur. "Take
us round by Fort Myer, please, Carter," she directed.

The car turned sharply, and in a few minutes they were rattling over
an old bridge.

"We live out in the country, Betty, I warn you," said the voluble
Bobby. "But it has its compensations. You'll like it."

Betty, a stranger to Washington, decided that the Willard must be a
country hotel. It would be like Uncle Dick, she knew, to shun the
heart of the city and establish himself somewhere where he could see
green fields the first thing every morning.

"What is Fort Myer?" she asked with lively curiosity, as the car
began to climb a steep grade. "Is that where they had training camps
during the war?"

"Right," said Bobby. "It's an army post, you know. See, here are
some of the officers' houses. I only hope we live here when Louise
and I are eighteen--they give the most heavenly dances and parties."

Betty looked with interest at the neat houses they were passing. The
names of the officers were conspicuously tacked on the doorsteps, and
there was a general air of orderliness and military spic and spanness
about the very gravel roads. Occasionally a dust-colored car shot
past them filled with men in uniform.

"Do you ride?" asked Betty suddenly. "Uncle Dick has always wanted
me to learn, but I've never had a good chance."

"Well, you can begin to-morrow morning," Bobby informed her. "We've
three ponies that are fine under the saddle. Betty, I do wish you'd
make up your mind to live in Washington this winter. There's no
reason in the world why you shouldn't, and we were talking it over
last night, making plans for you."

"Why! that's entirely as Uncle Dick says," returned Betty,
surprised. "I haven't any say in the matter."

Bobby shot a triumphant glance toward the other girls.

"He said he hadn't much right to dictate, but I told him I knew
better," she said with satisfaction. "He wants you as much as we do,
and that's considerable, you know."

Again a wave of doubt swept over Betty. Uncle Dick had said he had
not much right to dictate! When he was her only living relative!

"Uncle hasn't a fever or anything, has he?" she asked apprehensively.
"I mean the injury to his foot hasn't, it didn't--" she floundered.

"Oh, that old hurt to his head never amounted to anything," declared
Bobby with convincing carelessness. "No, indeed, he's perfectly well
except for the crutches, and the doctor says keeping him indoors for
a few days will give him a much-needed rest."

Betty recalled the accident in which her uncle had been stunned when
he had slipped down a bank into an excavation made along a road on
which they had been driving. Bobby evidently referred to that old
injury.

"Now you can begin to watch for the house," said the silent Esther,
as Carter swung the car around another curve in the beautiful road.
"I don't see why I couldn't have been named Virginia!"

"Esther has a personal grievance because she's the only one of us
born in the South, and she had to be named for an aunt like the rest
of us," laughed Bobby. "Every tenth girl you meet down here seems to
be named Virginia."

"But was she born in Virginia?" asked Betty. "Where did you live
then?"

Bobby stared. Then she laughed.

"Oh, I see," she said. "We lived at Fairfields. Of course you know
that. But, like so many friends, you have always thought of us as
living in Washington. We're in Virginia, Betty, didn't you know that?"

"No." Betty's puzzlement was plainly written on her face.

"When we crossed the bridge, we left the District of Columbia,"
explained Bobby. "Of course we're very close to the line, but still
we are not in Washington."

"There's the house!" exclaimed Louise. "I wonder if mother got back
from shopping. I don't see her on the porch."

Betty saw a beautiful white house, dazzlingly white against a
background of dark trees, with a broad lawn in front circled by a
wide white driveway. A terraced garden at the side with a red brick
walk was arranged with wicker chairs and tables and a couple of
swings protected with gay striped awnings. It was a typical Southern
mansion in perfect order, and Betty reveled in its architectural
perfections even while she told herself that it did not look in the
slightest like a hotel. What was it Bobby had called her home?
"Fairfields"--that was it; and she, Betty, wanted to go to the
Willard. Had they made a mistake and brought her to the wrong place?

