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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43907 ***
+
+[Illustration: "TAKE YOUR OLD BUTTER!" SHE STORMED AT THE ASTONISHED
+MR. PEABODY.
+
+"Betty Gordon at Bramble Farm." Page 63]
+
+
+
+
+Betty Gordon at Bramble Farm
+
+    OR
+
+    The Mystery of a Nobody
+
+    BY
+
+    ALICE B. EMERSON
+
+    AUTHOR OF "BETTY GORDON IN WASHINGTON,"
+    "BETTY GORDON IN THE LAND OF OIL,"
+    "THE RUTH FIELDING SERIES," ETC.
+
+    _ILLUSTRATED_
+
+[Illustration]
+
+    NEW YORK
+    CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
+    PUBLISHERS
+
+
+
+
+Books for Girls
+
+BY ALICE B. EMERSON
+
+12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.
+
+
+BETTY GORDON SERIES
+
+    BETTY GORDON AT BRAMBLE FARM
+    BETTY GORDON IN WASHINGTON
+    BETTY GORDON IN THE LAND OF OIL
+
+
+RUTH FIELDING SERIES
+
+    RUTH FIELDING OF THE RED MILL
+    RUTH FIELDING AT BRIARWOOD HALL
+    RUTH FIELDING AT SNOW CAMP
+    RUTH FIELDING AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT
+    RUTH FIELDING AT SILVER RANCH
+    RUTH FIELDING ON CLIFF ISLAND
+    RUTH FIELDING AT SUNRISE FARM
+    RUTH FIELDING AND THE GYPSIES
+    RUTH FIELDING IN MOVING PICTURES
+    RUTH FIELDING DOWN IN DIXIE
+    RUTH FIELDING AT COLLEGE
+    RUTH FIELDING IN THE SADDLE
+    RUTH FIELDING IN THE RED CROSS
+    RUTH FIELDING AT THE WAR FRONT
+    RUTH FIELDING HOMEWARD BOUND
+    RUTH FIELDING DOWN EAST
+
+    CUPPLES & LEON CO., PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK.
+
+
+    COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
+    CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
+
+    BETTY GORDON AT BRAMBLE FARM
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+    CHAPTER                          PAGE
+        I WAITING FOR WORD              1
+       II UNCLE DICK'S PLAN            10
+      III DINING OUT                   19
+       IV AT THE CROSSING              28
+        V MRS. PEABODY WRITES          37
+       VI THE POORHOUSE RAT            46
+      VII BRAMBLE FARM                 55
+     VIII BETTY MAKES UP HER MIND      64
+       IX ONE ON BOB                   72
+        X ROAD COURTESY                80
+       XI A KEEN DISAPPOINTMENT        89
+      XII BETTY DEFENDS HERSELF        96
+     XIII FOLLOWING THE PRESCRIPTION  105
+      XIV WINNING NEW FRIENDS         114
+        X NURSE AND PATIENT           123
+      XVI A MIDNIGHT CALL             132
+     XVII AN OMINOUS QUARREL          141
+    XVIII IN THE NAME OF DISCIPLINE   149
+      XIX THE ESCAPE                  157
+       XX STORMBOUND ON THE WAY       165
+      XXI THE CHICKEN THIEVES         174
+     XXII SPREADING THE NET           181
+    XXIII IN AMIABLE CONFERENCE       188
+     XXIV A NEW ACQUAINTANCE          197
+      XXV THEIR MUTUAL SECRETS        204
+
+
+
+
+BETTY GORDON AT BRAMBLE FARM
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+WAITING FOR WORD
+
+
+"I DO wish you'd wear a sunbonnet, Betty," said Mrs. Arnold, glancing
+up from her ironing board as Betty Gordon came into the kitchen.
+"You're getting old enough now to think a little about your complexion."
+
+Betty's brown eyes laughed over the rim of the glass of water she had
+drawn at the sink.
+
+"I can't stand a sunbonnet," she declared vehemently, returning the
+glass to the nickel holder under the shelf. "I know just how a horse
+feels with blinders on. You know you wouldn't like it, Mrs. Arnold,
+if I pulled up half your onion sets in mistake for weeds because I
+couldn't see what I was doing."
+
+Mrs. Arnold shook her head over the white ruffle she was fluting with
+nervous, skillful fingers.
+
+"There's no call for you to go grubbing in that onion bed," she said.
+"I'd like you to have nice hands and not be burnt black as an Indian
+when your uncle comes. But then, nobody pays any attention to what I
+say."
+
+There was more truth in this statement than Mrs. Arnold herself
+suspected. She was one of these patient, anxious women who
+unconsciously nag every one about them and whose stream of complaint
+never rises above a constant murmur. Her family were so used to Mrs.
+Arnold's monotonous fault-finding that they rarely if ever knew what
+she was complaining about. They did not mean to be disrespectful, but
+they had fallen into the habit of not listening.
+
+"Uncle Dick won't mind if I'm as black as an Indian," said Betty
+confidently, spreading out her strong little brown right hand and
+eyeing it critically. "With all the traveling he's done, I guess he's
+seen people more tanned than I am. You're sure there wasn't a letter
+this morning?"
+
+"The young ones said there wasn't," returned Mrs. Arnold, changing her
+cool iron for a hot one, and testing it by holding it close to her
+flushed face. "But I don't know that Ted and George would know a letter
+if they saw it, their heads are so full of fishing."
+
+"I thought Uncle Dick would write again," observed Betty wistfully.
+"But perhaps there wasn't time. He said he might come any day."
+
+"I don't know what he'll say," worried Mrs. Arnold, her eyes surveying
+the slender figure leaning against the sink. "Your not being in
+mourning will certainly seem queer to him. I hope you'll tell him Sally
+Pettit and I offered to make you black frocks."
+
+Betty smiled, her peculiarly vivid, rich smile.
+
+"Dear Mrs. Arnold!" she said, affection warm in her voice. "Of course
+I'll tell him. He will understand, and not blame you. And now I'm going
+to tackle those weeds."
+
+The screen door banged behind her.
+
+Betty Gordon was an orphan, her mother having died in March (it was now
+June) and her father two years before. The twelve-year-old girl had to
+her knowledge but one single living relative in the world, her father's
+brother, Richard Gordon. Betty had never seen this uncle. For years he
+had traveled about the country, wherever his work called him, sometimes
+spending months in large cities, sometimes living for weeks in the
+desert. Mr. Gordon was a promoter of various industrial enterprises and
+was frequently sent for to investigate new mines, oil wells and other
+large developments.
+
+"I'd love to travel," thought Betty, pulling at an especially stubborn
+weed. "I hope Uncle Dick will like me and take me with him wherever he
+goes. Wouldn't it be just like a fairy story if he should come here
+and scoop me out of Pineville and take me hundreds of miles away to
+beautiful and exciting adventures!"
+
+This enchanting prospect so thrilled the energetic young gardener
+that she sat down comfortably in the middle of the row to dream a
+little more. While her father lived, Betty's home had been in a small,
+bustling city where she had gone to school in the winter. The family
+had always gone to the seashore in the summer; but the only exciting
+adventure she could recall had been a tedious attack of the measles
+when she was six years old. Mrs. Gordon, upon her husband's sudden
+death, had taken her little daughter and come back to Pineville, the
+only home she had known as a lonely young orphan girl. She had many
+kind friends in the sleepy country town, and when she died these same
+friends had taken loving charge of Betty.
+
+The girl's grief for the loss of her mother baffled the villagers who
+would have known how to deal with sorrow that expressed itself in words
+or flowed out in tears. Betty's long silences, her desire to be left
+quite alone in her mother's room, above all her determination not to
+wear mourning, puzzled them. That she had sustained a great shock no
+one could doubt. White and miserable, she went about, the shadow of
+her former gay-hearted self. For the first time in her life she was
+experiencing a real bereavement.
+
+When Betty's father had died, the girl's grieving was principally
+for her mother's evident pain. She had always been her mother's
+confidante and chum, and the bond between them, naturally close, had
+been strengthened by Mr. Gordon's frequent absences on the road as a
+salesman. It was Betty and her mother who locked up the house at night,
+Betty and her mother who discussed household finances and planned to
+surprise the husband and father. The daughter felt his death keenly,
+but she could never miss his actual presence as she did that of the
+mother from whom she had never been separated for one night from the
+time she was born.
+
+The neighbors took turns staying with the stricken girl in the little
+brown house that had been home for the two weeks following Mrs.
+Gordon's death. Then, as Betty seemed to be recovering her natural
+poise, a discussion of her affairs was instigated. The house had been
+a rented one and Betty owned practically nothing in the world except
+the simple articles of furniture that had been her mother's household
+effects. These Mrs. Arnold stored for her in a vacant loft over a
+store, and Mrs. Arnold, her mother's closest friend, bore the lonely
+child off to stay with them till Richard Gordon could be heard from and
+some arrangement made for the future.
+
+Communication with Mr. Gordon was necessarily slow, since he moved
+about so frequently, but when the news of his sister-in-law's death
+reached him, he wrote immediately to Betty, promising to come to
+Pineville as soon as he could plan his business affairs to release him.
+
+"Betty!" a shrill whisper, apparently in the lilac bushes down by the
+fence, startled Betty from her day dreams.
+
+"Betty!" came the whisper again.
+
+"Is that you, Ted?" called Betty, standing up and looking expectantly
+toward the bushes.
+
+"Sh! don't let ma hear you." Ted Arnold parted the lilac bushes
+sufficiently to show his round, perspiring face. "George and me's going
+fishing, and we hid the can of worms under the wheelbarrow. Hand 'em to
+us, will you, Betty? If ma sees us, she'll want something done."
+
+"Did you go to the post-office this morning?" demanded Betty severely.
+
+"Sure I did. There wasn't anything but a postal from pa," came the
+answer from the bushes. "He's coming home next week, and then it'll be
+nothing but work in the garden all day long. Hand us the can of worms,
+like a good sport, won't you?"
+
+"Where did you hide them?" asked Betty absently.
+
+"Under the wheelbarrow, there at the end of the arbor," directed Ted.
+"Thanks awfully, Betty."
+
+"Where's George?" she asked. "Isn't there another mail at eleven, Ted?"
+
+"Oh, Betty, how you do harp on one subject," complained Ted, poking
+about in his can of worms with a stick, but keeping carefully out of
+sight of the kitchen window and the maternal eye. "Hardly anything ever
+comes in that eleven o'clock mail. Anyway, didn't mother say your uncle
+would probably come without bothering to write again?"
+
+"I suppose he will," sighed Betty. "Only it seems so long to wait.
+Where did you say George was?"
+
+Ted answered reluctantly.
+
+"He's in swimming."
+
+"Well I must say! You wait till your father comes home," said Betty
+ominously.
+
+The boys had been forbidden to go swimming in the treacherous creek
+hole, and George was where he had no business to be.
+
+"You needn't tell everything you know," muttered Ted uncomfortably,
+picking up his treasured can and preparing to depart.
+
+"Oh, I won't tell," promised Betty quickly.
+
+She went back to her weeding, and Ted scuffled off to fish.
+
+"Goodness!" Betty pushed the hair from her forehead with a grimy hand.
+"I do believe this is the warmest day we've had! I'll be glad when I
+get down to the other end where the arbor makes a little shade."
+
+She had reached the end of the long row and had stood up to rest her
+back when she saw some one leaning over the white picket fence.
+
+"Probably wants a drink of water," thought Betty, crossing the strip of
+garden and grass to ask him, after the friendly fashion of Pineville
+folk. "I've never seen him before."
+
+The stranger was leaning over the fence, staring abstractedly at a
+border of sweet alyssum which straggled down one side of the sunken
+brick walk. He was tall and broad-shouldered, and his straw hat
+pushed slightly back on his head revealed a keen, tanned face and
+close-cropped iron gray hair. He did not look up as Betty drew near and
+suddenly she felt shy.
+
+"I--I beg your pardon," she faltered, "were you looking for any
+particular house?"
+
+The stranger lifted his hat, and a pair of sharp blue eyes smiled
+pleasantly into Betty's brown ones.
+
+"I was looking, not for a particular house, but for a particular
+person," admitted the man, gazing at her intently. "I shouldn't wonder
+if I had found her, too. Can you guess who I am?"
+
+Betty's mind was so full of one subject that it would have been
+strange indeed if she had failed to guess correctly.
+
+"You're Uncle Dick!" she cried, throwing her arms around his neck
+and running the risk of spiking herself on the sharp pickets. "Oh, I
+thought you'd never come!"
+
+Uncle Dick, for it really was Mr. Gordon, hurdled the low fence lightly
+and stood smiling down on his niece.
+
+"I don't believe in wasting time writing letters," he declared
+cheerfully, "especially as I seldom know my plans three days ahead.
+You're the image of your father, child. I should have known you
+anywhere."
+
+Betty put her hands behind her, suddenly conscious that they could not
+be very clean.
+
+"I'm afraid I mussed your collar," she apologized contritely. "Mrs.
+Arnold was hoping you'd write so she could have me all scrubbed up for
+you;" and here Betty's dimple would flicker out.
+
+Mr. Gordon put an arm about the little figure in the grass-stained
+rose-colored smock.
+
+"I'd rather find you a garden girl," he announced contentedly. "Isn't
+there a place where you and I can have a little talk before we go in to
+see Mrs. Arnold and make our explanations?"
+
+Betty drew him toward the arbor. She knew they would be undisturbed
+there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+UNCLE DICK'S PLAN
+
+
+THE arbor was rather small and rickety, but at least it was shady.
+Betty sat down beside her uncle, who braced his feet against the
+opposite seat to keep his place on the narrow ledge.
+
+"I'm afraid I take up a good deal of room," he said apologetically.
+"Well, my dear, had you begun to think I was never coming?"
+
+Betty glanced up at him bravely.
+
+"It was pretty long--waiting," she admitted. "But now you're here,
+Uncle Dick, everything is all right. When can we go away?"
+
+"Aren't you happy here, dear?" asked her uncle, plainly troubled. "I
+thought from your first letter that Mrs. Arnold was a pretty good kind
+of friend, and I pictured you as contented as a girl could possibly be
+after a bitter loss like yours."
+
+He smiled a bit ruefully.
+
+"Maybe I'm not strong on pictures," he added. "I thought of you as a
+little girl, Betty. Don't know what'll you say, but there's a doll in
+my grip for you."
+
+Betty laughed musically.
+
+"I've always saved my old doll," she confided, slipping a hand into
+Uncle Dick's broad fist where it lay clinched on his knee. He was very
+companionable, was this uncle, and she felt that she already loved him
+dearly. "But, Uncle Dick, I haven't really played with dolls since we
+moved from the city. I like outdoor things."
+
+"Well, now, so do I," agreed her uncle. "I can't seem to breathe
+properly unless I'm outdoors. But about this going away--do you want to
+leave Pineville, Sister?"
+
+Betty's troubled eyes rested on the little garden hot in the bright
+sunshine.
+
+"It isn't home any more, without mother," she said slowly. "And--I
+don't belong, Uncle Dick. Mrs. Arnold is a dear, and I love her and she
+loves me. But they want to go to California, though they won't talk it
+before me, 'cause they think I'll feel in the way. Mr. Arnold has a
+brother on a fruit farm, and he's wild to move out there. As soon as
+you take me somewhere, they're going to pack up."
+
+"Well, then, we'll have to see that you do belong somewhere," said Mr.
+Gordon firmly. "Anything else, Sister?"
+
+Betty drew a deep breath.
+
+"It's heavenly to have you to listen to me," she declared. "I want to
+go! I've never been anywhere, and I feel as though I could go and go
+and never stop. Daddy was like that. Mother used to say if he hadn't
+had us to look after he would have been an explorer, but that he had to
+manage to earn a living and do his traveling as a salesman. Couldn't I
+learn to be a salesman, a saleswoman, I mean? Lots of girls do travel."
+
+"We'll think it over," answered her uncle diplomatically.
+
+"And then there's another thing," went on Betty, her pent-up thoughts
+finding relief in speech. "Although Mrs. Arnold was mother's dearest
+friend, I can't make her understand how mother felt about wearing
+mourning."
+
+Betty indicated her rose smock.
+
+"Lots of Pineville folks think I don't care about losing my mother,"
+she asserted softly, "because I haven't a single black dress. But
+mother said mourning was selfish. She wouldn't wear black when daddy
+died. Black makes other people feel sorry. But I did love mother! And
+do yet!"
+
+Uncle Dick's keen blue eyes misted and the brave little figure in the
+bright smock was blurred for a moment.
+
+"I suppose the whole town has been giving you reams of advice," he said
+irrelevantly. "Well Betty, I can't promise to take you with me--bless
+me, what would an old bachelor like me do with a young lady like you?
+But I think I know of a place where you can spend a summer and be
+neither lonesome nor unhappy. And perhaps in the fall we can make other
+arrangements."
+
+Betty was disappointed that he did not promise to take her with him
+at once. But she had been trained not to tease, and she accepted the
+compromise as pleasantly as it was offered.
+
+"Mrs. Arnold will be disappointed if you don't go round to the
+front door," she informed her uncle, as he stretched his long legs
+preparatory to rising from the low seat. "Company always comes to the
+front door, Uncle Dick."
+
+Mr. Gordon stepped out of the summer house and turned toward the gate.
+
+"We'll walk around and make a proper entry," he declared obligingly. "I
+meant to, and then as I came up the street I remembered how we used to
+cut across old Clinton's lot and climb the fence. So I had to come the
+back way for old times' sake."
+
+Betty's eyes were round with wonder.
+
+"Did you ever live in Pineville?" she asked in astonishment.
+
+"You don't mean to tell me you didn't know that?" Uncle Dick was as
+surprised as his niece. "Why, they shipped me into this town to read
+law with old Judge Clay before they found there was no law in me, and
+your father first met your mother one Sunday when he drove twenty
+miles from the farm to see me."
+
+Betty was still pondering over this when they reached the Arnold front
+door and Mrs. Arnold, flustered and delighted, answered Mr. Gordon's
+knock.
+
+"Sit right down on the front porch where it's cool," she insisted
+cordially. "I've just put on my dinner, and you'll have time for a
+good talk. No, Betty, there isn't a thing you can do to help me--you
+entertain your uncle."
+
+But Betty, who knew that excitement always affected Mrs. Arnold's bump
+of neatness, determined to set the table, partly to help her hostess
+and partly, it must be confessed, to make sure that the knives and
+forks and napkins were in their proper places.
+
+"I'm sure I don't know where those boys can be," scolded the flushed
+but triumphant mother, as she tested the flaky chicken dumplings and
+pronounced the dinner "done to a turn." "We'll just sit down without
+them, and it'll do 'em good," she decided.
+
+Betty ran through the hall to call her uncle. Just as she reached the
+door two forlorn figures toiled up the porch steps.
+
+"Where's ma?" whispered Ted, for the moment not seeing the stranger
+and appealing to Betty, who stood in the doorway. "In the kitchen? We
+thought maybe we could sneak up the front stairs."
