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

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      “There’s something wrong with her looks, that’s sure,” Helen agreed. “She is the dowdiest thing I ever saw.”

      “Her way of dressing has nothing to do with it. It is the hateful temper she shows. I am afraid that poor woman has had a very hard time with her pupils.”

      “There you go!” cried Helen. “Beginning to pity her! I thought you would not be sensible for long. Oh, Ruthie Fielding! you would find an excuse for a man’s murdering his wife and seven children.”

      “Yes, I suppose so,” Ruth said. “Of course, he would have to be insane to do it.”

      They returned to their stateroom. It was somewhat ghostly, Helen thought, along the narrow deck now. Ruth fumbled at the lock for some time.

      “Are you sure you have the right room?” Helen whispered.

      “I’ve got the right room, for I know the number; but I’m not sure about the key,” giggled Ruth. “Oh! here it opens.”

      They went in. Ruth remembered where the electric light bulb was and snapped on the light. “There! isn’t this cozy?” she asked.

      “‘Snug as a bug in a rug,’” quoted Helen. “Goodness! how sharp your elbow is, dear!”

      “And that was my foot you stepped on,” complained Ruth.

      “I believe we’ll have to take turns undressing,” Helen said. “One stay outside on the deck till the other gets into bed.”

      “And we’ve got to draw lots for the upper berth. What a climb!”

      “It makes me awfully dizzy to look down from high places,” giggled Helen. “I don’t believe I’d dare to climb into that upper berth.”

      “Now, Miss Cameron!” cried Ruth, with mock sternness. “We’ll settle this thing at once. No cheating. Here are two matches – ”

      “Matches! Where did you get matches?”

      “Out of my bag. In this tiny box. I have never traveled without matches since the time we girls were lost in the snow up in the woods that time. Remember?”

      “I should say I do remember our adventures at Snow Camp,” sighed Helen. “But I never would have remembered to carry matches, just the same.”

      “Now, I break the head off this one. Do you see? One is now shorter than the other. I put them together —so. Now I hide them in my hand. You pull one, Helen. If you pull the longer one you get the lower berth.”

      “I get something else, too, don’t I?” said Helen.

      “What?”

      “The match!” laughed the other girl. “There! Oh, dear me! it’s the short one.”

      “Oh, that’s too bad, dear,” cried Ruth, at once sympathetic. “If you really dread getting into the upper berth – ”

      “Be still, you foolish thing!” cried Helen, hugging her. “If we were going to the guillotine and I drew first place, you’d offer to have your dear little neck chopped first. I know you.”

      The next moment Helen began on something else. “Oh, me! oh, my! what a pair of little geese we are, Ruthie.”

      “What about?” demanded her chum.

      “Why! see this button in the wall? And we were scrambling all over the place for the electric light bulb. Can’t we punch it on?” and she tried the button tentatively.

      “Now you’ve done it!” groaned Ruth.

      “Done what?” demanded Helen in alarm. “I guess that hasn’t anything to do with the electric lights. Is it the fire alarm?”

      “No. But it costs money every time you punch that button. You are as silly as poor, little, flaxen-haired Amy Gregg was when she came to Briarwood Hall and did not know how to manipulate the electric light buttons.”

      “But what have I done?” demanded Helen. “Why will it cost me money?”

      Ruth calmly reached down the ice-water pitcher from its rack. “You’ll know in a minute,” she said. “There! hear it?”

      A faint tinkling approached. It came along the deck outside and Helen pushed back the blind a little way to look out. Immediately a soft, drawling voice spoke.

      “D’jew ring fo’ ice-water, missy? I got it right yere.”

      Ruth already had found a dime and she thrust it out with the pitcher. It was their own particular “colored gemmen,” as Helen gigglingly called him. She dodged back out of sight, for she had removed her shirtwaist. He filled the pitcher and went tinkling away along the deck with a pleasant, “I ‘ank ye, missy. Goo’ night.”

      “I declare!” cried Helen. “He’s one of the genii or a bottle imp. He appears just when you want him, performs his work, and silently disappears.”

      “That man will be rich before we get to Old Point Comfort,” sighed Ruth, who was of a frugal disposition.

      They closed the blind again, and a little later the lamp on the deck outside was extinguished. The girls had said their prayers, and now Helen, with much hilarity, “shinnied up” to the berth above, kicking her night slippers off as she plunged into it.

      “Good-bye – if I don’t see you again,” she said plaintively. “You may have to call the fire department with their ladders, to get me down.”

      Ruth snapped off the light, and then registered her getting into bed by a bump on her head against the lower edge of the upper berth.

      “Oh, my, Helen! You have the best of it after all. Oh, how that hurt!”

      “M-m-m-m!” from Helen. So quickly was she asleep!

      But Ruth could not go immediately to Dreamland. There had been too much of an exciting nature happening.

      She lay and thought of Curly Smith, and of the disguised boy, and of the obnoxious school teacher who had accused her and Helen of robbing her. The odor of Tom’s roses finally became so oppressive that she got up to open the blind again for more air. She again struck her head. It was impossible to remember that berth edge every time she got up and down.

      As she stepped lightly upon the floor in her bare feet she heard a stealthy footstep outside. It brought Ruth to an immediate halt, her hand stretched out toward the blind. Through the interstices of the blind she could see that the white moonlight flooded the deck. Stealthily she drew back the blind and peered out.

      The person on the deck had halted almost opposite the window. Ruth knew now that the steamer must be well across the Five Fathom Bank, with the Delaware Lightship behind them and the Fenwick Lightship not far ahead. To the west was the wide entrance to Delaware Bay, and the land was now as far away from them as it would be at any time during the trip.

      She peered out quietly. There stood the curly-haired boy again, leaning on the rail, and looking wistfully off to the distant shore.

      Was it Henry Smith? Was he the boy who had come aboard the boat in girl’s СКАЧАТЬ