There was no time to ask for explanations, however. The girls swept
her out of the car and up the low steps through the beautiful
doorway. A well-trained man servant closed the door noiselessly, and
the three bore Betty across the wide hall into a room lined with
books and boasting three or four built-in window seats, in one of
which a gentleman was reading.

"We found her! Here she is!" shouted the irrepressible Bobby. "Don't
tell us we can't pick a girl named Betty out of a crowd!"

The gentleman closed his book, and, steadying himself with a cane
lying near by, rose slowly. There was no recognition in the gaze he
fastened on Betty, and she for her part hung back, staring wildly.

"You're not Uncle Dick!" she gasped accusingly.




CHAPTER XII

STRAIGHTENING THINGS OUT


Betty's speech was shock number one. Another quickly followed.

The gentleman tugged quizzically at his short gray mustache.

"And you," he announced quietly, "are not my niece, Betty Littell!"

Esther and Louise stared, round-eyed, while Bobby collapsed
dramatically on a convenient couch.

"Have we kidnapped anybody?" she asked, a bit hysterically. "Good
gracious, Dad, don't tell me I've forcibly run off with a girl?
Haven't you made a mistake? She must be Betty--she said so."

"My darlings, I'm sorry to be late," said a new voice, a rich, sweet
contralto, and a stout woman with a kindly, florid face swept through
the doorway. "Why, what is the matter?" she demanded hurriedly,
confronting the tense group.

"Momsie!" exclaimed Bobby, hurling herself upon the newcomer. "Oh,
Momsie, isn't this Betty Littell? We went to meet her and she said
her name was Betty, and all the way home she talked about Uncle Dick,
and now she says dad isn't her uncle! I'm afraid I've made a mess of
things."

"Yes, I think you have," said Betty, with blazing cheeks. "I came to
Washington to meet my uncle, Mr. Richard Gordon, who is stopping at
the Willard. Of course my name is Betty. I'm Betty Gordon, and he's
my Uncle Dick. And goodness only knows what he is doing now--he'll be
about crazy if he came to meet me."

Bobby began to laugh uncontrollably.

"I never heard of such a thing in my life!" she giggled, wiping her
eyes. "Dad's name is Richard Littell, and we've been expecting our
cousin Betty Littell to arrive to-day from Vermont for a long visit.
We haven't seen her since she was six years old, but I took a chance
on recognizing her. And then there was the name! How could I guess
there would be two Bettys looking for two Uncle Dicks! Don't be mad,
Betty; you can see a mix-up like that wouldn't happen twice in a life
time."

"She isn't mad," interposed Mr. Littell, lowering himself carefully
to the window seat, for he had been standing all this time and his
foot began to pain again. "After she knows you a little better,
Bobby, she will expect this sort of denouement to follow whatever you
undertake. I say we ought to have some dinner, Mother, and then talk
at the table."

"Of course, of course," agreed motherly Mrs. Littell. "The poor
child must be famished. Take Betty--you don't mind if I call you
Betty, do you, dear?--up to your room, Bobby, and when you come down
dinner will be served."

"But my uncle!" urged Betty. "He will be so worried. And the other
girl--where do you suppose she is?"

"By George, the child has more sense than I have," said Mr. Littell
energetically. "I'd give a fortune if Bobby had half as level a head.
Our Betty is probably having hysterics in the station if she hasn't
taken the next train back to Vermont."

His keen eyes twinkled appreciatively at Betty, and she knew that
she liked him and also sensed instinctively that his eldest daughter
was very like him.

"Why, Father, how you do talk!" reproved Mrs. Littell comfortably.
"I'll call up the station while the girls are upstairs and then Betty
shall call the Willard, or you do it for her, and then perhaps we can
eat dinner before the souffle is quite ruined."

The girls took Betty upstairs to a luxurious suite of rooms they
shared, and when she had bathed her face and hands and brushed her
hair, they came down to find that Mr. Littell had called up the Union
Station and discovered that because of a freight wreck the Vermont
express had been delayed and would not be in before nine o'clock that
night.