+
+Ted was plastered from head to foot with slimy black mud, and George,
+his younger edition, was draped only in a wet bath towel. Both boys
+clung to their rough fishing rods, and Ted still carried the dirty tin
+can that had once held bait.
+
+"I should say," observed Mr. Gordon in his deep voice, "that we had
+been swimming against orders. Things usually happen in such cases."
+
+"Oh, gee!" sighed Ted despairingly. "Who's that? Company?"
+
+Mrs. Arnold had heard the talk, and she came to the door now, pushing
+Betty aside gently.
+
+"Well, I must say you're a pretty sight," she told her children. "If
+your father were at home you know what would happen to you pretty
+quick. Betty's uncle here, too! Aren't you ashamed of yourselves? I
+declare, I've a good mind to whip you good. Where are your clothes,
+George?"
+
+"They--they floated away," mumbled George. "Ted borrowed this towel.
+It's Mrs. Smith's. Say, ma, we're awful hungry."
+
+"You march upstairs and get cleaned up," said their mother sternly.
+"We're going to sit down to dinner this minute. Chicken and dumplings.
+When you come down looking like Christians I'll see about giving you
+something to eat."
+
+Midway in the delicious dinner Ted and George sidled into the room,
+very wet and shiny as to hair and conspicuously immaculate as to shirt
+and collar. Mrs. Arnold relented at the transformation and proceeded to
+pile two plates high with samples of her culinary skill.
+
+"Betty," said Mr. Gordon suddenly, "is there a garage here where we can
+hire a car?"
+
+"There isn't a garage in Pineville," answered Betty. "You see we're off
+the state road where the automobile traffic goes. There are only two or
+three cars in town, and they're for business. But we can get a horse
+and buggy, Uncle Dick."
+
+"Guess that's better, after all," said Mr. Gordon contentedly. "I want
+to talk to you about that plan I spoke of, and we'll stand a better
+chance of having our talk if we travel behind a horse. I wonder----"
+his eyes twinkled--"if there's a young man about who would care to earn
+a quarter by running down to the livery stable and seeing about a horse
+and buggy for the afternoon?"
+
+Ted and George grinned above their respective dishes of ice-cold rice
+pudding.
+
+"I'll go," offered Ted.
+
+"I'll go, too," promised George. "Can we drive the rig back to the
+house?"
+
+Mr. Gordon said they could, and the two boys dispatched their dessert
+in double quick time. While they went down to the town livery stable,
+Betty hurried to put on a cool, white frock, but, to Mrs. Arnold's
+disappointment, she refused to wear a hat.
+
+"The buggy top will be up, so my complexion will be safe," Betty
+declared merrily, giving Mrs. Arnold a hearty squeeze as that lady
+followed her downstairs to the porch where Mr. Gordon was waiting.
+
+"What's that? Go without a hat?" he repeated, when Betty consulted
+him. "I should say so! You're fifty times prettier with those smooth
+braids than with any hat, I don't care how fine it is. This must be our
+turnout approaching."
+
+As he guessed, it was their horse and buggy coming toward the house.
+Ted was driving, assisted by George, and the patient horse was
+galloping like mad as they urged it on.
+
+"Never knew a boy of that age who could be trusted to drive alone,"
+muttered Mr. Gordon, going down to the gate to meet them.
+
+The boys beamed at him and Betty, sure that they had pleased with their
+haste. They then watched Betty step in, followed by her uncle, and
+drive away with something like envy.
+
+"Are you used to driving, Betty?" asked Mr. Gordon, as he chirped
+lightly to the horse that obediently quickened its lagging pace.
+
+"Why, I've driven some," replied Betty hesitatingly. "But I wouldn't
+know what to do if he should be frightened at anything. Do you like to
+drive, Uncle?"
+
+"I'm more used to horseback riding," was the answer. "I hope you'll
+have a chance to learn that this summer, Betty. I must have you
+measured for a habit and have it sent up to you from the city. There's
+no better sport for a man or a woman, to my way of thinking, than can
+be found in the saddle."
+
+"Where am I going?" asked the girl timidly. "Who'll teach me to ride?"
+
+"Oh, there'll be some one," said her uncle easily. "I never knew a
+ranch yet where there were not good horsemen. The idea came to me that
+you might like to spend the summer with Mrs. Peabody, Betty."
+
+"Mrs. Peabody?" repeated Betty, puzzled. "Does she live on a ranch? I'd
+love to go out West, Uncle Dick."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+DINING OUT
+
+
+FOR a moment Mr. Gordon stared at his niece, a puzzled look in his
+eyes. Then his face cleared.
+
+"Oh, I see. You've made a natural mistake," he said. "Mrs. Peabody
+doesn't live out West, Betty, but up-state--about one hundred and fifty
+miles north of Pineville. I've picked up that word ranch in California.
+Everything outside the town limits, from a quarter of an acre to a
+thousand, is called a ranch. I should have said farm."
+
+Betty settled back in the buggy, momentarily disappointed. A farm
+sounded so tame and--and ordinary.
+
+"The plan came to me while I was sitting out on the porch waiting for
+dinner," pursued her uncle, unconscious that he had dashed her hopes.
+"Your father and I had such a happy childhood on a farm that I'm sure
+he would want you to know something about such a life first-hand. But
+of course I intend to talk it over with you before writing to Agatha."
+
+"Agatha?" repeated Betty.
+
+"Mrs. Peabody," explained Mr. Gordon. "She and I went to school
+together. Last year I happened to run across her brother out in the
+mines. He told me that Agatha had married, rather well, I understood,
+and was living on a fine, large farm. What did he say they called their
+place? 'Bramble Farm'--yes, that's it."
+
+"Bramble Farm," echoed Betty. "It sounds like wild roses, doesn't it,
+Uncle Dick? But suppose Mrs. Peabody doesn't want me to come to live
+with her?"
+
+"Bless your heart, child, this is no permanent arrangement!" exclaimed
+her uncle vigorously. "You're my girl, and mighty proud I am to have
+such a bonny creature claiming kin with me. I've knocked about a good
+bit, and sometimes the going has been right lonesome."
+
+He seemed to have forgotten the subject of Bramble Farm for the moment,
+and something in his voice made Betty put out a timid hand and stroke
+his coat sleeve silently.
+
+"All right, dear," he declared suddenly, throwing off the serious mood
+with the quick shift that Betty was to learn was characteristic of him.
+"If your old bachelor uncle had the slightest idea where he would be
+two weeks from now, he'd take you with him and not let you out of his
+sight. But I don't know; though I strongly suspect, and it's no place
+to take a young lady to. However, if we can fix it up with Agatha for
+you to spend the summer with her, perhaps matters will shape up better
+in the fall. I'll tell her to get you fattened up a bit; she ought to
+have plenty of fresh eggs and milk."
+
+Betty made a wry face.
+
+"I don't want to be fat, Uncle Dick," she protested. "I remember a fat
+girl in school, and she had an awful time. Is Mrs. Peabody old?"
+
+Mr. Gordon laughed.
+
+"That's a delicate question," he admitted. "She's some three or four
+years younger than I, I believe, and I'm forty-two. Figure it out to
+suit yourself."
+
+The bay horse had had its own sweet way so far, and now stopped
+short, the road barred by a wide gate. It turned its head and looked
+reproachfully at the occupants of the buggy.
+
+"Bless me, I never noticed where we were going," said Mr. Gordon,
+surprised. "What's this we're in, Betty, a private lane? Where does it
+lead?"
+
+"Let me open the gate," cried Betty, one foot on the step. "We're in
+Mr. Bradway's meadow. Uncle Dick. We can keep right on and come out on
+the turnpike. He doesn't care as long as the gates are kept closed."
+
+"I'll open the gate," said Mr. Gordon decidedly. "Take the reins and
+drive on through."
+
+Betty obeyed, and Mr. Gordon swung the heavy gate into place again and
+fastened it.
+
+"Is Mrs. Peabody pretty?" asked Betty, as he took his place beside her
+and gathered up the lines. "Has she any children?"
+
+The blue eyes surveyed her quizzically.
+
+"A real girl, aren't you?" teased her uncle. "Why, child, I couldn't
+tell you to save me, whether Agatha is pretty or not. I haven't seen
+her for years. But she has no children. Her brother, Lem, told me that.
+She was a pretty girl." Mr. Gordon added reflectively: "I recollect she
+had long yellow braids and very blue eyes. Yes, she's probably a pretty
+woman."
+
+To reach the turnpike they had to pass through another barred gate, and
+then when they did turn into the main road, Mr. Gordon, glancing at his
+watch, uttered an exclamation.
+
+"Four o'clock," he announced. "Why, it must have been later than I
+thought when we started. The horse has taken its own sweet time. Look,
+Betty, is there a place around here where we can get some ice-cream?"
+
+Betty's eyes danced. Like most twelve-year-old girls, she regarded
+ice-cream as a treat.
+
+"There's a place in Pineville; but let's not go there--the whole town
+goes to the drug-store in the afternoons," she answered. "Couldn't we
+go as far as Harburton and stop at the ice-cream parlor? The horse
+isn't very tired, is it, Uncle Dick?"
+
+"Considering the pace he has been going, I doubt it," responded her
+uncle. "What's the matter with you and me having a regular lark, Betty?
+Let's not go back for supper--we'll have it at the hotel. They can put
+up the horse, and we'll drive back when it's cooler."
+
+Betty was thrilled at the idea of eating supper at the Harburton Hotel;
+certainly that would be what she called "exciting." But since her
+mother's death she had learned to think not only for herself but for
+others.
+
+"Mrs. Arnold would be so worried," she objected, trying to keep the
+longing out of her voice. "She'd think we'd been struck at the grade
+crossing. And, Uncle Dick, I don't believe this dress is good enough."
+
+But Mr. Gordon was not accustomed to being balked by objections. He
+swept Betty's aside with a half-dozen words. They would telephone
+to Mrs. Arnold. Well, then, if she had no telephone, they would
+telephone a near neighbor and get her to carry the message. As for the
+dress--here he glanced contentedly at Betty--he didn't see but that she
+looked fine enough to attend the King's wedding. She could wash and
+freshen up a little when they reached the hotel.
+
+Betty's face glowed.
+
+"You're just like Daddy," she said happily. "Mother used to say she
+never had to worry about anything when he was at home. Mrs. Arnold
+doesn't either, when her husband's home. Do all husbands do the
+deciding, Uncle Dick?"
+
+Mr. Gordon submitted, amusedly, that as he was not a husband, he could
+not give accurate information on that point. But Betty's active mind
+was turning over something.
+
+"Mrs. Arnold says Mr. Arnold makes the boys stand round," she confided.
+"I notice they mind him ten times as quick as they do their mother. But
+they love him more. Do you make people stand round, Uncle Dick?"
+
+Mr. Gordon smiled down into the serious little face tilted to meet his
+glance.
+
+"I haven't much patience with disobedience, I'm afraid," he replied. "I
+suppose some of the men I've bossed would consider me a Tartar. Why,
+Betty? Are you thinking of going on strike against my authority? I
+don't advise you to try it."
+
+Betty blushed.
+
+"It isn't that," she said hastily. "But--but--well, I have a temper,
+Uncle Dick. I get so raging mad! If I don't tell you, some one else
+will, or else you'll see me 'acting up,' as Mrs. Arnold says, before
+you go. So I thought I'd better tell you."
+
+Mr. Gordon's lips twitched.
+
+"A temper, out of control, is a mighty useless possession," he said
+solemnly. "But as long as you know you've got a spark of fire in you,
+Betty, you can watch out for it. Afraid of going on the rampage while
+you're at Bramble Farm? Is that what's worrying you?"
+
+"Some," confessed his niece, with scarlet cheeks.
+
+"I'll tell you what to do," counseled Mr. Gordon, and his even, rather
+slow voice soothed Betty inexpressibly. "When you get a 'mad fit,' you
+fly out to the wood pile and chop kindling as hard as you can. You
+can't talk and chop wood, and the tongue does most of the mischief when
+our tempers get the best of us. You'll remember that little trick,
+won't you?"
+
+Betty promised she would, and, as they were now driving into the
+thriving county seat of Harburton, she began to point out the few
+places of interest.
+
+The hotel was opposite the court house, and as they stopped before the
+curb and Betty saw the porch well filled with men, with here and there
+a woman in a pretty summer dress, she felt extremely shy. A boy ran up
+to take their horse and lead it around to the stables for a rub-down
+and a comfortable supper. Mr. Gordon tucked his niece's hand under his
+arm and marched unconcernedly up the hotel steps.
+
+"I suppose he's used to hotels," thought Betty, sinking into one of
+the stuffed red velvet chairs at her uncle's bidding and looking
+interestedly about her as he went in search of the proprietor. "I
+wonder if it's fun to live in a hotel all the time instead of a house."
+
+Her uncle came back in a few moments with a pleasant-faced, matronly
+woman, whom he introduced as the sister of the proprietor. She was to
+take Betty upstairs and let her make herself neat for supper, which
+would, so the woman said, be ready in twenty minutes.
+
+"I'll wait for you right here," promised Mr. Gordon, divining in
+Betty's anxious glance a fear that she would have to search for him on
+the crowded piazza.
+
+"You drove in, didn't you?" asked Mrs. Holmes, leading the way upstairs
+and ushering Betty into a pretty, chintz-hung room. "You'll find fresh
+water in the pitcher, dear. Didn't your father say you were from
+Pineville?"
+
+Betty, pouring the clear, cool water into the basin, explained that Mr.
+Gordon was her uncle and said that they had driven over from Pineville
+that afternoon.
+
+"Well, you want to be careful driving back," cautioned Mrs. Holmes.
+"The flag man goes off duty at six o'clock, and that crossing lies
+right in a bad cut. There was a nasty accident there last week."
+
+Betty had read of it in the _Pineville Post_, and thanked Mrs. Holmes
+for her warning. When that kind woman had ascertained that Betty needed
+nothing more, she excused herself and went down to superintend the two
+waitresses.
+
+Betty managed to smooth her hair nicely with the aid of a convenient
+sidecomb, and after bathing her face and hands felt quite refreshed and
+neat again. She found her uncle reading a magazine.
+
+"Well, you look first rate," he greeted her. "I picked this up off the
+table without glancing at it; it's a fashion magazine. It reminds me,
+Betty, you'll need some new clothes this summer, eh? You'll have to
+take Mrs. Arnold when you go shopping. I wouldn't know a bonnet from a
+pair of gloves."
+
+Betty laughed and slipped her hand into his, and they went toward the
+dining room. What a dear Uncle Dick was! She had not had many new
+clothes since her father's death.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+AT THE CROSSING
+
+
+THE country hotel supper was no better than the average of its kind,
+but to Betty, to whom any sort of change was "fun," it was delicious.
+She and Uncle Dick became better acquainted over the simple meal in the
+pleasant dining room than they could ever have hoped to have been with
+Mrs. Arnold and the two boys present, and it was not until her dessert
+was placed before her that Betty remembered her friend.
+
+"Mrs. Arnold will think we're lost!" she exclaimed guiltily. "I meant
+to telephone! And oh, Uncle Dick, she does hate to keep supper waiting."
+
+Uncle Dick smiled.
+
+"I telephoned the neighbor you told me about," he said reassuringly.
+"She said she would send one of her children right over with the
+message. That was while you were upstairs. So I imagine Mrs. Arnold has
+George and Ted hard at work drying the dishes by this time."
+
+"They don't dry the dishes, 'cause they're boys," explained Betty
+dimpling. "In Pineville, the men and boys never think of helping with
+the housework. Mother said once that was one reason she fell in love
+with daddy--because he came out and helped her to do a pile of dishes
+one awfully hot Sunday afternoon."
+
+After supper Betty and her uncle walked about Harburton a bit, and
+Betty glanced into the shop windows. She knew that probably her new
+dresses, at least the material for them, would be bought here, and she
+was counting more on the new frocks than even Uncle Dick knew.
+
+When they went back to the hotel it was still light, but the horse was
+ordered brought around, for they did not want to hurry on the drive
+home.
+
+"I guess I missed not belonging to any body," she said shyly, after a
+long silence.
+
+Uncle Dick glanced down at her understandingly.
+
+"I've had that feeling, too," he confessed. "We all need a sense of
+kinship, I think, Betty. Or a home. I haven't had either for years. Now
+you and I will make it up to each other, my girl."
+
+The darkness closed in on them, and Uncle Dick got out and lit the two
+lamps on the dashboard and the little red danger light behind. Once or
+twice a big automobile came glaring out of the road ahead and swept
+past them with a roar and a rush, but the easy going horse refused to
+change its steady trot. But presently, without warning, it stopped.
+
+Uncle Dick slapped the reins smartly, with no result.
+
+"He balks," said Betty apologetically. "I know this horse. The livery
+stable man says he never balks on the way home, but I suppose he was so
+good all the afternoon he just has to act up now."
+
+"Balks!" exploded Uncle Dick. "Why, no stable should send out a horse
+with that habit. Is there any special treatment he favors, Betty?" he
+added ironically.
+
+Betty considered.
+
+"Whipping him only makes him worse, they say," she answered. "He puts
+his ears back and kicks. Once he kicked a buggy to pieces. I guess
+we'll have to get out and coax him, Uncle Dick."
+
+Mr. Gordon snorted, but he climbed down and went to the horse's head.
+
+"You stay where you are, Betty," he commanded. "I'm not going to have
+you dancing all over this dark road and likely to be run down by a car
+any minute simply to cater to the whim of a fool horse. You hold the
+reins and if he once starts don't stop him; I'll catch the step as it
+goes by."
+
+Betty held the reins tensely and waited. There was no moon, and clouds
+hid whatever light they might have gained from the stars. It was
+distinctly eery to be out on the dark road, miles from any house,
+with no noise save the incessant low hum of the summer insects. Betty
+shivered slightly.
+
+She could hear her uncle talking in a low tone to the dejected,
+drooping, stubborn bay horse, and she could see the dim outline of his
+figure. The rays of the buggy lamps showed her a tiny patch of the
+wheels and road, but that was every bit she could see.
+
+Up over the slight rise of ground before them shone a glare, followed
+in a second by the headlights of a large touring car. Abreast of the
+buggy it stopped.
+
+"Tire trouble?" asked some one with a hint of laughter in the deep
+strong voice.
+
+"No, head trouble," retorted Mr. Gordon, stepping over to the driver of
+the car. "Balky horse."
+
+"You don't say!" The motorist seemed surprised and interested. "I'd
+give you a tow if you were going my way. But, do you know, my son who
+runs a farm for me has a way of fixing a horse like that. He says it's
+all mental. Beating 'em is a waste of time. Jim unharnesses a horse
+that balks with him, leads it on a way and then rolls the wagon up and
+gears up again. Horse thinks he's starting all over--new trip, you
+see. What's the word I want?"
+
+"Psychological?" said the sweet, clear voice of Betty promptly.
