Ruth Fielding Down in Dixie; Great Times in the Land of Cotton. Emerson Alice B.

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      Suddenly the Unknown looked up and caught the two chums staring frankly in the direction of “his, her, or its” seat. Red flamed into the sallow cheeks, and gathering up the folders hastily, the person crammed them into the bag and then started up to make her way aft. But Ruth had already seen the impoliteness of their actions.

      “Do let us go away, Helen,” she said. “We have no right to stare so.”

      She drew Helen down the saloon on the starboard side; it seems that the Unknown stalked down the saloon on the other. The chums and the strange individual rounded the built-up stairwell of the saloon at the same moment and came face to face again.

      “Well, I want to know!” exclaimed the Unknown suddenly, in a viperish voice. “What do you girls mean? Are you following me around this boat? And what for, I’d like to know?”

      “There!” murmured Ruth, with a sigh. “The worm has turned. We’re in for it, Helen – and we deserve it!”

      CHAPTER III – THE BOY IN THE MOONLIGHT

      A mistake could scarcely be made in the sex of the comical looking individual at whom the chums had been led to stare so boldly, when once they heard the voice. That shrill, sharp tone could never have come from a male throat. Now, too, the Unknown drew a pair of spectacles from her bag, adjusted them, and glared at Ruth and Helen.

      “I want to know,” repeated the woman sternly, “what you mean by following me around this boat?”

      The chums were tongue-tied in their embarrassment for the moment, but Helen managed to blurt out: “We – we didn’t know – ”

      She was on the verge of making a bad matter worse, by saying that they didn’t know the lady was a lady! But Ruth broke in with:

      “Oh, I beg your pardon, I am sure. We did not mean to offend you. Won’t you forgive us, if you think we were rude? I am sure we did not intend to be.”

      It would have been hard for most people to resist Ruth’s mildness and her pleading smile. This person with the spectacles and the short hair was not moved by the girl of the Red Mill at all. Later Ruth and Helen understood why not.

      “I don’t want any more of your impudence!” the stern woman said. “Go away and leave me alone. I’d like to have the training of all such girls as you. I’d teach you what’s what!”

      “And I believe she would,” gasped Helen, as she and Ruth almost ran back up to the saloon deck again. “Goodness! she is worse than Miss Brokaw ever thought of being – and we thought her pretty sharp at times.”

      “I wonder what and who the woman is,” Ruth murmured. “I am glad she is nobody whom I have to know.”

      “Hope we have seen the last of the hateful old thing!”

      But they had not. As the girls walked forward through the saloon and approached the spot where they had sat watching the mysterious woman with the short hair and the shorter temper, a youth got up from one of the seats and strolled out upon the deck ahead of them. Ruth started, and turned to look at Helen.

      “My dear!” she said. “Did you see that?”

      “Don’t point out any other mysteries to me – please!” cried Helen. “We’ll get into a worse pickle.”

      “But did you see that boy?” insisted Ruth.

      “No. I’m not looking for boys.”

      “Neither am I,” Ruth returned. “But I could not help seeing how much that one resembled Curly Smith.”

      “Dear me! You certainly have Henry Smith on the brain,” cried Helen.

      “Well, I can’t help thinking of the poor boy. I hope we shall hear from his grandmother again. I am going to write and mail the letter just as soon as we reach Old Point Comfort.”

      The girls had walked slowly on, past the seat where the odd looking woman whom they had watched had sat down to examine the contents of her handbag. There were few other passengers about, for as the evening closed in almost everybody had sought the open deck.

      Suddenly, from behind them, came a sound which seemed to be a cross between a steam whistle gone mad and the clucking of an excited hen. Ruth and Helen turned in amazement and saw the lank, mannish figure of the strange woman flying up the saloon.

      “Stop them! Come back! My ticket!” were the words which finally became coherent as the strange individual reached the vicinity of the girl chums. An officer who was passing through happened to be right beside the two girls when the excited woman reached them.

      She apparently had the intention of seizing hold upon Ruth and Helen, and the friends, startled, shrank back. The ship’s officer promptly stepped in between the girls and the excited person with the short hair.

      “Wait a moment, madam,” he said sharply. “What is it all about?”

      “My ticket!” cried the short-haired woman, glaring through her spectacles at Ruth and Helen.

      “Your ticket?” said the officer. “What about it?”

      “It isn’t there!” and she pointed tragically to the seat on which she had previously rested.

      “Did you leave it there?” queried the officer, guessing at the reason for her excitement.

      “I just did, sir!” snapped the stern woman.

      “Your ticket for your trip to Norfolk?”

      “No, it isn’t. It’s my ticket for my railroad trip from Norfolk to Charleston. I had it folded in one of those Southern Railroad Company’s folders. And now it isn’t in my bag.”

      “Well?” said the officer calmly. “I apprehend that you left the folder on this seat – or think you did?”

      “I know I did,” declared the excited woman. “Those girls were following me around in a most impudent way; and they were right here when I got up and forgot that folder.”

      “The inference being, then,” went on the officer, “that they took the folder and the ticket?”

      “Yes, sir, I am convinced they did just that,” declared the woman, glaring at the horrified Ruth and Helen.

      Said the latter, angrily: “Why, the mean old thing! Who ever heard the like?”

      “Oh, I know girls through and through!” snapped the strange woman. “I should think I ought to by this time – after fifteen years of dealing with the minxes. I could see that those two were sly and untrustworthy, the instant I saw them.”

      “Oh!” exclaimed Ruth.

      “Nasty cat!” muttered Helen.

      The officer was not greatly impressed. “Have you any real evidence connecting these young ladies with the loss of your ticket?” he asked.

      “I say it’s stolen!” cried the sharp-voiced one.

      “And it may, instead, have been picked up, folder and all, by a quite different party. Perhaps the purser already has your lost СКАЧАТЬ