"So our Betty is probably having a comfortable dinner on the train,"
he announced. "Now just a minute, and I'll have the Willard for the
other Betty. We'll tell your uncle you are safe and that we'll bring
you into Washington to-night."

In a few minutes he had the connection, and they heard him ask for
Mr. Richard Gordon. His mobile face changed as the clerk answered,
and Betty, watching, knew that he had disconcerting news. He turned
to them, covering the mouthpiece with his hand.

"Mr. Gordon left early this morning for Oklahoma," he said. "He left
an address for mail, and there's a telegram which came after he left.
It was sent from Halperin and was received at eleven-thirty this
morning."

"That's the one I sent!" answered Betty. "And Uncle Dick's gone to
Oklahoma! What on earth shall I do?"

"Do!" repeated Mr. and Mrs. Littell in concert. "Why, stay right
here with us, of course! Do you suppose we'd let a young girl like
you knock around alone in a city? We'll be glad to have you stay as
long as you will, and you mustn't be uncomfortable another second.
When you hear from your uncle there'll be plenty of time to make
other plans."

Betty did not try to express her gratitude to these new kind
friends, for she knew that she could never say one-half the thanks
she felt toward them. They were cordiality itself, and did everything
in their power to make her feel at home. An excellent dinner was
served in the charming dining-room with a mixture of formality and
simple home courtesy that was as unusual as it was delightful, and in
this atmosphere of good breeding and tact, Betty bloomed like a
little rose.

"A charming girl, whoever she is," said Mr. Littell to his wife, as
he smoked his cigar after dinner and the girls drew Betty to the
piano. "She has plenty of spirit, but lacks Bobby's boisterousness.
It will be a good thing for the girls to have some one like her,
self-reliant and quiet and yet with decided snap, to chum with."

"I like the idea of five girls in the house," beamed Mrs. Littell,
who was the soul of hospitality and fairly idolized her three
daughters. Whatever discipline they had came from their father. "And
now I think I had better go to the station, after our Betty, don't
you?"

"Oh, Mother!" came in concert from the piano, where Bobby was
rattling off a lively waltz. "We all want to go. Please? There's
plenty of room in the car."

Mrs. Littell looked undecided.

"One of you may go with your mother," said Mr. Littell decisively.
"I think it had better be Louise. Now, there is no use in arguing.
One girl is enough. Betty will be tired after traveling all night and
all day, and she will be in no mood for talking and carrying on. I'll
tell Carter to bring the car around, Mother."

Bobby pouted for a few moments after her mother and sister had gone,
but her good-nature was easily restored and she and Betty and Esther
were deep in an exchange of confidences when Mrs. Littell returned
bringing the missing Betty with her.

"Now stand up for a minute, you two Bettys," commanded Bobby, when
greetings had been exchanged and explanations made. "I want to see if
I made such a dreadful mistake in taking Betty Gordon for Betty
Littell."

The two girls stood side by side, and though they both had dark eyes
and hair, there the resemblance ceased. Betty Littell was a dumpling
of a girl with curly hair, a snub nose and round face. She looked the
picture of good-nature, and her plumpness suggested a fondness for
sweets that subsequent acquaintance with her fully sustained.

Betty Gordon had grown tall through the summer, and she was of a
slender, wiry build that hinted of a fondness for outdoor life. Her
heavy straight hair was wrapped around her well-shaped little head in
braids, and her exquisite little hands and feet, so far her one claim
to beauty, though later promises lay in her glowing face, gave her,
as Louise afterward confided to her mother, "an air like an Indian
princess."

"No, you don't look much alike," conceded Bobby, after a prolonged
scrutiny. "But Betty Gordon looks the way I thought Betty Littell
would look, so I don't see that I am to blame."

"Trust Bobby to excuse herself from a scrape," chuckled her father.
"By the way, how are you going to arrange about names? Two Bettys in
the family will involve complications."