+
+"Well, I'll be jiggered!" the motorist swept off his cap. "Thank you,
+whoever you are. That's what I wanted to say. Yes, nowadays they
+believe in reasoning with a horse. I'll help you unhitch if you say so."
+
+"Let me," pleaded Betty. "Please, Uncle Dick. I know quite a lot about
+unharnessing. Can't I get out and do one side?"
+
+The motorist was already out of his car, and at her uncle's brief "all
+right," Betty slipped down and ran to the traces. The stranger observed
+her curiously.
+
+"Thought you were older," he said genially. "Where did a little tyke
+like you get hold of such a long word?"
+
+"I read it," replied Betty proudly. "They use it in the Ladies' Aid
+when they want to raise more money than usual and they hate to ask
+for it. Mrs. Banker says there's a psychological moment to ask for
+contributions, and I have to copy the secretary's notes for her."
+
+"I see," said the stranger. "There! Now, Mr. Heady here is free, and
+we'll lead him up the road a way."
+
+Uncle Dick led the horse, who went willingly enough, and Betty and the
+kind friend-in-need, as she called him to herself, each took a shaft of
+the light buggy and pulled it after them. To their surprise, when the
+horse was again harnessed to the wagon it started at the word "gid-ap,"
+and gave every evidence of a determination to do as all good horses
+do--whatever they are ordered.
+
+"Guess he's all right," said the motorist, holding out his hand to Mr.
+Gordon. "Now, don't thank me--only ordinary road courtesy, I assure
+you. Hope your troubles are over for the night."
+
+The two men exchanged cards, and, lifting his hat to Betty, though he
+couldn't see her in the buggy, the stranger went back to his car.
+
+"Wasn't he nice?" chattered Betty, as the horse trotted briskly. Uncle
+Dick grimly resolved to make it pay for the lost time. "We might have
+been stuck all night."
+
+"Every indication of it," admitted Mr. Gordon. "However, I'm glad to
+say that I've always found travelers willing to go to any trouble to
+help. Don't ever leave a person in trouble on the road if you can do
+one thing to aid him, Betty. I want you to remember that."
+
+Betty promised, a bit sleepily, for the motion and the soft, night air
+were making her drowsy. She sat up, however, when they came in sight of
+the winking red and green lights that showed the railroad crossing.
+
+"No gateman, is there?" inquired her uncle. "Well, I'll go ahead and
+look, and you be ready to drive across when I whistle."
+
+He climbed down and ran forward, and Betty sat quietly, the reins held
+ready in her hand. In a few moments she heard her signal, a clear,
+sharp whistle. She spoke to the horse, who moved on at an irritatingly
+slow pace.
+
+"For goodness sake!" said Betty aloud, "can't you hurry?"
+
+She peered ahead, trying to make out her uncle's figure, but the heavy
+pine trees that grew on either side of the road threw shadows too deep
+for anything to be plainly outlined. Betty, nervously on the lookout,
+scarcely knew when they reached the double track, but she realized her
+position with a sickening heart thump when the horse stopped suddenly.
+The bay had chosen the grade crossing as a suitable place to enjoy a
+second fit of balkiness.
+
+"Uncle Dick!" cried Betty in terror. "Uncle Dick, he's stopped again!
+Come and help me unhitch!"
+
+No one answered.
+
+Betty had nerves as strong and as much presence of mind as any girl
+of her age, but a woman grown might consider that she had cause for
+hysterics if she found herself late at night marooned in the middle of
+a railroad track with a balky horse and no one near to give her even
+a word of advice. For a moment Betty rather lost her head and screamed
+for her uncle. This passed quickly though, and she became calmer. The
+whip she knew was useless. So was coaxing. There was nothing to do with
+any certainty of success but to unharness the horse and lead her over.
+But where was Uncle Dick?
+
+Betty jumped down from the buggy and ran ahead into the darkness,
+calling.
+
+"Uncle Dick!" shouted Betty. "Uncle Dick, where are you?"
+
+The cheery little hum of the insects filled the silence as soon as
+her voice died away. There was no other sound. Common sense coming to
+her aid, Betty reasoned that her uncle would not have gone far from
+the crossing, and she soon began to retrace her steps, calling at
+intervals. As she came back to the twinkling red and green lights, she
+heard a noise that brought her heart into her throat. Some one had
+groaned!
+
+"He's hurt!" she thought instantly.
+
+The groan was repeated, and, listening carefully, Betty detected that
+it came from the other side of the road. A few rods away from the
+flagman's house was a pit that had recently been excavated for some
+purpose and then abandoned. Betty peered down into this.
+
+"Uncle Dick?" she said softly.
+
+Another deep groan answered her.
+
+Betty ran back to the buggy and managed to twist one of the lamps from
+the dashboard. She was back in a second, and carefully climbed down
+into the pit. Sure enough, huddled in a deplorable heap, one foot
+twisted under him, lay Mr. Gordon.
+
+Betty had had little experience with accidents, but she instinctively
+took his head in her lap and loosened his collar. He was unconscious,
+but when she moved him he groaned again heart-breakingly.
+
+"How shall I ever get him up to the road?" wondered Betty, wishing she
+knew something of first-aid treatment. "If I could drag him up and then
+go and get the horse and buggy----"
+
+Her pulse gave an astounding leap and her brown eyes dilated. Putting
+her uncle's head back gently on the gravel, she scrambled to her
+feet, feeling only that whatever she did she must not waste time in
+screaming. She had heard the whistle of a train!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+MRS. PEABODY WRITES
+
+
+THE bad, little stubborn horse standing on the track at the mercy of
+the coming comet! That was Betty's thought as she sped down the road.
+In the hope that a sense of the danger might have reached the animal's
+instinct, she gave the bridle a desperate tug when she reached the
+horse, but it was of no use. Feverishly Betty set to work to unharness
+the little bay horse.
+
+She was unaccustomed to many of the buckles, and the harness was stiff
+and unyielding. Working at it in a hurry was very different from the
+few times she had done it for fun, or with some one to manage all the
+hard places. She had finished one side when the whistle sounded again.
+To the girl's overwrought nerves it seemed to be just around the curve.
+She had no thought of abandoning the animal, however, and she set her
+teeth and began on the second set of snaps and buckles. These, too,
+gave way, and with a strong push Betty sent the buggy flying backward
+free of the tracks, and, seizing the bridle, she led the cause of all
+the trouble forward and into safety. For the third time the whistle
+blew warningly, and this time the noise of the train could be plainly
+heard. But it was nearly a minute before the glare of the headlight
+showed around the curve.
+
+"Look what didn't hit you, no thanks to you," Betty scolded the horse,
+as a relief to herself. "I 'most wish I'd left you there; only then we
+never would get Uncle Dick home."
+
+Poor Betty had now the hardest part of her task before her. She went
+back and dragged the buggy over the tracks, up to the horse and started
+the tedious business of harnessing again. She was not sure where all
+the straps went, but she hoped enough of them would hold together till
+they could get home. When she had everything as nearly in place as she
+could get them she climbed down into the pit.
+
+To her surprise, her uncle's eyes were open. He lay gazing at the buggy
+lamp she had left.
+
+"Uncle Dick," she whispered, "are you hurt? Can you walk? Because
+you're so big, I can't pull you out very well."
+
+"Why, I can't be hurt," said her uncle slowly in his natural voice.
+"What's happened? Where are we? Goodness, child, you look like a ghost
+with a dirty face."
+
+Betty was not concerned with her looks at that moment, and she was so
+delighted to find her uncle conscious that she did not feel offended
+at his uncomplimentary remark. In a few words she sketched for him
+what had happened.
+
+"My dear child!" he ejaculated when she had told him, "have you been
+through all that? Why, you're the pluckiest little woman I ever heard
+of! No wonder you look thoroughly done up. All I remember is whistling
+for you to come ahead and then taking a step that landed me nowhere. In
+other words, I must have stepped into this pit. I'm not hurt--just a
+bit dazed."
+
+To prove it, he got to his feet a trifle shakily. Declining Betty's
+assistance, he managed to scramble out of the pit, up on to the road.
+His head cleared rapidly, and in a few more moments he declared he felt
+like himself.
+
+"In with you," he ordered Betty, after a preliminary examination of the
+harness which, he announced, was "as right as a trivet." "You've done
+your share for to-night. Go to sleep, if you like, and I'll wake you up
+in time to hear Mrs. Arnold send Ted out to take the horse around to
+the livery stable. It wouldn't do for me to do it--I might murder the
+owner!"
+
+Betty leaned her head against her uncle's broad shoulder, for a minute
+she thought, and when she woke found herself being helped gently from
+the buggy.
+
+"You're all right, Betty," soothed Mrs. Arnold's voice in the
+darkness. "I've worried myself sick! Do you know it's one o'clock?"
+
+Mr. Gordon took the wagon around to the stable, and Betty, with Mrs.
+Arnold's help, got ready for bed.
+
+Betty was fast asleep almost before the undressing was completed, and
+she slept until late the next morning. When she came down to the luxury
+of a special breakfast, she found only Mrs. Arnold in the house.
+
+"Your uncle's gone out to post a letter," that voluble lady informed
+her. "Both boys have gone fishing again. I'm only waiting for their
+father to come home and straighten 'em out. Will you have cocoa,
+dearie?"
+
+Before she had quite finished her breakfast, Mr. Gordon came back
+from the post-office, and then, as Mrs. Arnold wanted to go over to a
+neighbor's to borrow a pattern, he sat down opposite Betty.
+
+"You look rested," he commented. "I don't like to think what might
+have happened last night. However, we'll be optimistic and look ahead.
+I've written to Mrs. Peabody, dear, and to-morrow I think you and Mrs.
+Arnold had better go shopping. I'll write you a check this morning.
+Agatha will want you to come, I know. And to tell you the truth, Betty,
+I've had a letter that makes me anxious to be off. I want to stay to
+see you safely started for Bramble Farm, and then I must peg away at
+this new work. Finished? Then let's go into the sitting room and I'll
+explain about the check."
+
+The next morning Betty and Mrs. Arnold started for Harburton with what
+seemed to Betty a small fortune folded in her purse. Mrs. Arnold had
+shown her how to cash the check at the Pineville Bank, and she was to
+advise as to material and value of the clothing Betty might select;
+but the outfit was to represent Betty's choice and was to please her
+primarily--Uncle Dick had made this very clear.
+
+Betty had learned a good deal about shopping in the last months of her
+mother's illness, and she did not find it difficult to choose suitable
+and pretty ginghams for her frocks, a middy blouse or two, some new
+smocks, and a smart blue sweater. She very sensibly decided that as she
+was to spend the summer on a farm she did not need elaborate clothes,
+and she knew, from listening to Mrs. Arnold, that those easiest to iron
+would probably please Mrs. Peabody most whether she did her own laundry
+work or had a washerwoman.
+
+When the purchases came home Uncle Dick delighted Betty with his warm
+approval. For a couple of days the sewing machine whirred from morning
+to night as the village dressmaker sewed and fitted the new frocks and
+made the old presentable. Then the letter from Mrs. Peabody arrived.
+
+    "I will be very glad to have your niece spend the
+    summer with me," she wrote, in a fine, slanting
+    hand. "The question of board, as you arrange it, is
+    satisfactory. I would not take anything for her, you
+    know, Dick, and for old times' sake would welcome her
+    without compensation, but living is so dreadfully high
+    these days. Joseph has not had good luck lately, and
+    there are so many things against the farmer.... Let me
+    know when to expect Betty and some one will meet her."
+
+The letter rambled on for several pages, complaining rather querulously
+of hard times and the difficulties under which the writer and her
+husband managed to "get along."
+
+"Doesn't sound like Agatha, somehow," worried Uncle Dick, a slight
+frown between his eyes. "She was always a good-natured, happy kind of
+girl. But most likely she can't write a sunny letter. I know we used
+to have an aunt whose letters were always referred to as 'calamity
+howlers.' Yet to meet her you'd think she hadn't a care in the world.
+Yes, probably Agatha puts her blues into her letters and so doesn't
+have any left to spill around where she lives."
+
+Several times that day Betty saw him pull the letter from his pocket
+and re-read it, always with the puzzled lines between his brows. Once
+he called to her as she was going upstairs.
+
+"Betty," he said rather awkwardly, "I don't know exactly how to put
+it, but you're going to board with Mrs. Peabody, you know. You'll
+be independent--not 'beholden,' as the country folk say, to her. I
+want you to like her and to help her, but, oh, well, I guess I don't
+know what I am trying to say. Only remember, child, if you don't like
+Bramble Farm for any good reason, I'll see that you don't have to
+remain there."
+
+A brand-new little trunk for Betty made its appearance in the front
+hall of the Arnold house, and two subdued boys--for Mr. Arnold had
+returned home--helped her carry down her new treasures and, after the
+clothes were neatly packed, strap and lock the trunk. There was a tiny
+"over-night" bag, too, fitted with toilet articles and just large
+enough to hold a nightdress and a dressing gown and slippers. Betty
+felt very young-ladyish indeed with these traveling accessories.
+
+"I'll order a riding habit for you in the first large city I get to,"
+promised her uncle. "I want you to learn to ride--I wrote Agatha that.
+She doesn't say anything about saddle horses, but they must have
+something you can ride. And you'll write to me, my dear, faithfully?"
+
+"Of course," promised Betty, clinging to him, for she had learned to
+love him dearly even in the short time they had been together. "I'll
+write to you, Uncle Dick, and I'll do everything you ask me to do.
+Then, this winter, do let's keep house."
+
+"We will," said Uncle Dick, fervently, "if we have to keep house on the
+back of a camel in the desert!" At this Betty giggled delightedly.
+
+Betty's train left early in the morning, and her uncle went to the
+station with her. Mrs. Arnold cried a great deal when she said
+good-bye, but Betty cheered her up by picturing the long, chatty
+letters they would write to each other and by assuring her friend that
+she might yet visit her in California.
+
+Mr. Gordon placed his niece in the care of the conductor and the
+porter, and the last person Betty saw was this gray-haired uncle
+running beside the train, waving his hat and smiling at her till her
+car passed beyond the platform.
+
+"Now," said Betty methodically, "if I think back, I shall cry; so I'll
+think ahead."
+
+Which she proceeded to do. She pictured Mrs. Peabody as a gray-haired,
+capable, kindly woman, older than Mrs. Arnold, and perhaps more serene.
+She might like to be called "Aunt Agatha." Mr. Peabody, she decided,
+would be short and round, with twinkling blue eyes and perhaps a white
+stubby beard. He would probably call her "Sis," and would always be
+studying how to make things about the house comfortable for his wife.
+
+"I hope they have horses and pigs and cows and sheep," mused Betty, the
+flying landscape slipping past her window unheeded. "And if they have
+sheep, they'll have a dog. Wouldn't I love to have a dog to take long
+walks with! And, of course, there will be a flower garden. 'Bramble
+Farm' sounds like a bed of roses to me."
+
+The idea of roses persisted, and while Betty outwardly was strictly
+attentive to the things about her, giving up her ticket at the proper
+time, drinking the cocoa and eating the sandwich the porter brought
+her (on Uncle Dick's orders she learned) at eleven o'clock, she was in
+reality busy picturing a white farmhouse set in the center of a rose
+garden, with a hedge of hollyhocks dividing it from a scarcely less
+beautiful and orderly vegetable kingdom.
+
+Day dreams, she was soon to learn.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE POORHOUSE RAT
+
+
+"THE next station's yours, Miss," said the porter, breaking in on
+Betty's reflections. "Any small luggage? No? All right, I'll see that
+you get off safely."
+
+Betty gathered up her coat and stuffed the magazine she had bought
+from the train boy, but scarcely glanced at, into her bag. Then she
+carefully put on her pretty grey silk gloves and tried to see her face
+in the mirror of the little fitted purse. She wanted to look nice when
+the Peabodys first saw her.
+
+The train jarred to a standstill.
+
+Betty hurried down the aisle to find the porter waiting for her with
+his little step. She was the only person to leave the train at Hagar's
+Corners, and, happening to glance down the line of cars, she saw her
+trunk, the one solitary piece of baggage, tumbled none too gently to
+the platform.
+
+The porter with his step swung aboard the train which began to move
+slowly out. Betty felt unaccountably small and deserted standing
+there, and as the platform of the last car swept past her, she was
+conscious of a lump in her throat.
+
+"Hello!" blurted an oddly attractive voice at her shoulder, a boy's
+voice, shy and brusque but with a sturdy directness that promised
+strength and honesty.
+
+The blue eyes into which Betty turned to look were honest, too, and the
+shock of tow-colored hair and the half-embarrassed grin that displayed
+a set of uneven, white teeth instantly prepossessed the girl in favor
+of the speaker. There was a splash of brown freckles across the snub
+nose, and the tanned cheeks and blue overalls told Betty that a country
+lad stood before her.
+
+"Hello!" she said politely. "You're from Mr. Peabody's, aren't you? Did
+they send you to meet me?"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Peabody said I was to fetch you," replied the boy. "I knew it
+was you, 'cause no one else got off the train. If you'll give me your
+trunk check I'll help the agent put it in the wagon. He locks up and
+goes off home in a little while."
+
+Betty produced the check and the boy disappeared into the little
+one-room station. The girl for the first time looked about her. Hagar's
+Corners, it must be confessed, was not much of a place, if one judged
+from the station. The station itself was not much more than a shanty,
+sadly in need of paint and minus the tiny patch of green lawn that
+often makes the least pretentious railroad station pleasant to the eye.
+Cinders filled in the road and the ground about the platform. Hitched
+to a post Betty now saw a thin sorrel horse harnessed to a dilapidated
+spring wagon with a board laid across it in lieu of a seat. To her
+astonishment, she saw her trunk lifted into this wagon by the station
+agent and the boy who had spoken to her.
+
+"Why--why, it doesn't look very comfortable," said Betty to herself. "I
+wonder if that's the best wagon Mr. Peabody has? But perhaps his good
+horses are busy, or the carriage is broken or something."
+
+The boy unhitched the sorry nag and drove up to the platform where
+Betty was waiting. His face flushed under his tan as he jumped down to
+help her in.
+
+"I'm afraid it isn't nice enough for you," he said, glancing with
+evident admiration at Betty's frock. "I spread that salt bag on the
+seat so you wouldn't get rust from the nails in that board on your
+dress. I'm awfully sorry I haven't a robe to put over your lap."
+
+"Oh, I'm all right," Betty hastened to assure him tactfully. Then, with
+a desire to put him at his ease, "Where is the town?" she asked.
+
+They had turned from the station straight into a country road, and
+Betty had not seen a single house.
+
+"Hagar's Corners is just a station," explained the lad. "Mostly milk is
+shipped from it. All the trading is done at Glenside. There's stores
+and schools and a good-sized town there. Mr. Peabody had you come to
+Hagar's Corners 'cause it's half a mile nearer than Glenside. The horse
+has lost a shoe, and he doesn't want to run up a blacksmith's bill till
+the foot gets worse than it is."
+
+Betty's brown eyes widened with amazement.
+
+"That horse is limping now," she said severely, "Do you mean to tell
+me Mr. Peabody will let a horse get a sore foot before he'll pay out a
+little money to have it shod?"
+
+The boy turned and looked at her with something smoldering in his face
+that she did not understand. Betty was not used to bitterness.
+
+"Joe Peabody," declared the boy impressively, "would let his own wife
+go without shoes if he thought she could get through as much work as
+she can with 'em. Look at my feet!" He thrust out a pair of rough,
+heavy work shoes, the toes patched abominably, the laces knotted in
+half a dozen places; Betty noticed that the heel of one was ripped
+so that the boy's skin showed through. "Let his horse go to save a
+blacksmith's bill!" repeated the lad contemptuously. "I should think
+he would! The only thing that counts with Joe Peabody in this world is
+money!"
+
+Betty's heart sank. To what kind of a home had she come? Her head was
+beginning to ache, and the glare of the sun on the white, dusty road
+hurt her eyes. She wished that the wagon had some kind of top, or that
+the board seat had a back.
+
+"Is it very much further?" she asked wearily.
+
+"I'll bet you're tired," said the boy quickly. "We've a matter of three
+miles to go yet. The sorrel can't make extra good time even when he has
+a fair show, but I aim to favor his sore foot if I do get dished out of
+my dinner."
+
+"I'm so hungry," declared Betty, restored to vivacity at the thought
+of luncheon. "All I had on the train was a cup of chocolate and a
+sandwich. Aren't you hungry, too?"
+
+"Considering that all I've had since breakfast at six this morning, is
+an apple I stole while hunting through the orchard for the turkeys,
+I'll say I'm starved," admitted the boy. "But I'll have to wait till
+six to-night, and so will you."
+
+"But I haven't had any lunch!" Betty protested vigorously. "Of course,
+Mrs. Peabody will let me have something--perhaps they'll wait for me."
+
+The boy pulled on the lines mechanically as the sorrel stumbled.
+
+"If that horse once goes down, he'll die in the road and that'll be
+the first rest he's known in seven years," he said cryptically. "No,
+Miss, the Peabodys won't wait for you. They wouldn't wait for their own
+mother, and that's a fact. Don't I remember seeing the old lady, who
+was childish the year before she died, crying up in her room because
+no one had called her to breakfast and she came down too late to get
+any? Mrs. Peabody puts dinner on the table at twelve sharp, and them
+as aren't there have to wait till the next meal. Joe Peabody counts it
+that much food saved, and he's got no intentions of having late-comers
+gobble it up."
+
+Betty Gordon's straight little chin lifted. Meekness was not one of
+her characteristics, and her fighting spirit rose to combat with small
+encouragement.
+
+"My uncle's paying my board, and I intend to eat," she announced
+firmly. "But maybe I'm upsetting the household by coming so late in
+the afternoon; only there was no other train till night. I have some
+chocolate and crackers in my bag--suppose we eat those now?"
+
+"Gee, that will be corking!" the fresh voice of the boy beside her was
+charged with fervent appreciation. "There's a spring up the road a
+piece, and we'll stop and get a drink. Chocolate sure will taste good."
+
+Betty was quicker to observe than most girls of her age, her sorrow
+having taught her to see other people's troubles. As the boy drew
+rein at the spring and leaped down to bring her a drink from its cool
+depths, she noticed how thin he was and how red and calloused were his
+hands.
+
+"Thank you." She smiled, giving back the cup. "That's the coldest water
+I ever tasted. I'm all cooled off now."
+
+He climbed up beside her again, and the wagon creaked on its journey.
+As Betty divided the chocolate and crackers, unobtrusively giving her
+driver the larger portion, she suggested that he might tell her his
+name.
+
+"I suppose you know I'm Betty Gordon," she said. "You've probably heard
+Mrs. Peabody say she went to school with my Uncle Dick. Tell me who you
+are, and then we'll be introduced."
+
+The mouth of the boy twisted curiously, and a sullen look came into the
+blue eyes.
+
+"You can do without knowing me," he said shortly. "But so long as
+you'll hear me yelled at from sun-up to sun-down, I might as well
+make you acquainted with my claims to greatness. I'm the 'poorhouse
+rat'--now pull your blue skirt away."
+
+"You have no right to talk like that," Betty asserted quietly. "I
+haven't given you the slightest reason to. And if you are really
+from the poorhouse, you must be an orphan like me. Can't we be good
+friends? Besides, I don't know your name even yet."
+
+The boy looked at the sweet girl face and his own cleared.
+
+"I'm a pig!" he muttered with youthful vehemence. "My name's Bob
+Henderson, Miss. I hadn't any call to flare up like that. But living
+with the Peabodys doesn't help a fellow when it comes to manners. And
+I am from the poorhouse. Joe Peabody took me when I was ten years old.
+I'm thirteen now."
+
+"I'm twelve," said Betty. "Don't call me Miss, it sounds so stiff. I'm
+Betty. Oh, dear, how dreadfully lame that horse is!"
+
+The poor beast was limping, and in evident pain. Bob Henderson
+explained that there was nothing they could do except to let him walk
+slowly and try to keep him on the soft edge of the road.
+
+"He'll have to go five miles to-morrow to Glenside to the
+blacksmith's," he said moodily. "I'm ashamed to drive a horse through
+the town in the shape this one's in."
+
+Betty thought indignantly that she would write to the S. P. C. A. They
+must have agents throughout the country, she knew, and surely it could
+not be within the law for any farmer to allow his horse to suffer as
+the sorrel was plainly suffering.
+
+"Is Mr. Peabody poor, Bob?" she ventured timidly. "I'm sure Uncle Dick
+thought Bramble Farm a fine, large place. He wanted me to learn to ride
+horseback this summer."
+
+"Have to be on a saw-horse," replied Bob ironically. "You bet Peabody
+isn't poor! Some say he's worth a hundred thousand if he's worth a
+penny. But close--say, that man's so close he puts every copper through
+the wringer. You've come to a sweet place, and no mistake, Betty. I'm
+kind of sorry to see a girl get caught in the Peabody maw."
+
+"I won't stay 'less I like it," declared Betty quickly. "I'll write to
+Uncle Dick, and you can come, too, Bob. Why are we turning in here?"
+
+"This," said Bob Henderson pointing with his whip dramatically, "is
+Bramble Farm."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+BRAMBLE FARM
+
+
+THE wagon was rattling down a narrow lane, for though the horse went
+at a snail's pace, every bolt and hinge in the wagon was loose and
+contributed its own measure of noise to their progress. Betty looked
+about her with interest. On either side of the lane lay rolling fertile
+fields--in the highest state of cultivation, had she known it. Bramble
+Farm was famed for its good crops, and whatever people said of its
+master, the charge of poor farming was never laid at his door. The lane
+turned abruptly into a neglected driveway, and this led them up to the
+kitchen door of the farmhouse.
+
+"Never unlocks the front door 'cept for the minister or your funeral,"
+whispered Bob in an aside to Betty, as the kitchen door opened and a
+tall, thin man came out.
+
+"Took you long enough to get here," he greeted the two young people
+sourly. "Dinner's been over two hours and more. Hustle that trunk
+inside, you Bob, and put up the horse. Wapley and Lieson need you to
+help 'em set tomato plants."
+
+Betty had climbed down and stood helplessly beside the wagon. Mr.
+Peabody, for she judged the tall, thin man must be the owner of Bramble
+Farm, though he addressed no word directly to her and Bob was too
+evidently subdued to attempt any introduction, but swung on his heel
+and strode off in the direction of the barn. There was nothing for
+Betty to do but to follow Bob and her trunk into the house.
+
+The kitchen was hot and swarming with flies. There were no screens at
+the windows, and though the shades were drawn down, the pests easily
+found their way into the room.
+
+"How do you do, Betty? I hope your trip was pleasant. Dinner's all put
+away, but it won't be long till supper time. I'm just trying to brush
+some of the flies out," and to Betty's surprise a thin flaccid hand was
+thrust into hers. Mrs. Peabody was carrying out her idea of a handshake.
+
+Betty stared in wonder at the lifeless creature who smiled wanly at
+her. What would Uncle Dick say if he saw Agatha Peabody now? Where were
+the long yellow braids and the blue eyes he had described? This woman,
+thin, absolutely colorless in face, voice and manner, dressed in a
+faded, cheap, blue calico wrapper--was this Uncle Dick's old school
+friend?
+
+"Perhaps you'd like to go upstairs to your room and lie down a while,"
+Mrs. Peabody was saying. "I'll show you where you're to sleep. How did
+you leave your uncle, dear?"
+
+Betty answered dully that he was well. Her mind was too taken up with
+new impressions to know very clearly what was said to her.
+
+"I'm sorry there aren't any screens," apologized her hostess. "But the
+flies aren't bad on this side of the house, and the mosquitoes only
+come when there's a marsh wind. You'll find water in the pitcher, and
+I laid out a clean towel for you. Do you want I should help you unpack
+your trunk?"
+
+Betty declined the offer with thanks, for she wanted to be alone. She
+had not noticed Mrs. Peabody's longing glance at the smart little
+trunk, but later she was to understand that that afternoon she had
+denied a real heart hunger for handling pretty clothes and the dainty
+accessories that women love.
+
+When the door had closed on Mrs. Peabody, Betty sat down on the bed to
+think. She found herself in a long, narrow room with two windows, the
+sashes propped up with sticks. The floor was bare and scrubbed very
+clean and the sheets and pillow cases on the narrow iron bed, though
+of coarse unbleached muslin, were immaculate. Something peculiar about
+the pillow case made her lean closer to examine it. It was made of
+flour or salt bags, overcasted finely together!
+
+"'Puts every copper through the wringer.'" The phrase Bob had used came
+to Betty.
+
+"There's no excuse for such things if he isn't poor," she argued
+indignantly. "Well, I suppose I'll have to stay a week, anyway. I might
+as well wash."
+
+A half hour later, the traces of travel removed and her dark frock
+changed to a pretty pink chambray dress, Betty descended the stairs to
+begin her acquaintance with Bramble Farm. She wandered through several
+darkened rooms on the first floor and out into the kitchen without
+finding Mrs. Peabody. A heavy-set, sullen-faced man was getting a drink
+from the tin dipper at the sink.
+
+"Want some?" he asked, indicating the pump.
+
+Betty declined, and asked if he knew where Mrs. Peabody was.
+
+"Out in the chicken yard," was the reply. "You the boarder they been
+talking about?"
+
+"I'm Betty Gordon," said the girl pleasantly.
+
+"Yes, they've been going on for a week about you. Old man's got it all
+figured out what he'll do with your board. The missis rather thought
+she ought to have half, but he shut her up mighty quick. Women and
+money don't hitch up in Peabody's mind."
+
+He laughed coarsely and went out, drawing a plug of tobacco from his
+hip pocket and taking a tremendous chew from it as he closed the door.
+
+Betty felt a sudden longing for fresh air, and, waiting only for the
+man to get out of sight, she stepped out on the back porch. A regiment
+of milk pans were drying in the late afternoon sun and a churn turned
+up to air showed that Mrs. Peabody made her own butter. Betty was still
+hungry, and the thought of slices of home-made bread and golden country
+butter smote her tantalizingly.
+
+"I wonder where the chicken yard is," she thought, going down to the
+limp gate that swung disconsolately on a rusty hinge.
+
+The Bramble Farm house, she discovered, looking at it critically,
+was apparently suffering for the minor repairs that make a home
+attractive. The blinds sagged in several places and in some instances
+were missing altogether; once white, the paint was now a dirty gray;
+half the pickets were gone from the garden fence; the lawn was ragged
+and overgrown with weeds; and the two discouraged-looking flower-beds
+were choked this early in the season. Betty's weeding habits moved her
+irresistibly to kneel down and try to free a few of the plants from
+the mass of tangled creepers that flourished among them.
+
+"Better not let Joe Peabody see you doing that," said Bob Henderson's
+voice above her bent head. "He hasn't a mite of use for a person who
+wastes time on flower-beds. If you want to see things in good shape,
+take a look at the vegetable gardens. The missis has to keep that
+clear, 'cause after it's once planted, she's supposed to feed us all
+summer from it."
+
+Betty shook back her hair from a damp forehead.
+
+"For mercy's sake," she demanded with heat, "is there one pleasant,
+kind thing connected with this place? Who was that awful man I met in
+the kitchen?"
+
+"Guess it was Lieson, one of the hired men," replied Bob. "He came down
+to the house to get a drink a few minutes ago. He's all right, Betty,
+though not much to look at."
+
+"You, Bob!" came a stentorian shout that shot Bob through the gate and
+in the general direction of the voice with a speed that was little less
+than astonishing.
+
+Betty stood up, shook the earth from her skirt, and, guided by the
+shrill cackle of a proud hen, picked her way through a rather cluttered
+barn-yard till she came to a wire-enclosed space that was the chicken
+yard. Mrs. Peabody, staggering under the weight of two heavy pails of
+water, met her at the gate.
+
+"How nice you look!" she said wistfully. "Don't come in here, dear; you
+might get something on your dress."
+
+"Oh, it washes," returned Betty carelessly. "Do you carry water for the
+chickens?"
+
+"Twice a day in summer," was the answer. "Before Joe, Mr. Peabody, had
+water put in the barns, it was an awful job; but he couldn't get a man
+to help him with the cows unless he had running water at the barn, so
+this system was new last year. It's a big help."
+
+Silently, and feeling in the way because she could not help, Betty
+watched the woman fill troughs and drinking vessels for the parched
+hens that had evidently spent an uncomfortable and dry afternoon in the
+shadeless yard. Scattering a meager ration of corn, Mrs. Peabody went
+into the hen house and reappeared presently with a basket filled with
+eggs.
+
+"They'd lay better if I could get 'em some meat scraps," she confided
+to Betty as they walked toward the house. "But I dunno--it's so hard to
+get things done, I've about given up arguing."
+
+She would not let Betty help her with the supper, and was so
+insistent that she should not touch a dish that Betty yielded, though
+reluctantly. The heat of the kitchen was intense, for Mrs. Peabody had
+built a fire of corn cobs in the range. Gas, of course, there was none,
+and she evidently had not an oil stove or a fireless cooker.
+
+Precisely at six o'clock the men came in.
+
+"They milk after supper, summers," Mrs. Peabody had explained. "The
+milk stays sweet longer."
+
+Betty watched in round-eyed amazement as Mr. Peabody and the two hired
+men washed at the sink, with much sputtering and blowing, and combed
+their hair before a small cracked mirror tacked over the sink. If she
+had not been very hungry, she was sure the sight would have taken her
+appetite away. Bob did not come in till they were seated. He had washed
+outside, he explained, and Betty cherished the idea that perhaps he had
+acted out of consideration for her.
+
+"What's that?" demanded Mr. Peabody, pointing his fork at a tiny pat of
+butter before Betty's plate.
+
+There was no other butter on the table, and only a very plain meal of
+bread, fried potatoes, raspberries and hot tea.
+
+"I--I had a little butter left over from the last churning," faltered
+Mrs. Peabody. "'Twasn't enough to make even a quarter-pound print, Joe."
+
+"Don't believe it," contradicted her husband. "I told you flat, Agatha,
+that there was to be no pampering. Betty can eat what we eat, or go
+without. Take that butter off, do you hear me?"
+
+A sallow flush rose to Mrs. Peabody's thin cheeks, and her lips moved
+rebelliously. Evidently her husband was practiced at reading her
+soundless words.
+
+"Board?" he cried belligerently. "What do I care whether she's paying
+board or not? Don't I have to be the judge of how the house should
+be run? Food was never higher than 'tis now, and you've got to watch
+every scrap. You take that butter off and don't let me catch you doing
+nothin' like that again."
+
+The men were eating stolidly, evidently too used to quarrels to pay any
+attention to anything but their food. Betty had listened silently, but
+the bread she ate seemed to choke her. Suddenly she rose to her feet,
+shaking with rage.
+
+"Take your old butter!" she stormed at the astonished Mr. Peabody.
+"I wouldn't eat it, if you begged me to. And I won't stay in your
+house one second longer than it takes to have Uncle Dick send for
+me--you--you old miserable miser!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+BETTY MAKES UP HER MIND
+
+
+BETTY had a confused picture of Mr. Peabody staring at her, his fork
+arrested half way to his mouth, before she dashed from the kitchen and
+fled to her room. She flung herself on the bed and burst into tears.
+
+She lay there for a long time, sobbing uncontrollably and more unhappy
+than she had ever been in her short life. She missed her mother and
+father intolerably, she longed for the kindness of the good, if
+querulous, Mrs. Arnold and the comfort of Uncle Dick's tenderness and
+protection.
+
+"He wouldn't want me to stay here, I know he wouldn't!" she whispered
+stormily. "He never would have let me come if he had known what kind of
+a place Bramble Farm is. I'll write to him to-night."
+
+A low whistle came to her. She ran to the window.
+
+"Sh! Got a piece of string?" came a sibilant whisper. Bob Henderson
+peered up at her from around a lilac bush. "I brought you some bread
+with raspberries mashed between it. Let down a cord and I'll tie it on."
+
+"I'll come down," said Betty promptly. "Can't we take a walk? It looks
+awfully pretty up the lane."
+
+"I have to clean two more horses and bed down a sick cow and carry
+slops to the pigs yet," recited Bob in a matter of fact way, as though
+these few little duties were commonly performed at the close of his
+long day. "After that, though, we might go a little way. It won't be
+dark."
+
+"Well, whistle when you're ready," directed Betty. "I won't come down
+and run the risk of having to talk to Mr. Peabody. And save me the
+bread!"
+
+It seemed a long time before Bob whistled, and the gray summer dusk was
+deepening when Betty ran down to join him. He handed her the bread,
+wrapped in a bit of clean paper, diffidently.
+
+"I didn't touch it with my hands," he assured her.
+
+Bob's face was shining from a vigorous scrubbing and his hair was
+plastered tight to his head and still wet. He had so evidently tried
+to make himself neat and his poor frayed overalls and ridiculous shoes
+made the task so hopeless that Betty was divided between pity for him
+and anger at the Peabodys who could treat a member of their household
+so shabbily.
+
+"I guess you kind of shook the old man up," commented Bob, unconscious
+of her thoughts. "For half a minute after you slammed the door, he sat
+there in a daze. Mrs. Peabody wanted to take some supper up to you, but
+he wouldn't let her. She's deathly afraid of him."
+
+"Did he ever hit her?" asked Betty, horrified.
+
+"No, I don't know that he ever did. He doesn't have to hit her; his
+talk is worse. They say she used to answer back, but I never heard her
+open her mouth to argue with him, and I've been here three years."
+
+"Do they pay you well?"
+
+The boy looked at Betty sharply.
+
+"I thought you were kidding," he said frankly. "Poorhouse children
+don't get paid. We get our board till we're eighteen. We're not
+supposed to do enough work to cover more'n that. Just the same, I do as
+much as Wapley or Leison, any day."