"I think we'll have to call Betty Littell, 'Libbie'" suggested Mrs.
Littell, smiling. "That was your mother's name at home, always, Betty."

"Yes, I know it; and that's why they called me Betty," replied the
Littell girl. "Two names, the same names, I mean, do make confusion.
I'm willing to be called Libbie, Aunt Rachel, if you let me have a
little time to get used to it. If I don't answer right away, you'll
understand that I'm listening for 'Betty.'"

"Well, Mother, I think at least two of these girls need sleep,"
announced Mr. Littell. "Betty Gordon looks as if she couldn't keep
her eyes open another moment, and Betty Littell has yawned twice. I
should say we all might retire--it's after eleven."

"Goodness, so it is," said his wife hastily. "Time does fly so when
you're talking. Come, girls, if you are going sightseeing to-morrow,
you'll need a good night's rest."

There were three bedrooms and a private bath at the disposal of the
girls, and separate beds in all the rooms. Betty Gordon shared a room
with Bobby, Louise and Betty Littell had the one adjoining, and
Esther slept alone in the third room, which was also connected with
the others.

Long after the other girls were asleep Betty lay awake, thinking
over the happenings of the day. Finally she worked around to the
suggested change in names.

"They must expect me to stay if they plan to avoid confusion of
names," she thought. "I must talk to Mr. Littell in the morning and
ask him if it's really all right. I feel as if it were an imposition
for me, a perfect stranger, to accept their hospitality like this."

In the morning she was up and dressed before the rest, fortunately
having a fresh blouse in her bag so that, although she had nothing
but her suit skirt, she looked well-groomed and dainty. Betty Littell
was also without her trunk, though Bobby promised that both trunks
should be brought from the station that morning.

"I'd like to speak to your father a minute," said Betty, when she
was dressed.

Bobby, on the floor tying her shoes, blew her a kiss.

"You'll find him on the terrace probably," she said confidently. "Go
ahead, dear, but it won't do you any good. We're determined to keep
you to play with us."

So the astute Bobby had guessed what she wanted to say!
Nevertheless, Betty was determined to carry out her resolution. She
went slowly down the wide staircase and stepped out through double
screen doors on to the bricked terrace. Sure enough, there sat Mr.
Littell, smoking comfortably and reading his morning paper.




CHAPTER XIII

WASHINGTON MONUMENT


"You're up early!" the gentleman greeted Betty cordially. "Guess
you're ahead of even Esther, who usually leads the van. Sleep well?
That's good," as she nodded. "No troubles this bright morning?"

Betty gave him a grateful glance.

"I can't help it," she said bravely. "You know how I feel, coming
here like this--you don't know me--"

"No-o," drawled Mr. Littell, pulling forward a gay-cushioned chair
and motioning for her to sit down. ("Can't have any manners when your
foot is smashed," he explained in an aside.) "No, Betty, it's true we
don't know you. But mother and I think we know a nice girl when we
see her, and we're glad to have you stay with us just as long as you
can feel comfortable and at home. If I were you, I'd just bury these
uneasy feelings you speak of. Fact is, I'll give you two good reasons
why you should make us a little visit. One is that if we had had the
pleasure of your acquaintance you would have had a regular letter
from mother weeks ago, asking you to come and spend the summer with
us. The second is that I know how your uncle would feel to think of
you alone in the city or the country. Guess how I'd take it if one of
my own daughters was waiting for word from me and no one made things
pleasant for her. Won't you shake hands and make a bargain with me
that you'll try to see our side of it, your uncle's and mine, and
then just plan to have a happy time with the girls until we can reach
him in the West?"

Betty placed her small hand in the larger one held out to receive
it, and smiled back at Mr. Littell. He had a smile very few people
could resist.

"That's better," he said with satisfaction. "Now we're friends. And,
remember, I'm always ready to give advice or listen. That's what
fathers and uncles are for