+
+Betty walked along eating her bread and wondering about Bob Henderson.
+Who, she speculated, had been his father and mother, and how had he
+happened to find himself in the poorhouse? And why, oh, why, should
+such a boy have had the bad luck to be "taken" by a man like Mr.
+Peabody? Betty was a courteous girl, and she could not bring herself to
+ask Bob these questions pointblank, however her curiosity urged her.
+Perhaps when they were better acquainted, she might have a chance. But
+that thought suggested to Betty her letter.
+
+"I'm going to write to Uncle Dick before I go to bed to-night," she
+announced. "He said I needn't stay if for any good reason I found I
+wasn't happy here. I can't stay, Bob, honestly I can't. He wouldn't
+want me to. Shall I ask him about a place for you? And where do I mail
+my letter?"
+
+Bob Henderson's face fell. He had hoped that this bright, pretty girl,
+with her independent and friendly manner, might spend the summer at
+Bramble Farm. Bob had been so long cut off from communication with a
+companion of his own age that it was a perfect luxury for him to have
+Betty to talk to. Still, he could not help admitting, the Peabody
+circle had nothing to offer Betty.
+
+"Don't mail your letter in the box at the end of the lane," he advised
+her. "Joe Peabody might see it and take it out. I'll take it to
+Glenside with me to-morrow--unless you want to go along? Say, that
+would be great, wouldn't it?"
+
+Betty liked the idea, and so before they turned back to the house
+they arranged to mail the letter secretly in Glenside the following
+morning. Immensely cheered, Betty went in to write to her uncle and Bob
+disappeared up the stairs to the attic, where he and the two hired men
+shared quarters.
+
+It was too dark to see clearly in her room, and after Betty had groped
+around in a vain hunt for a lamp and matches, she went down to the
+kitchen intending to ask for a light.
+
+Mrs. Peabody stood at the table, mixing something in a pan, and a small
+glass lamp gave the room all the light it had.
+
+"I'm setting my bread," the woman explained, as Betty came in. "Where
+have you been dear? You must be hungry."
+
+"No, I'm not hungry," answered Betty, avoiding explanations. "I've been
+out for a little walk. May I have a lamp Mrs. Peabody?"
+
+Her hostess glanced round to make sure that the door was shut.
+
+"You can take this one in just a minute," she said, indicating the
+small lamp on the table. "Mr. Peabody's gone up to bed. You see we
+don't use lights much in summer--we go to bed early 'cause all hands
+have to be up at half-past four. And lamps brings the mosquitoes."
+
+Betty sat down in a chair to wait for her lamp. She was tired from her
+journey and the exciting events of the day, but she had made up her
+mind to write to her uncle that night, and her mind made up, Betty was
+sure to stick to it.
+
+"Aren't you going to bed?" asked Betty, taking up the lamp when Mrs.
+Peabody had finished.
+
+Mrs. Peabody made no move to leave the kitchen.
+
+"I like to sit out on the back stoop awhile and get cooled off," she
+said. "Sometimes I go to sleep leaning against the post, and one night
+I didn't wake up till morning and Bob Henderson fell over me running
+out for wood to start the fire. I like to sit quiet. Sometimes I wish I
+had a dog to keep me company, but Mr. Peabody don't like dogs."
+
+Betty went back to her room and began her letter. But all the while she
+was writing the thought of that lonely woman "sitting quiet" on the
+doorstep haunted her. What a life! And she had probably looked forward
+to happiness with her husband and home as all girls do.
+
+The mosquitoes were singing madly about the light before the first five
+minutes had passed, but Betty stuck it out and sealed and addressed her
+letter, putting it under her pillow for safe keeping. Then she blew out
+the light and undressed in the dark. The bed was the hardest thing she
+had ever lain upon, but, being a healthy young person and very tired,
+she fell asleep as quickly as though the mattress had been filled with
+softest down and only wakened when a shaft of sunlight fell across her
+face. Some one was whistling softly beneath her window.
+
+Seizing her dressing gown and flinging it across her shoulders, Betty
+peered out. Bob Henderson, swinging a milk pail in either hand, was
+back of the lilac bush again.
+
+"Say, it's quarter of six," he called anxiously, as he saw Betty's face
+at the window. "Breakfast is at six, and if you don't hurry you'll be
+cheated out of that. I'm going to Glenside right after, too."
+
+"I'll hurry," promised Betty. "Thank you for telling me. Have you been
+up long?"
+
+"Hour and a half," came the nonchalant answer as Bob hurried on to the
+barn.
+
+Betty sat down on the floor to put on her shoes and stockings. At first
+she was angry to think that she should be made to rush like this in
+order to have any breakfast when her uncle was paying her board and in
+any other household she would have been accorded some consideration
+as a guest. Then the humor of the situation appealed to her and she
+laughed till the tears came. She, Betty Gordon, who often had to be
+called three times in the morning, was scrambling into her clothes at
+top speed in the hope of securing something to eat.
+
+"It's too funny!" she gasped as she pulled a middy blouse on over her
+head. "I'll bet the Peabody's never have to call any one twice to come
+to the table; not if they're within hearing distance. They come first
+call without coaxing."
+
+The breakfast table was set in the kitchen, and when Betty entered
+Mrs. Peabody was putting small white saucers of oatmeal at each place.
+Ordinarily Betty did not care for oatmeal in warm weather, but this
+morning she was in no mood to quarrel with anything eatable and she
+dispatched her portion almost as quickly as Bob did his. Mr. Peabody
+grunted something which she took to mean good-morning, and the two
+hired men simply nodded to her. After the oatmeal came fried potatoes,
+bread without butter, ham and coffee. There was no milk to drink and no
+eggs.
+
+"If I was going to stay," thought Betty to herself, "I'd get some stuff
+over in town and hide it in my room. I wonder if I couldn't anyway.
+When I leave, Bob would have it."
+
+She fell to planning what she would buy and became as silent as any of
+the other five at that queer table.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+ONE ON BOB
+
+
+AS soon as the men finished eating they rose silently and shuffled out.
+Any diffidence Betty might have felt about facing any one at the table
+after her dramatic exit of the night before was speedily dispelled; no
+one paid the slightest attention to her. Mrs. Peabody had risen and
+begun to wash the dishes at the sink before Betty had finished.
+
+"I want to ride over to Glenside with Bob," said the girl a trifle
+uncertainly as she pushed back her chair. "You don't care, do you, Mrs.
+Peabody? And can I do any errands for you?"
+
+"No, I dunno as I want anything," said the woman dully. "You go along
+and try to enjoy yourself. Bob's got to get back by eleven to whitewash
+the pig house."
+
+"Come, drive over with us this morning," urged Betty kindly. "I'll help
+you with the work when we get back. The air will do you good. You look
+as though you had a headache."
+
+"Oh, I have a headache 'most all the time," admitted Mrs. Peabody,
+apparently not thinking it worth discussion. "And I couldn't go to
+town, child, I haven't a straw hat. I don't know when I've been to
+Glenside. Joe fusses so about the collection, I gave up going to church
+two years ago."
+
+Betty heard the sound of wheels and ran out to join Bob, an ache in her
+throat.
+
+"I think it's a burning shame!" she announced hotly to that youth, as
+he put out a helpful hand to pull her up to the seat. "I pity Mrs.
+Peabody from the bottom of my heart. Why can't she have a straw hat?
+Doesn't she take care of the poultry and the butter and do all the work
+in the house? If she can't have a hat, I'd like to know why not!"
+
+"Regular pepper-pot, aren't you?" commented Bob admiringly. "Gee, I
+wanted to laugh when you lit into old Peabody last night. Didn't dare,
+though--he'd have up and pasted me one."
+
+It was a beautiful summer morning, and in spite of injustice and
+unlovely human traits housed under the roof they had left, in spite of
+the sight of the poor animal before them suffering pain at every step,
+the two young people managed to enjoy themselves. Betty had a hundred
+questions to ask about Bramble Farm, and Bob was in the seventh heaven
+of delight to have this friendly, cheerful companion to talk to instead
+of only his own thoughts for company.
+
+"I've got the letter to Uncle Dick here in my pocket," Betty was
+saying as they came in sight of the blacksmith's shop on the outskirts
+of Glenside. "I suppose I'll have to be patient about waiting for an
+answer. It may take a week. I don't know just where he is, but I've
+written to the address he gave me, and marked it 'Please forward.'"
+
+The blacksmith came out and took the horse, Bob helping him unharness
+and Betty improving the opportunity to see the inside of a smithy.
+
+"I guess you'll want to look around town a bit?" suggested Bob, coming
+up to her when the sorrel was tied in place awaiting his turn to be
+shod. Two other horses were before him. "I'll wait here for you."
+
+Betty looked at him in surprise.
+
+"Why, Bob Henderson!" she ejaculated, keeping her voice low so that the
+two or three loungers about the door could not hear. "Are you willing
+to let me go around by myself in a perfectly strange town? I don't even
+know my way to the post-office. Don't you want to go with me?"
+
+Bob was evidently embarrassed.
+
+"I--I--I don't look fit!" he blurted out. "The collar's torn off
+this shirt, and I get only one clean pair of overalls a week--Monday
+morning. I don't look good enough to go round with you."
+
+"Don't be silly!" said Betty severely. "You look all right for a work
+day. Come on, or we won't be back by the time the shoe is on."
+
+Between the shop and the town there was a rather deserted strip of
+land, very conspicuous as to concrete walks and building lots marked
+off, but rather lacking in actual houses. Betty seized her opportunity
+to do a little tactful financiering. She knew that Bob had no money of
+his own--indeed it was doubtful if the lad had ever handled even small
+change that he was not accountable for.
+
+"Uncle Dick gave me some money to spend," remarked Betty, rather
+hurriedly, for she did not know how Bob was going to take what she
+meant to say. "And before you show me the different stores, I want you
+to take me to the drug store. I'm going to buy Mrs. Peabody the largest
+bottle of violet toilet water I can find. It will do her headache heaps
+of good. If I give you the money, you'll buy it for me, won't you Bob?"
+
+"Sure I will," agreed the unsuspecting Bob, and he pocketed the five
+dollar bill she gave him readily enough.
+
+The wily Betty hoped that the drug store would be modern, for she had a
+plan tucked up her white sleeve.
+
+"Want to go to the drug store first or to the post-office?" asked Bob.
+
+"Oh, the post-office!" Betty was suddenly anxious to know that her
+letter was actually on the way.
+
+"Don't forget--get a big bottle," said Betty warningly, as she and Bob
+entered the drug store.
+
+Her dancing dark eyes discovered what she had hoped for the moment
+they were inside the screen door--a large soda fountain with a
+white-jacketed clerk behind it.
+
+Bob led the way to the perfume counter, and though the clerk, who
+evidently knew him, seemed surprised at his order, he very civilly set
+out several bottles of toilet water for their inspection. Betty chose a
+handsome large bottle, and when it was wrapped, and with it some soap,
+for Betty did not fancy the thin wafer of yellow kitchen soap she had
+found in her soapdish, Bob paid for the package and received the change
+quite as though he were accustomed to such proceedings. Indeed he stood
+straighter, and Betty knew she was right in her conclusions that he had
+sensitiveness and pride.
+
+The time had come to put her plan into action.
+
+"Oh, Bob!" She pulled his coat sleeve as they were passing the fountain
+on their way out. "Let's have a sundae!"
+
+The clerk had heard her, and he came forward at once, pushing toward
+them a printed card with the names of the drinks served. Bob opened
+his mouth, then closed it. He sat down on one of the high stools and
+Betty on another.
+
+"I'll have a chocolate marshmallow nut sundae," ordered Betty
+composedly, having selected the most expensive and fanciful concoction
+listed with the fervent hope that it would be plentiful and good.
+
+"I'll have the same," mumbled Bob, just as Betty had trusted he would.
+
+While the clerk was mixing the delectable dainty, Betty stole a look at
+Bob. His mouth was set grimly. Then he turned and caught her eye. An
+unwilling grin flickered across his face and he capitulated as Betty
+broke into a delighted giggle.
+
+"Well, I'll be jiggered!" admitted Bob, "you've certainly put it over
+on me."
+
+They laughed and chattered over the sundaes, and Betty, when they were
+gone, would not listen to reason, but insisted they must have another.
+She did not want a second one, but she knew Bob's longing for sweets
+must have gone ungratified a long time, and she was too young to worry
+about the ultimate effect on his surprised organs of digestion. Bob
+was fairly caught, and could not object without putting himself in an
+unfavorable light with the impressive young clerk, so two more sundaes
+were ordered and disposed of. Then Bob paid for them from the change in
+his pocket and he and Betty found themselves on the sunny sidewalk.
+
+"That's the first sundae I ever had," confessed Bob shyly. "Of course
+we had ice-cream at the poorhouse sometimes for a treat--Christmas and
+sometimes Fourth of July. But I never ate a sundae. Do you want your
+change back now?"
+
+"No, keep it," said Betty. "I want to go to a grocery store now. And
+where do they keep mosquito netting?"
+
+"Same place--Liscom's general store," answered Bob.
+
+The general store was well-named. Betty, who had never been in a
+place of this kind, was fascinated by the shelves and the wonderful
+assortment of goods they contained. Everything, she privately decided,
+from a pink chiffon veil to a keg of nails could be bought here, and
+her deductions were very near the truth.
+
+"I can't stand being chewed by the mosquitoes another night," she
+whispered to Bob. "So I'm going to get some netting and tack it on the
+window casings. I'd buy a lamp if I was going to stay."
+
+After the netting was measured off, Betty, to Bob's astonishment, began
+to buy groceries. She chose cans of sardines and tuna fish, several
+packages of fancy crackers, a bottle or two of olives, a pound of dried
+apricots, a box of dates and one or two other articles. These were all
+wrapped together in a neat bundle.
+
+"Do they make sandwiches here?" asked Betty, watching a machine shaving
+off a pink slice of cold boiled ham and a layer of cheese and the
+storekeeper's assistant butter two slabs of bread with sweet-looking
+butter at the order of a teamster who stood waiting.
+
+"Sure we do, Miss," the proprietor assured her. "Nice, fresh sandwiches
+made while you wait, and wrapped in waxed paper."
+
+"I'll have two ham and two cheese, please," responded Betty, adding in
+an aside to Bob: "We can eat 'em going home."
+
+She was afraid that perhaps she had spent more money than she had left
+from the five dollar bill. But Bob had enough to pay for her purchases,
+it seemed, and they left the store with their bundles, well pleased
+with the morning's work.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+ROAD COURTESY
+
+
+"WE'LL have to hurry," said Bob, quickening his steps, "if I'm to get
+back at eleven. I hope Turner has the sorrel ready."
+
+"Hasn't the horse a name?" queried Betty curiously, running to keep up
+with Bob. "I must go out and see the cows and things. Do you like pigs,
+Bob?"
+
+The boy laughed a little at this confusion of ideas.
+
+"No, none of the horses are named," he answered, taking the questions
+in order. "Peabody has three; but we just call 'em the sorrel and the
+black and the bay. Nobody's got time to feed 'em lumps of sugar and
+make pets out of them. Guess that's what you've got in mind, Betty. Old
+Peabody would throw a fit if he saw any one feeding sugar to a horse."
+
+"But the cows?" urged Betty. "Do they get enough to eat? Or do they
+have to suffer to save money, like this poor horse we brought over to
+be shod?"
+
+"Cows," announced Bob sententiously, "are different A cow won't give
+as much milk if she's bothered, and Joe Peabody can see a butter check
+as far as anybody else. So the stables are screened and the cows are
+fed pretty well. Now, of course, they're out on pasture. They're not
+blood stock, though--just mixed breeds. And I hate pigs!"
+
+Betty was surprised at his vehemence, but she had no chance to ask for
+an explanation, for by this time they had reached the smithy, and the
+blacksmith led out the sorrel.
+
+After they were well started on their way toward the farm, she ventured
+to ask Bob why he hated pigs.
+
+"If you had to take care of 'em, you'd know why," he answered moodily.
+"I'd like to drown every one of 'em in the pails of slop I've carried
+out to 'em. And whitewashing the pig house on a hot day--whew! The pigs
+can go out in the orchard and root around, while I have to clean up
+after 'em. Besides, if you lived on ham for breakfast the year round,
+you'd hate the sight of a pig!"
+
+Betty laughed understandingly.
+
+"I know I should," she agreed. "Isn't it funny, I never thought so much
+about eating in my life as I have since I've been here. It's on my mind
+continually. I bought this canned stuff to keep up in my room so if I
+don't want to eat what the Peabodys have every meal I needn't. You can
+have some, too, Bob. Let's eat these sandwiches now--I'm hungry, aren't
+you? Why didn't you tell me you were tired of ham and I would have
+bought something else?"
+
+But Bob was far from despising well-cooked cold, boiled ham, and he
+thoroughly enjoyed his share of the sandwiches. While eating he glanced
+once or twice uncertainly at Betty, wishing he could find the courage
+to tell her how glad he was that she had come to Bramble Farm. Bob's
+life had had very few pleasant events in it so far.
+
+"Don't you think it was funny that Mr. Peabody let me come?" asked
+Betty presently, following her own train of thought. "If he's so close,
+I should think he'd hate to have any one come to see his wife."
+
+"He's doing it for the check your uncle sent," retorted Bob shrewdly.
+"Didn't you know your board was paid for two weeks in advance? That's
+why Peabody isn't making a fuss about your going; he figures he'll be
+in that much. Hello, what's this?"
+
+"This" was a buggy drawn up at one side of the road, the fat, white
+horse lazily cropping grass, while two slight feminine figures stood
+helplessly by.
+
+Bob was going to drive past, but Betty put out her hand and jerked the
+sorrel to a halt.
+
+"Ask 'em what the matter is," she commanded.
+
+"They've lost a wheel," said Bob in a low tone, his practiced eye
+having detected at once that one of the rear wheels was lying on the
+grass. "We can't stop, Betty; we're late now, and Joe Peabody's in a
+raging temper anyway this morning."
+
+"Why, Bob Henderson, how you do talk!" Betty's dark eyes began to shoot
+fire. "Just because you have to live with the meanest man in the world
+is no excuse for you to grow like him! If you drive on and don't try to
+help these women, I'll never speak to you again--never!"
+
+Bob looked shamefaced. His first impulse had been to stop and offer
+help, but he had had first-hand experience with the Peabody temper
+and had endured more than one beating for slight neglect of iron-clad
+orders. When he still hesitated, Betty spoke scornfully.
+
+"They're old ladies--so don't bother," she said bitingly. "Uncle Dick
+says no one should ever leave any one in trouble on the road, but I
+suppose he meant men who could whack you over the head if you refused
+to assist them. Why don't you drive on, Bob?"
+
+"You hush up!" Bob, stung into action, closed his mouth grimly and
+handed over the reins to his tormentor. "It's a half hour's job to put
+that wheel on, but I suppose there's no way out of it, so here goes."
+
+The two women were, as Betty had said, old ladies; that is, each had
+very white hair. And, although the day was warm, they were so muffled
+up in veils and shawls and gloves that the boy and the girl marveled
+how they could see to drive.
+
+"The wheel just came off without warning," said the taller of the
+two, in a high, sweet voice, as Bob asked to be allowed to help them.
+"Sister and I were so frightened! It might have been serious, you know,
+but Phyllis is such a good horse! She never even attempted to run."
+
+Bob with difficulty repressed a grin. Looking at the fat sides of
+Phyllis he would have said that physical handicaps, rather than an
+inherent sweetness of disposition, kept Phyllis where she belonged
+between the shafts.
+
+"You've lost a nut," announced the boy, after a brief examination.
+
+"Dear, dear!" fluttered both ladies. "Isn't that unfortunate! You
+haven't a--a--nut with you, Mr.----?"
+
+"I'm Bob Henderson," said the lad courteously. "I'll look around here
+in the dust a bit and maybe the nut will turn up. Why don't you sit
+down in the shade and rest awhile?"
+
+The two ladies accepted his suggestion gratefully. They retired to
+a crooked old apple tree growing on the bank further down the road,
+evincing no desire to make the acquaintance of Betty, who sat quietly
+in the wagon holding the reins.
+
+"I suppose they think we're backwoods country folks," thought Betty,
+the blood coming into her face. "Don't know that I blame them, seeing
+that this wagon is patched and tied together in a hundred places and
+the horse looks like a shadow of a skeleton."
+
+Bob continued to search in the dust of the road painstakingly. The two
+women clearly had shifted their trouble to him, and apparently had no
+further interest in the outcome. Betty longed to offer to help him, but
+the severity of his profile, as she glimpsed it now and then, deterred
+her.
+
+"I wish I could stop before I say so much," mourned the girl to
+herself. "I ought to know that Bob can't help being afraid of Mr.
+Peabody. If he had control over me, I'd probably act just as his wife
+and Bob do. When you can get away from an ogre, it's easy enough to say
+you're not afraid of him. Doesn't Bob dominate the situation, as Mrs.
+Arnold used to say!"
+
+Bob had found the nut, and was now fitting the wheel into place,
+working with a quickness and skill that fascinated Betty. She timidly
+called to him and asked if she should not come and hold the axle,
+but he refused her offer curtly. In a very few minutes the wheel was
+screwed on and the two ladies at liberty to resume their journey. They
+were insistent that Bob accept pay for his help, but the boy declined,
+politely but resolutely, and seemingly at no loss for diplomatic words
+and phrases.
+
+"Were you born in the poorhouse, Bob?" Betty asked curiously, wondering
+where the lad had developed his ability to meet people on their own
+ground. The volubly thankful ladies had driven on, and the sorrel was
+now trotting briskly toward Bramble Farm.
+
+"Yes, I was," said Bob shortly. "But my mother wasn't, nor my father.
+I've got a box buried in the garden that's mine, though the clothes
+on my back belong to old Peabody. And if I'm like Joe Peabody in
+other things, perhaps I'll learn to make money and save it. My father
+couldn't, or I wouldn't have been born in an alms-house!"
+
+"Oh, Bob!" Betty cried miserably, "I didn't mean you were like Mr.
+Peabody--you know I didn't. I'm so sorry! I always say things I don't
+mean when I'm mad. Uncle Dick told me to go out and chop wood when I
+get furious, and not talk. I am so sorry!"
+
+"We've got a wood pile," grinned Bob. "I'll show you where it is. The
+rest of it's all right, Betty. I'd probably have stayed awake all night
+if I'd driven by those women. Only I suppose Peabody will be in a
+towering rage. It must be noon."
+
+If Betty was not afraid of Mr. Peabody, it must be confessed that she
+looked forward with no more pleasure than Bob to meeting him. Still she
+was not prepared for the cold fury with which he greeted them when they
+drove into the yard.
+
+"Just as I figured," he said heavily. "Here 'tis noon, and that boy
+hasn't done a stroke of work since breakfast. Gallivanting all over
+town, I'll be bound. Going to be like his shiftless, worthless father
+and mother--a charge on the township all his days. You take that pail
+of whitewash and don't let me see you again till you get the pig house
+done, you miserable, sneaking poorhouse rat! You'll go without dinner
+to pay for wasting my time like this! Clear out, now."
+
+"How dare you!" Betty's voice was shaking, but she stood up in the
+wagon and looked down at Mr. Peabody bravely. "How dare you taunt a boy
+with what he isn't responsible for? It isn't his fault that he was born
+in the poorhouse, nor his fault that we're late. I made him stop and
+help put a buggy wheel on. Oh, how can you be so mean, and close and
+hateful?"
+
+Betty's eyes overflowed as she gathered up her bundles and jumped
+to the ground. Mrs. Peabody, standing in the doorway, was a silent
+witness to her outburst, and the two hired men, who had come up to
+the house for dinner, were watching curiously. Bob had disappeared
+with the bucket of whitewash. No one would say anything, thought Betty
+despairingly, if a murder were committed in this awful place.
+
+"Been spending your money?" sneered Mr. Peabody, eyeing the bundles
+with disfavor. "Never earned a cent in your life, I'll be bound, yet
+you'll fling what isn't yours right and left. Let me give you a word of
+advice, young lady; as long as you're in my house you hold your tongue
+if you don't want to find yourself in your room on a diet of bread and
+water. Understand?"
+
+Betty Gordon fled upstairs, her one thought to reach the haven of her
+bed. Anger and humiliation and a sense of having lowered herself to the
+Peabody level by quarreling when in a bad temper swept over her in a
+wave. She buried her head in the hard little pillow.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+A KEEN DISAPPOINTMENT
+
+
+"I'M just as bad as he is, every bit," sobbed poor little Betty. "Uncle
+Dick would say so. I'm in his house, much as I hate it, and I hadn't
+any right to call him names--only he is so hateful! Oh, dear, I wonder
+if I shall ever get away from here!"
+
+She cried herself into a headache, and had no heart to open the parcel
+of groceries or to go down to ask Mrs. Peabody for something to eat,
+though indeed the girl knew she stood small chance of securing as much
+as a cracker after the dinner hour.
+
+Suddenly some one put a soothing hand on her hot forehead, and, opening
+her swollen eyes, Betty saw Mrs. Peabody standing beside the bed.
+
+"You poor lamb!" said the woman compassionately. "You mustn't go on
+like this, dear. You'll make yourself sick. I'm going to close the
+blinds and shut out the sun; then I'll get a cold cloth for your head.
+You'd feel better if you had something to eat, though. You mustn't go
+without your meals, child."
+
+"I've got some crackers and bouillon cubes," replied Betty wearily. "I
+suppose Mr. Peabody wouldn't mind if I used a little hot water from the
+tea kettle?"
+
+She bit her tongue with vexation at the sarcasm, but Mrs. Peabody
+apparently saw no implication.
+
+"The kitchen fire's gone out, but the kettle's still hot," she
+answered. "I'll step down and get you a cup. I have just ninety cobs
+to get supper on, or I'd build up a fresh fire for you. Joe counts the
+cobs; he wants they should last till the first of July."
+
+"Oh, how do you stand it?" burst from Betty. "I should think you'd go
+crazy. Don't you ever want to scream?"
+
+Mrs. Peabody stopped in the doorway.
+
+"I used to care," she admitted apathetically. "Not any more. You can
+get used to anything. Besides, it's no use, Betty; you'll find that
+out. Flinging yourself against a stone wall only bruises you--the wall
+doesn't even feel you trying."
+
+"Bring up two cups," called Betty, as Mrs. Peabody started down stairs.
+
+"I'll bet she flung herself against the stone wall till all the spirit
+and life was crushed out of her," mused the girl, lying flat on her
+back, her eyes fixed on the fly-specked ceiling. "Poor soul, it must be
+awful to have to give up even trying."
+
+Mrs. Peabody came back with two cracked china cups and saucers, and a
+tea kettle half full of passably hot water. Betty forgot her throbbing
+head as she bustled about, spreading white paper napkins on the
+bed--there was no table and only one chair in the room--and arranging
+her crackers and a package of saltines which she deftly spread with
+potted ham.
+
+"We'll have a make-believe party," she declared tactfully, dropping a
+couple of soup cubes in each cup and adding the hot water. "I'm sure
+you're hungry; you jump up so much at the table, you don't half eat
+your meals."
+
+Mrs. Peabody raised her eyes--faded eyes but still honest.
+
+"I've no more pride left," she said quietly.
+
+"Goodness!" exclaimed Betty, "I bought you something this morning, and
+haven't given it to you."
+
+Mrs. Peabody was as pleased as a child with the pretty bottle of toilet
+water, and Betty extracted a promise from her that she would use it for
+her headaches, and not "save" it.
+
+"If I was going to stay," thought Betty, stowing her packages of
+goodies under the bed as the most convenient place presenting itself,
+"I might be able to make things a little pleasanter for Mrs. Peabody. I
+do wonder when Uncle Dick will write."
+
+She had allowed four days as the shortest time in which her uncle could
+possibly get an answer to her, so she was agreeably delighted when, on
+going out to the mailbox at the head of the lane the third morning, she
+found a letter addressed to her and postmarked "Philadelphia." There
+was no other mail in the box. The Peabodys did not even subscribe for a
+weekly paper.
+
+"Bob!" shouted Betty, hurdling a fence and bearing down upon that youth
+as he hoed corn in a near by field. "Bob, here's a letter from Uncle
+Dick! He's answered so soon, I'm sure he says I can come to him. Won't
+that be great?"
+
+Bob nodded grimly and went on with his work while Betty eagerly
+tore open her envelope. After she had read the first few lines the
+brightness went out of her face, and when she looked up at Bob she was
+crying.
+
+"What's the matter, is he sick?" asked the boy in alarm.
+
+"He hasn't had my letter at all!" wept Betty. "He never got it! This
+was written the same day I wrote him, and he says he's going out to
+the oil wells and won't be in touch with civilization for some weeks
+to come. His lawyer in Philadelphia is to hold his mail, and send the
+checks for my board. And he thinks I'm having a good time with his old
+friend Agatha and encloses a check for ten dollars for me to spend.
+Oh, Bob!" and the unhappy Betty flung her arms around the neck of the
+astonished Bob and cried as though her heart would break.
+
+"There, there!" Bob patted her awkwardly, in his excitement hitting
+her with the hoe handle, but neither of them knew that. "There, Betty,
+maybe things won't be as bad as you think. You can go to Glenside and
+get books from the library--they've got a right nice little library.
+It would be nice if you had a bicycle or something to go on, but you
+haven't."
+
+"Uncle's sending me a riding habit," said Betty, wiping her eyes. "And
+a whole bundle of books and a parcel of magazines. He says he never yet
+saw a farm with enough reading material on the parlor table. I will be
+glad to have something to read."
+
+"Sure. And Sundays I can borrow a magazine," and Bob's eyes shone with
+anticipated enjoyment. "Sunday's the one day I have any time to myself
+and there's never much to do."
+
+Betty slipped the letter into her blouse pocket. She was bitterly
+disappointed to think that she must stay at Bramble Farm, and she did
+not relish the idea of having to confess to the Peabodys that her plans
+for leaving them had been rather premature.
+
+"I say," Bob looked up from his hoeing, the shrewd light in his eyes
+that made him appear older than his thirteen years. "I say, Betty, if
+you're wise, you won't say anything about this letter up at the house.
+Old Peabody doesn't know you've written to your uncle, and he'll think
+you changed your mind. I half believe he thinks you were only speaking
+in a fit of temper, anyway. If you tell him you can't reach your uncle
+by letter, and have to stay here for the next few weeks whether you
+will or no, he'll think he has you right where he wants you. He can't
+help taking advantage of every one."
+
+"Doesn't any one ever come to call?" Betty asked a day or two later,
+following Bob out to the pasture to help him salt the sheep.
+
+It was a Sunday morning, and even Mr. Peabody so far respected the
+Sabbath that he exacted only half as much as usual from his help.
+The milking, of course, had to be done, and the stock fed, but that
+accomplished, after breakfast, Wapley and Lieson, the hired men, had
+set off to walk to Glenside to spend their week's wages as they saw
+fit. They had long ago, after wordy battles, learned the futility of
+trying to borrow a horse from Mr. Peabody.
+
+Bob had finished his usual chores, and after salting the sheep would be
+practically free for the day. He and Betty had planned to take their
+books out into the orchard and enjoy the peaceful sunniness of the
+lovely June weather.
+
+"Come to call?" repeated Bob, letting down the bars of the rocky
+pasture. "What would they come to call for? No one would be civil to
+'em, and Mrs. Peabody runs when she sees any one coming. She hasn't got
+a decent dress; so I don't blame her much. Here, you sit down and I'll
+call them."
+
+Betty sat down on a flat rock and Bob spread out his salt on another.
+The sheep knew his voice and came slowly toward him.
+
+"Come on now, Betty, and let's have a whack at that magazine, the one
+about out West," said Bob at last.
+
+The promised package of books and magazines had arrived, and Betty had
+generously placed them at the disposal of the household. Wapley and
+Lieson had displayed a pathetic eagerness for "pictures," and sat up
+after supper as long as the light lasted, turning over the illustrated
+pages. Betty doubted if they could read.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+BETTY DEFENDS HERSELF
+
+
+APPARENTLY Mr. Peabody had never taken Betty's threat to ask her uncle
+to take her away seriously, and her presence at the farm soon came to
+be an accepted fact. Conditions did not improve, but Betty developed
+a sturdy, wholesome philosophy that helped her to make the best of
+everything. Uncle Dick wrote seldom, but packages from Philadelphia
+continued to come at intervals, and always proved to be practical and
+needful.
+
+"Though as to that, he couldn't have the lawyer send me anything that
+wouldn't be useful," said Betty to herself. "I never saw a place where
+there was so much _nothing_ as here at Bramble Farm."
+
+One morning when the pouring rain kept her indoors, Betty was exploring
+the little used parlor. Mrs. Peabody seldom entered the room save to
+clean it and close it up, and Betty opened a corner of the blind with
+something like trepidation. A large shotgun over the mantel attracted
+her attention at once.
+
+"Don't touch that thing--it's always kept loaded," said the voice of
+Lieson at the door.
+
+Betty shivered and drew away from the shelf. Lieson showed his
+tobacco-stained teeth in a friendly grin.
+
+"I was up attic getting my rubber boots," he explained, "and I saw the
+mail wagon stop at the box. Do you want I should go down and get the
+mail?"
+
+"Oh, would you?" Betty's tone was eager. "Perhaps there is a letter
+from my uncle. That would be so kind of you, Mr. Lieson, because
+otherwise I may have to wait till it stops raining."
+
+"I'll go," said Lieson awkwardly, and he went stumping down the hall.
+
+Wapley and Lieson were rough and untidy, but Betty found herself liking
+them better and feeling sorry for them as time went on. They worked
+hard and were never thanked and had very little pleasure after their
+day's work was over. Several times now they had done little kindnesses
+for Betty, and she had tried to show that she appreciated their efforts.
+
+Lieson came back from the mail box carrying a square package, but no
+letter. Though Mr. Peabody was presumably waiting in the barn for him
+and fuming at his delay, the man showed such a naive interest in the
+parcel that Betty could not resist asking him to wait while she opened
+it.
+
+"Why, it's a camera!" she exclaimed delightedly, as she took out the
+square box. "I'll take your picture, Mr. Lieson, as soon as the sun
+comes out, to pay you for walking through all this rain to get the mail
+for me."
+
+"Say, would you?" Lieson showed more animation than Betty had ever
+noticed in him. "Honest? I got a lady friend, and she's always at me to
+send her my picture. She sure would admire to have one of me."
+
+"All right, she hasn't long to wait," promised Betty gaily. "Here are
+two rolls of film, and luckily I know how to operate a camera. Mr.
+Arnold had a good one and he taught me. The first sunny day, remember,
+Mr. Lieson."
+
+The rain continued all that day, and at night when Betty went up to bed
+she heard it pattering on the tin roof of the porch which was under her
+window.
+
+Betty had managed to make her room more habitable, and, relieved of any
+fear of embarrassing her hostess, had tacked netting at the two windows
+and bought herself a lamp with a good burner. She scrupulously paid
+Mr. Peabody for the oil she used, and while he showed plainly that he
+considered burning a light at night in summer a wicked extravagance, he
+did not interfere.
+
+"Now let me see," mused Betty. "Shall I answer Mrs. Arnold's last
+letter or go to bed? I guess I'll go to bed. I'll have all day to
+write letters to-morrow."
+
+She was brushing her hair when a noise in the next room startled her.
+She knew that it was not occupied, for, besides herself, the Peabodys
+were the only ones who slept on the second floor. Bob Henderson and the
+hired men were housed in the attic. The Peabodys' bedroom was further
+down the hall, on the other side of the house.
+
+"Pshaw!" Betty put her brush back on the table and gave her head a
+shake. "I mustn't get nervous. We're too far out in the country for
+burglars; and, besides, what in the world would they come here after?"
+
+Mr. Peabody differed from the majority of his neighbors in that he
+banked most of his funds. Some said it was because, if he had been in
+the habit of keeping money in the house, his help would have murdered
+him cheerfully and taken the cash as a reward. Be that as it may, it
+was well known that Joseph Peabody seldom had actual money in his
+pocket or in his tin strong box, and now Betty was glad to recall this.
+
+She had braided her hair and put out the light and was just slipping
+into bed when she heard the noise again. This time it sounded against
+the wall. Betty stealthily crept out of bed and ran to her door. There
+was no door key, but she shot the bolt.
+
+"That's some protection," she murmured, hopping into bed again. "If
+there are burglars in the house, I suppose I've locked 'em out to scare
+Mr. and Mrs. Peabody to death. But at any rate they have each other,
+and I'm all alone."
+
+Closing her eyes tight, Betty began to say her prayers, but she fell
+asleep before she had finished.
+
+She woke in the dark to hear a noise directly under her bed!
+
+She sat up, her eyes trying to pierce the darkness, wondering why she
+had not taken the precaution of looking under the bed before she locked
+herself into a room with a burglar.
+
+"If I look now and see his legs, I'll faint away, I know I shall," she
+thought, her teeth chattering, though the night was warm. "I wish to
+goodness Uncle Dick had sent me a revolver."
+
+That reminded her of the shotgun downstairs. With Betty to think was to
+act, and she sprang noiselessly out of bed and ran to the door. Thank
+goodness, the bolt slipped without squeaking. Downstairs ran Betty and
+lifted the heavy shotgun from its place over the mantel. She was no
+longer afraid, and her eyes sparkled with excitement. She was having
+a grand adventure. She had shot a gun a few times under Mr. Arnold's
+instructions and careful supervision when he was teaching his boys how
+to handle one, and she thought she knew all about it.
+
+She gained her room, breathless, for the gun was heavy. At the
+threshold she stopped a moment to listen. Yes, there was the noise
+again. The burglar was unaware of her flight.
+
+Unaware herself of the absurdity of her deductions, Betty raised the
+heavy gun and pointed it toward the bed. As well as she could tell, she
+was aiming under the bed. She shut her eyes tight and fired.
+
+The gun kicked unmercifully, and Betty ejaculated a loud "Ow!" which
+was lost in the babble of sound that immediately followed the shot.
+There was the sound of breaking glass under the bed, a shrill scream
+from Mrs. Peabody, and the thunderous bellow of Mr. Peabody demanding:
+"What in Sam Hill are those varmints up to now?" Evidently he
+attributed the racket to Wapley and Lieson, who had been known to come
+home late from Glenside.
+
+In a few minutes they were all gathered at Betty's door, Bob
+open-mouthed and speechless, the two men sleepily curious, the Peabodys
+loudly demanding to know what the matter was.
+
+"Are you hurt, Betty?" asked Mrs. Peabody anxiously. "Where did you get
+the gun, dear? Did something frighten you?"
+
+"It's a burglar!" declared Betty. "I heard him under the bed! But I
+got him, I know I did!"
+
+"Light the lamp and look under the bed, Bob," commanded Mr. Peabody
+harshly. "I don't believe this burglar stuff, but the girl's shot off a
+good charge of buckshot, no doubt of that. Find out what she hit."
+
+Bob lit the lamp and stooped down to look. Then his lips twitched.
+
+"Rat!" he announced briefly. "A big one."
+
+"Haul him out," directed Lieson. "Let's have a look at him."
+
+Betty had shrunk inside the doorway when the lamp was lit, conscious of
+her attire, and now she managed to reach her dressing gown and fling it
+around her.
+
+"He's in too many pieces," said Bob doubtfully. "Guess we'll have to
+get a dustpan and brush."
+
+Mr. Peabody and the two men went grumbling back to bed, Peabody taking
+the gun for safekeeping, but Mrs. Peabody sent Bob down to the kitchen
+for the articles he mentioned, declaring that Betty should not have to
+finish the night in a room with a dead rat.
+
+"If there was another bed made up, I'd move you into it," she said.
+"But I haven't an extra place ready."
+
+Betty had pinned up her hair and put on her slippers before Bob came
+back, and had put her best pink crepe dressing gown around Mrs.
+Peabody, who presented an incongruous vision so attired. Bob looked at
+Betty in admiration. With her tumbled dark hair and pink cheeks and
+blue gown and slippers, the boy thought her the prettiest thing he had
+ever seen.
+
+"I didn't want to tell you--don't look," he whispered, getting down on
+his knees to sweep out the remains of the slaughtered rat, "but the
+buckshot hit two olive bottles, and there's some mess here under your
+bed. I guess the rat was after the crackers."
+
+Bob carried down the dead rat and mopped up the brine from the olives
+and threw out the debris, making several trips downstairs without a
+murmur. Finally it was all cleaned up, and they could go back to their
+rooms and finish the remainder of the night in probable peace.
+
+"If you hear a noise"--Bob could not resist this parting shot--"run
+down and grab the dinner bell. We'll hear it just as quick, and you
+might shoot the potted ham full of bullets next time."
+
+Betty did not sleep well, and once she woke, sure that she had heard
+loud talking and shouts. She thought the noise came from the attic.
+
+"Lieson had the nightmare after your shindy," announced Bob at the
+breakfast table. "He suddenly began shouting and got me by the throat,
+declaring that if I didn't pay him every cent I owed him he'd kill me.
+Wapley had to come and pull him away, or I don't know but he would have
+choked the breath out of me."
+
+"I had a bad dream," said Lieson sullenly.
+
+The rain was still coming down and all the good-nature of the day
+before had left Lieson. He refused to answer a remark of Mr. Peabody's,
+and was evidently in a bad humor.
+
+"He and the old man had a run in before breakfast," whispered Bob,
+pulling on his boots preparatory to carrying out food to the pigs.
+Betty stood at the window and they could talk without being overheard.
+"It was something about money. Well, Betty, are you going gunning
+to-day?"
+
+"You needn't tease me," replied Betty, laughing. "I feel foolish
+enough, without being reminded of last night. I think I'll go upstairs
+and sew on buttons as a penance. There's nothing I hate to do worse."
+
+"Do it well then," suggested the irrepressible Bob, slamming the door
+just in time to avoid the glass of water Betty tossed after him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+FOLLOWING THE PRESCRIPTION
+
+
+THE sound of some one chopping wood caught the alert ear of Bob
+Henderson as he came whistling through the yard on his way to the tool
+house. Some peculiar quality in the strokes seemed to suggest something
+to him, and he turned aside and made for the woodshed.
+
+"For the love of Mike! Betty Gordon, what do you call it you're
+doing now?" he inquired, standing in the frame of the woodshed, at a
+respectful distance from the energetic figure by the wood block.
+
+"Chopping wood!" snapped Betty, hacking a dry rail viciously. "Did you
+think I was cutting out paper dolls?"
+
+"My dear child, that isn't the way to chop wood," insisted Bob
+paternally. "Here, let me show you. You'll ruin the axe, to say nothing
+of chopping off your own right ear."
+
+Betty brought the axe down on the rail with unnecessary violence.
+
+"Let me alone," she said ominously. "I'm mad! This is Uncle Dick's
+prescription, but I can't see that it works. The more I chop, the
+madder I get!"
+
+Bob grinned, and then as a shout of "You, Bob!" sounded from outside,
+his expression changed.
+
+"Wapley is waiting for nails to fix the fence with," he said hurriedly.
+"I'll have to hurry. But come on down to the cornfield, can't you,
+Betty? We can talk there."
+
+Bob ran off, and Betty regarded the axe resentfully.
+
+"Seems to me he's hoed enough corn to reach round the earth," she said
+aloud. "I wonder if Bob ever gets mad? Well, I guess I will go down and
+talk to him, though I did mean to weed the garden for Mrs. Peabody. I
+can do that this afternoon."
+
+In spite of the absence of fresh eggs and milk from her diet, the weeks
+at Bramble Farm had benefited Betty. She was deeply tanned from days
+spent in the sun, and while perceptibly thinner, a close observer would
+have known that she was hardy and strong. She was growing taller, too.
+
+"Mr. Peabody is so mean!" she scolded, dropping down under a scrubby
+wild cherry tree in the field where Bob was already hard at work hoeing
+corn, having delivered the nails to Wapley. "You know this is the first
+fair day we've had since those three rainy ones, and I promised Mr.
+Lieson I'd take his picture. He wants it for his girl. And Mr. Peabody
+wouldn't let him go upstairs and put on his best clothes. Said it was
+his time and that foolishness could wait till after supper. You know I
+can't take a snapshot after supper!"
+
+Bob hoed a few minutes in silence.
+
+"Try a little diplomacy, Betty," he finally advised. "Sunday is the
+time to take Lieson in his glad rags. He looks fierce all dressed up,
+I think; it probably will break off the match if his girl is marrying
+him for his beauty. But Lieson the way he is now--in that soft shirt
+and without his hat--isn't half bad. He's got a kind of wistful, gentle
+face, for all he can jaw so terribly; have you noticed it? Go down in
+the potato field and take his picture while he's working and tell him
+you'll take him dressed up Sunday and he can have both pictures. He'll
+be so pleased, he'll offer to let you hold a pig."
+
+Betty made a little face. Lieson had already done just that. Thinking
+that Betty, who made such a fuss over the baby lambs, would be equally
+delighted with the little pigs, Lieson had told her to shut her eyes
+one day and hold out her hands; into them he had dropped a squirming,
+slippery, squealing baby pig and Bob had always declared he could not
+tell which made the most noise--Betty when she opened her eyes, or the
+pig when she dropped him. Lieson had been much disappointed.
+
+"I'll go and get the camera now," said Betty, jumping up, all traces of
+temper vanished. "I'll put in the film that holds a dozen and just go
+round taking everything. That will be fun!"
+
+She went running up the field and Bob's eyes followed her wistfully.
+
+"She's a good kid," he said to himself. "Trouble is, she's never been
+up against it before and she doesn't always know how to take it. It
+does make her so mad to see old Peabody walk all over every one; but
+there's no sense in letting her buck against him when you can turn her
+thoughts in another direction. Gee, I'm sick of this blamed corn!"
+
+Bob went up and down the endless rows, and Betty skipped about,
+"snapping" views of Bramble Farm to her heart's content. Lieson was
+delighted to learn that he might have two pictures of himself, and
+though it seemed to him a waste of time to be photographed in his
+work clothes, still he admitted that even an "ordinary" picture was
+preferable to none.
+
+"My lady friend," he announced proudly, as Betty clicked her bulb, "she
+like me anyway."
+
+Wapley, while without the excuse of a "lady friend," was nevertheless
+almost childishly pleased to pose for his photograph, and him, too,
+Betty promised to take again on Sunday. Mrs. Peabody, weeding in the
+large vegetable garden that was her regular care, alone refused to be
+taken.
+
+"Oh, no!" she shrank down among the cabbages and pulled her hideous
+sunbonnet further over her eyes when Betty pressed her to reconsider
+her refusal. "Child, don't ask me. When I look at the picture of me
+taken in my wedding dress and then see myself in the mirror mornings, I
+wonder if I'm the same person. I wouldn't have my picture taken for one
+hundred dollars!"
+
+Betty used up one roll of films that morning, but she decided to save
+the other roll for Sunday, as she was not sure she could get another in
+Glenside. She determined to take her pictures over that afternoon and
+have them developed, for she was as eager to see the results as Lieson
+and Wapley. Bob, too, owned up to a desire to see how he "turned out."
+
+"It's a pretty hot day," ventured Mrs. Peabody uncertainly, when Betty,
+at the dinner table, announced her intention of walking to Glenside
+that afternoon. "Maybe, dearie, if you wait till after supper, some one
+will be driving over."
+
+"Horses ain't going a step off this farm this week," said Mr. Peabody
+impressively. "They're working without shoes, as anybody with any
+interest in the place would know. If some folks haven't any more
+to do than gad around spending good money, it's none of my affair;
+but I don't aim to run a stage between here and Glenside for their
+convenience."
+
+Dinner was finished in silence after this speech, and immediately after
+she had helped Mrs. Peabody with the dishes, Betty went up to her room
+to change her dress. She did not mind the walk; indeed she had taken
+it several times before, and knew that one side of the road would be
+comparatively shady all the way.
+
+Betty took an inexplicable whim to put on her prettiest dress, a
+delicate pink linen with white collars and cuffs that Mrs. Arnold had
+taught her to embroider herself in French knots. She untied the black
+velvet ribbon she usually wore on her broad-brimmed hat and substituted
+a sash of pink mull.
+
+"You look too nice!" exclaimed Mrs. Peabody when the girl came
+downstairs. "Don't you think you should take an umbrella, though? Those
+big white clouds mean a thunder storm."
+
+Betty laughingly declined the umbrella, and, promising Mrs. Peabody
+"something pretty," started off on her walk. Poor Mrs. Peabody, though
+Betty was too inexperienced to realize it, was beginning, very slowly
+it is true, but still beginning, to break under the long strain of
+hard work and unhappiness. Betty only knew that she was pitifully
+pleased with the smallest gift from the town stores.
+
+"If I don't see a girl of my own age to speak to pretty soon," declared
+Betty to herself, walking swiftly up the lane, "I don't know what I
+shall do! Bob is nice, but, goodness! he isn't interested in lots of
+things I like. Crocheting, for instance. I never was crazy about fancy
+work, but now I'm kind of hungry for a crochet needle."
+
+Half way to Glenside a farmer overtook her, and after the pleasant
+country fashion offered her a "lift." Betty accepted gladly. He lived,
+as she discovered after a few minutes' conversation, on the farm next
+to the Peabodys, and he had heard about her and knew who she was.
+
+"When you get time," he said kindly, when she told him she was going to
+Glenside, "walk through the town and out toward Linden. There's quite
+a nursery out that way, and you'd like to see the flowers. Folks come
+from the city to buy their plants there."
+
+At the nearest crossroads to Glenside he turned, and Betty got out,
+thanking him heartily for the ride. It was a matter of only a few
+moments now to reach Glenside, and she found herself in the town much
+sooner than she had counted on. So when the drug-store clerk said he
+would have her pictures developed and printed within an hour if she
+could wait, Betty determined to wait instead of having them mailed to
+her. She had a sundae and bought some chocolates for Mrs. Peabody, and
+then remembered the farmer's remark about the nursery.
+
+"How far is it to the nursery they talk about?" she said to the woman
+clerk who had weighed out the candy.
+
+"Baxter's? Oh, not more than three-quarters of a mile," was the
+answer. "You go right up Main Street an far as the sidewalk goes. When
+it stops, keep right on, and pretty soon you'll see a big sign of a
+watering-pot; that's it."
+
+Betty followed these directions implicitly, and she had reached the end
+of the town sidewalk when she heard the distant mutter of thunder.
+
+"I guess I can reach the nursery and be looking at the flowers while it
+storms," she said to herself.
+
+Betty had no more fear of thunderstorms than of a tame cat, but she
+mightily disliked the idea of getting her hat wet. So she hurried
+conscientiously.
+
+The sun went under a heavy cloud, and a violent crash of thunder
+directly overhead stimulated her into a run. There was not a house in
+sight, and Betty began to wish she had turned and gone back to the
+town. At least she could have found shelter in a shop.
+
+Splash! A huge drop of rain flattened in the dust of the road. The tall
+trees on either side began to sway in the slowly rising wind.
+
+"I'll bet it will be a big storm, and I'll be soaked!" gasped Betty.
+"Where is that plaguey nursery!"
+
+She began to run, and the drops came faster and faster. Then, without
+warning, the long line of swaying trees stopped, and a tidy white
+picket fence began on the side of the road nearest Betty. Back of the
+pickets was a well-kept green lawn; and set in the center of a circle
+of glorious elm trees was a comfortable white house with green blinds
+and a wide porch. A woman and two girls were hastily taking in a swing
+and a quantity of sofa pillows to protect them from the storm.
+
+"Come in, quick!" called the woman, as Betty came in sight. "Hurry,
+before you're soaked. Just lift the latch and the gate swings in."
+
+"Just lift the latch." Betty thought she had never heard a more cordial
+or welcome invitation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+WINNING NEW FRIENDS
+
+
+BETTY opened the gate and ran up the path. The younger girl, who seemed
+about her own age, put out a friendly hand and touched her sleeve.
+
+"Not wet a bit, Mother!" she announced triumphantly. "And I don't
+believe her hat's spotted, either!"
+
+A jagged streak of lightning and another thundering crash sent them all
+scurrying indoors. The lady led the way into a pleasant room where an
+open piano, books, and much gay cretonne-covered wicker furniture gave
+an atmosphere at once homelike and modern. Betty had craved the sight
+of such a room since leaving Pineville and her friends.
+
+"Pull down the shades, Norma; and, Alice, light the lamp," directed the
+mother of the two girls.
+
+The younger girl drew the shades and Alice, who was evidently some
+years older than her sister, lighted the pretty wicker lamp on the
+center table.
+
+"I'm so glad you reached our house before the storm fairly broke," said
+their mother, smiling at Betty. "In another second you would have been
+drenched, and there isn't a house between here and Baxter's nursery."
+
+Betty explained that she had been on her way to the nursery, and
+thinking that her kind hostess should know her guest's name, gave it,
+and said that she was staying at Bramble Farm.
+
+"Oh, yes, we've heard of you," said the lady, in some surprise. "I am
+Mrs. Guerin, and my husband, Dr. Guerin, learns all the news, you know,
+on his rounds among his patients. Mrs. Keppler, I believe, was the one
+who told him there was a girl visiting the Peabodys."
+
+Betty wondered rather uncomfortably what had been said about her and
+whether she was regarded with pity because of the conditions endured by
+any one who had the misfortune to be a member of the Peabody household.
+The Kepplers, she knew, were their nearest neighbors.
+
+Norma and Alice each took a seat on the arms of their mother's chair,
+and regarded the guest curiously, but kindly.
+
+"Do you like the country?" asked the younger girl, feeling that
+something in the way of conversation was expected of her.
+
+Betty replied in the affirmative, adding that, aside from lonesomeness
+now and then, she had enjoyed the outdoor life immensely.
+
+"But what do you do all day long?" persisted Norma. "The Peabodys are
+so queer!"
+
+"Norma!" reproved her mother and Alice in one breath.
+
+"Well they are!" muttered Norma. "Miss Gordon isn't a relation of
+theirs, is she? So why do I have to be polite?"
+
+"I'm only twelve," said Betty, embarrassed by the "Miss Gordon," and
+puzzled to know how to avoid a discussion of the Peabodys. "No one ever
+calls me 'Miss.' My Uncle Dick went to school with Mrs. Peabody, and he
+thought it would be pleasant for me to board with them this summer."
+
+"When you get lonesome for girls, come over and see us," suggested Mrs.
+Guerin cordially. "Come whenever you are in Glenside, anyway. Norma
+hasn't many friends of her own age in town, and she'll probably talk
+you deaf, dumb and blind."
+
+"I don't get over very often," said Betty, thinking how fortunate Norma
+was to have such a lovely, tactful mother, "because I usually have to
+walk. But if your husband is a doctor, couldn't he bring you over to
+call some afternoon? Doctors are always on the road, I know."
+
+A curious expression swept over Mrs. Guerin's face, inexplicable to
+Betty. She avoided a direct answer to the invitation by sending the
+girls out to the kitchen for lemonade and cakes and blowing out the
+lamp and raising the shades herself. The brief thunderstorm was about
+over, and the sun soon shone brightly.
+
+Alice wheeled the tea-wagon out on the porch, and the four spent a
+merry half hour together. Betty felt that she had made three real
+friends, and the Guerins, for their part, were agreeably delighted
+with the young girl who was so alone in the world and who, while they
+knew she must have a great deal that was unpleasant to contend with,
+resolutely talked only of her happy times.
+
+Betty had just risen to go when a runabout stopped at the curb and a
+gray-haired man got out and came up the path.
+
+"There's father!" cried Norma, jumping up to meet him. "Father, the
+Rutans telephoned over an hour ago. I couldn't get you anywhere. It was
+before the storm."
+
+"Hal, this is Betty Gordon," said the doctor's wife, drawing Betty
+forward. "She is the girl staying with the Peabodys. Do you have to go
+out directly?"
+
+"Just want to get a few things, then I'm off," answered the doctor
+cheerily. "Miss Betty, if you don't mind waiting while I stop in at the
+drug store, I'm going half of your way and will be glad to give you a
+lift. The roads will be muddy after this rain."
+
+Betty accepted the kind offer thankfully, and Mrs. Guerin and the girls
+went down to the car with her. They each kissed her good-bye, and Mrs.
+Guerin's motherly touch as she tucked the linen robe over Betty's knees
+brought thoughts of another mother to the little pink-frocked figure
+who waved a farewell as the car coughed its sturdy way up the street.
+
+At the drug store the doctor got his medicines and Betty her pictures,
+which she paid for and slipped into her bag without looking at. She
+liked Doctor Guerin instinctively, and indeed he was the type of
+physician whom patients immediately trusted and in whom confidence was
+never misplaced.
+
+"You look like an outdoor girl," he told her as he turned the car
+toward the open country. "I don't believe you've had to take much in
+the way of pills and powders, have you?"
+
+Betty smiled and admitted that her personal acquaintance with medicine
+was extremely limited.
+
+"Mrs. Peabody has headaches all the time," she said anxiously. "I think
+she ought to see a doctor. And one day last week she fainted, but she
+insisted on getting supper."
+
+Doctor Guerin bit his lip.
+
+"Guess you'll have to be my ally," he said mysteriously. "Mrs. Peabody
+was a patient of mine, off and on, for several years--ever since I've
+practiced in Glenside, in fact. But--well, Mr. Peabody forbade my
+visits finally; said he was paying out too much for drugs. I told him
+that his wife had a serious trouble that might prostrate her at any
+time, but he refused to listen. Ordered me off the place one day when
+Mrs. Guerin was in the car with me, and was so violent he frightened
+her. That was some time ago." The doctor shook his head reminiscently.
+"Mrs. Peabody in the house was groaning with pain and Mrs. Guerin was
+imploring me to back the car before Peabody killed me. He was shouting
+like a mad man, and it was Bedlam let loose for sure.
+
+"I went, because there was nothing else to do, but I managed to get
+word to the poor soul, through that boy, Bob Henderson, that if she
+ever had a bad attack and would send me word, day or night, I'd come
+if I had to bring the constable to lock that miser up out of the way
+first. I suspect he is a coward as well as a bully, but fighting him
+wouldn't better his wife's position any; he would only take it out on
+her."
+
+"Yes, I think he would," agreed Betty. "I used to wonder how she stood
+him. But telling her what I think of him doesn't help her, and now I
+don't do that any more if I think in time."
+
+"Well, you may be able to help her by sending me word if she is taken
+ill suddenly," said the doctor. "I'm sure it is a comfort to her to
+have you with her this summer. Now here's the boundary line. Sorry I
+can not take you all the way in, but it would only mean an unpleasant
+row."
+
+Instead of half way, the doctor had taken her almost to the Peabody
+lane, and Betty jumped down and thanked him heartily. She was glad
+to have been saved the long muddy walk. She was turning away when a
+thought struck her.
+
+"How could I reach you if Mrs. Peabody were ill?" she asked. "There's
+no 'phone at Bramble Farm, you know."
+
+"The Kepplers have one," was the reply, Doctor Guerin cranking his car.
+"They'll be glad to let you use it any time for any message you want to
+send."
+
+Betty found no one in the house when she reached it, the men being
+still at work in the field and Mrs. Peabody out in the chicken yard.
+Betty took off her pretty frock and put on a blue and white gingham
+and her white shoes. She was determined not to allow herself to get
+what Mrs. Peabody called "slack," and she scrupulously dressed every
+afternoon, whether she went off the farm or not.
+
+The pictures, she discovered when she examined them, were exceptionally
+good. Lieson, in particular, had proved an excellent subject, and
+Betty privately decided that he was more attractive in his working
+clothes than he could ever hope to be in the stiff black and white
+she knew he would assume for Sunday. She took the prints and went
+downstairs to await an opportunity to show them.
+
+Bob Henderson was in the kitchen, doing something to his hand. Betty
+experienced a sinking sensation when she saw a blood-stained rag
+floating in the basin of water on the table.
+
+"Bob!" she gasped. "Did you hurt yourself?"
+
+Bob glanced up, managing a smile, though he was rather white around the
+mouth.
+
+"I cut my finger," he said jerkily. "The blame thing won't stop
+bleeding."
+
+"I have peroxide upstairs!" Betty flew to get the bottle.
+
+It was a nasty cut, but she set her teeth and washed it thoroughly with
+the antiseptic and warm water before binding it up with the clean,
+soft handkerchief she had brought back with her. Bob had been clumsily
+trying to make a bandage with his dark blue bandana handkerchief, all
+the lad had.
+
+"How did you do it?" asked Betty, as she tied a neat knot and tucked
+the ends in out of sight. "I'll fix you some more cloths to-night;
+you'll have to wash that cut again in the morning."
+
+Bob was putting away the basin and now he went off to get the pails
+of slop for the pigs. Betty thought he had not heard her question,
+but when Lieson came in for a drink of water and saw the pictures
+he unconsciously set her right. Lieson was greatly pleased with his
+picture, and looked so long at the other prints that Betty feared lest
+Mr. Peabody should come in and make an accusation of wasted time.
+
+"That's a good picture of Bob, too," commented Lieson. "He cut his hand
+this afternoon on the hoe. The old man come down where he was hoeing
+corn, and just as he got there Bob cut a stalk; you can't always help
+it. Peabody flew into a rage and grabbed the hoe. Bob thought he was
+going to strike him with it and he put up his hand to save his head,
+and Peabody brought the sharp edge of the hoe down so it nicked his
+finger. Guess he won't be able to milk to-night."
+
+Betty stood in the doorway of the kitchen and stared away into the
+serene green fields.
+
+"It looks so peaceful," she thought wearily. "And yet to live in
+such a place doesn't seem to have the slightest effect on people's
+dispositions. I wonder why?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+NURSE AND PATIENT
+
+
+WHEN the next Sunday came round the shrill song of the locusts began
+early, foretelling a hot day. The heat and the flies and the general
+uninviting appearance of the breakfast table irritated Betty more than
+usual, and only consideration for Mrs. Peabody, who looked wretchedly
+ill, kept her at the table through the meal. Lieson and Mr. Peabody
+bickered incessantly, and Wapley, who had taken cold, coughed noisily.
+
+"Guess I'll go over and see Doc Guerin an' get him to give me something
+for this cold," Wapley mumbled, after a particularly violent paroxysm.
+"Never knew folks had colds in summer, but I got one for sure."
+
+"You take some of that horse medicine out on the barn shelf," advised
+Peabody. "The bottle's half full, and I'll sell it to you for a
+quarter. The doctor's stuff will cost you all of a dollar, and that
+horse medicine will warm you up fine. That's all you want, anyway,
+something to kind of heat up your pipes."
+
+Betty hoped fervently that the man would not follow this remarkable
+prescription, and it was with actual relief that she saw him come
+downstairs an hour later arrayed in his best clothes ready to walk
+to town. She had her camera ready and stood patiently in the sun for
+fifteen minutes till she had taken the promised pictures. Wapley was
+snapped alone and with Lieson, and then a photograph of Lieson alone,
+and then it was Bob's turn. That usually amiable youth was inclined to
+be sulky, but finally yielded to persuasion. Betty was anxious to send
+a full set of pictures to her uncle, and while Bob's "Sunday best" was
+exactly the same as his week-day attire, still, as she pointed out, he
+could wear his pleasantest expression for a "close up."
+
+The cause for Bob's crossness was revealed after Lieson and Wapley
+had started for Glenside. His sore finger was swollen and gave him
+considerable pain.
+
+"Why didn't you go with them and see the doctor?" scolded Betty. "Go
+now. I think the cut should be opened, Bob."
+
+"I'm not going," said Bob flatly. "Where'd I get any money to pay him?"
+
+"I have some----" Betty was beginning, but he cut her short with the
+curt announcement that he was not going to let her do everything for
+him.
+
+"Well, then, go over and let Doctor Guerin examine your finger and
+offer to work it out for him in some way," urged Betty. "Don't be silly
+about money, Bob; any doctor does his work first and then asks about
+his pay. Won't you go?"
+
+"No, I won't," retorted Bob ungraciously. "I'm too dog-gone tired to
+walk that far, anyway. Let's take books out to the orchard, and if you
+have any crackers or anything, we won't come back for dinner. I hate
+that hot kitchen!"
+
+This was very unlike Bob, and Betty noticed that his face was flushed
+and his eyes heavy. She was sure he had fever, but she knew it was
+useless to argue with him. So, like the sensible girl she was, she
+tried to make him comfortable without further consulting him. She had
+a new parcel of magazines he had not seen, and without asking Mrs.
+Peabody, she took a square rug from the parlor for him to lie on and
+the pillow from her bed. Mrs. Peabody she knew would not object to the
+rug being used, but Mr. Peabody was shaving in the kitchen, and if he
+heard the request would instantly deny it.
+
+On her last trip to the town Betty had bought a dozen lemons and a
+package of soda fountain straws, and when Bob complained of thirst, she
+surprised him with a lemonade. Fortunately the water from the spring in
+one of the meadows was icy cold.
+
+Bob's "Gee, that's good!" more than repaid her for her trouble and the
+heat headache that throbbed in her temples from her hurried journeys
+down to the spring.
+
+There was a faint breeze stirring fitfully in the orchard, and it was
+shady. Betty read aloud to Bob until he fell asleep. After he was
+unconscious, she looked at him pityingly, noting the sore finger held
+stiffly away from its fellows and the pathetic droop of the boyish
+mouth.
+
+"His mother would be so sorry!" she thought, folding up a paper to
+serve as a fan and beginning to fan him gently. "I wonder how he
+happened to be born in the poorhouse. He has nice hands and feet,
+well-proportioned, that is, and mother always said that was a mark of
+good breeding. Besides, I know from the way he speaks and acts that he
+is different from these hired men."
+
+Betty continued to fan till she saw Mrs. Peabody come out of the
+kitchen and go to the woodshed. Then she ran in to tell her that Bob
+would probably sleep through dinner and that would be one less for the
+noon meal. Sunday dinner was never an elaborate affair in the Peabody
+household, and Betty insisted on helping Mrs. Peabody to-day, since she
+could not induce her to go away from the kitchen and lie down. The men
+had said they were going to stay in town till milking time, and only
+Mr. and Mrs. Peabody and Betty sat down to the sorry repast at one
+o'clock. There was little conversation, and Mr. Peabody was the only
+one who made a pretense of eating what was served.
+
+"Now you go upstairs, and let me do the dishes," said Betty to Mrs.
+Peabody, as her husband put on his hat and went out at the conclusion
+of the meal. "If you'll undress and go to bed, I'll get supper and feed
+the chickens. You look so fagged out."
+
+"It's the heat," sighed Mrs. Peabody. "Land, child, I've crawled
+through a sight of summers, and won't give out awhile yet, I guess.
+You're the one to watch out. Keep in out of the sun, and don't run your
+feet off waiting on Bob. I'll show you something, though, if you won't
+let on."
+
+She beckoned Betty to one corner of the kitchen where a fly-specked
+calendar hung.
+
+"Look here," said Mrs. Peabody. "Nobody knows what these pencil marks
+mean but me--I made 'em. Now's the second week in July--there's
+seventeen days of July left. Thirty-one days in August. And most
+generally you can count on the first week of September being hot--that
+makes fifty-five days. Three meals a day to get, or one hundred and
+sixty-five meals in all."
+
+"Then what?" asked the hypnotized Betty.
+
+"Oh, then it begins to get a little cooler," said Mrs. Peabody
+listlessly. "I've counted this way for three summers now. Somehow it
+makes the summer go faster if you can see the days marked off and know
+so many meals are behind you."
+
+Inexperienced as Betty was, it seemed infinitely pathetic to her that
+any one should long for the summer days to be over, and she realized
+dimly that the loneliness and dullness of her hostess' daily life must
+be beginning to prey on her mind. She helped dry the dishes, went
+upstairs with Mrs. Peabody and bathed her forehead with cologne and
+closed the shutters of her room for her. Then, hoping she might sleep
+for a few hours as she resolutely refused to give up for the rest of
+the day, Betty hurried to put on her thinnest white frock and went
+back to the orchard. She found her patient awake and decidedly feeling
+aggrieved.
+
+"I've been awake for ages," he greeted her. "Gee, isn't it hot! You
+look kind of pippin' too. Do you know, I've been thinking about that
+riding habit of yours, Betty. What are you going to do with it?"
+
+"Keep it till I go somewhere else where there'll be a chance to learn
+to ride," answered Betty. "Why?"
+
+"Oh, I was just thinking," and Bob turned over on his back to stare up
+through the branches. "You'll get away from here sooner than I shall,
+Betty. But, believe me, the first chance I get I'm going to streak out.
+Peabody's got no claim on me, and I've worked out all the food and
+clothes he's ever given me. The county won't care--they've got more
+kids to look after now than they can manage, and one missing won't
+create any uproar. I'd like to try to walk from here to the West. They
+say my mother had people out there somewhere."
+
+"Tell me about her," urged Betty impulsively. "Do you remember her,
+Bob?"
+
+"She died the night I was born," said Bob quietly. "My father was
+killed in a railroad wreck they figured out. You see my mother was a
+little out of her head with grief and shock when they found her walking
+along the road, singing to herself. All she had was the clothes on her
+back and a little black tin box with her marriage certificate in it and
+some papers that no one rightly could understand. They sent her to the
+alms-house, and a month later I was born. The old woman who nursed her
+said her mind was perfectly clear the few hours she lived after that,
+and she said that 'David,' my father, had been bringing her East to a
+hospital when their train was wrecked. She couldn't remember the date
+nor tell how long before it had happened, and after she died no one was
+interested enough to trace things up. I was brought up in the baby ward
+and went to school along with the others. Many is the boy I've punched
+for calling me 'Pauper!' And then, when I was ten, Peabody came over
+and said he wanted a boy to help him on his farm; I could go to school
+in the winters, and he'd see that I had clothes and everything I
+needed. I've never been to school a day since, and about all I needed,
+according to him, was lickings. But if I ever get away from here I mean
+to find out a few things for myself."
+
+Bob paused for breath. His fever made him talkative, and Betty had
+never known him so communicative.
+
+"Where is the tin box?" she asked with interest.
+
+"Buried, in the garden. I had sense enough to do that the first night I
+came to Bramble Farm, and I've never dared dig it up since. Afraid old
+Peabody might catch me. It's safer to leave it alone."
+
+Presently Bob went off to sleep again and Betty mused silently till he
+woke, hungry, and then she gave him bouillon cubes dissolved in hot
+water, for Mrs. Peabody was getting supper and Bob refused to go to the
+table. The men came back and did the milking, grumbling a little, but
+on the whole willing to save Bob's finger. They had a rough fondness
+for the lad.
+
+When the heavy dew began to fall Betty had to appeal to Leison to make
+Bob go into the house. He declared fretfully that the attic was hot,
+and Betty knew it was like an oven, but it was out of the question for
+him to lie in the damp grass. She dressed his finger freshly for him,
+Mrs. Peabody looking on, but offering not a word, either of pity or
+curiosity. Betty wondered if she had grown into the habit of keeping
+still till now it was impossible for her to voice an emotion.
+
+Bob's finger dressed, Lieson bore him upstairs despite his protests,
+and before the others went up to their rooms, Betty had the
+satisfaction of hearing that Bob had already gone to sleep.
+
+Betty herself was extremely tired, for she had worked hard all day,
+waiting on Bob and trying to save Mrs. Peabody in many ways. She
+brushed out her thick hair and slipped into her nightgown, thankful
+for the prospect of rest even the hardest of beds offered her. She was
+asleep almost as soon as her head touched the pillow.
+
+She had been asleep only a few minutes, or so it seemed, when something
+woke her.
+
+She sat up in bed, startled. Had some one groaned?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+A MIDNIGHT CALL
+
+
+BETTY'S first thought was of Bob. Was he really sick? Then she
+remembered that the boy slept in the attic and that she probably could
+not have heard him if he had made the noise that woke her.
+
+Then the sound began again, deep guttural groans that sent a shudder
+through the girl listening in the dark, and Betty knew that Mrs.
+Peabody must be ill. She lit her lamp and looked at her watch.
+Half-past one! She had been asleep several hours. Slipping on her
+dressing gown and slippers, Betty opened her door, intending to go
+down the hall to the Peabodys' room and see what she could do. To her
+relief, she saw Mr. Peabody, fully dressed except for his shoes, which
+he carried in his hand, coming shuffling down the hall.
+
+"You're going for the doctor?" said Betty eagerly. "Is Mrs. Peabody
+very ill? Shall I go down and heat some water?"
+
+"I don't know how sick she is," answered the man sourly. "But I do know
+I ain't going for that miserable, no-account doctor I ordered off this
+farm once. If you're going to die, you're going to die, is the way I
+look at it, and all the groaning in the world ain't going to help you.
+And a doctor to kill you off quicker ain't necessary, either. I'm going
+out to the barn to get a little sleep. Here I've got a heavy day's work
+on to-morrow, and she's been carrying on like this for the better part
+of an hour."
+
+Betty stared at Mr. Peabody in horror. Something very like loathing,
+and an amazement not unmixed with terror, seized her. It was
+inconceivable that any one should talk as he did.
+
+"She must have a doctor!" she flung at him. "Send Bob--or one of the
+men, Bob's half sick himself. If you won't call them, I will. I won't
+stay here and let any one suffer like that. Listen! Oh, listen!"
+
+Betty put her hands over her ears, as a shrill scream of pain came from
+Mrs. Peabody's room.
+
+"Send the men on a wild goose chase at this time of night?" snarled
+Mr. Peabody. "Not if I know it. Morning will do just as well if she's
+really sick. You will, will you?" He lunged heavily before Betty,
+divining her intention to reach the stairway that led to the attic.
+A heavy door stood open for the freer circulation of air, and this
+Peabody slammed and locked, dropping the key triumphantly in his
+pocket.
+
+"You take my advice and go back to bed," he said. "One woman raising
+Cain at a time's enough. Go to bed and keep still before I make you."
+
+Betty scarcely heard the implied threat. She heard little but the
+heart-breaking groans that seemed to fill the whole house. Her mind was
+made up.
+
+"I'm going myself!" she blazed, wrapping her gown about her. "Don't you
+dare stop me! You've killed your wife, but at least the neighbors are
+going to know about it. I'm going to telephone to Doctor Guerin!"
+
+With a quick breath Betty blew out the lamp, which bewildered Peabody
+for a moment. She dashed past him as he fumbled and mumbled in the
+dark and slid down the banisters and jerked open the front door, which
+luckily for her was seldom locked at night. She ran down the steps,
+across the yard and into the field, her heart pounding like a trip
+hammer. On and on she ran, not daring to stop to look behind her. When
+she heard steps gaining on her, her feet dragged with despair, but her
+spirit flogged her on.
+
+"I won't give up, I won't give up!" she was crying aloud through
+clenched teeth when the voice of Bob Henderson calling, "Betty! Betty!
+it's all right!" sounded close to her shoulder.
+
+"You dear, darling Bob!" Betty turned radiantly to face the boy. "How
+did you get out? Hurry! We must hurry! Mrs. Peabody is so sick!"
+
+"Easy there!" Bob caught her elbow as she stumbled over a bit of rough
+ground. "The noise woke me up, and when we heard you and Peabody,
+Lieson lowered me out of the window by the bedsheet. We weren't
+sure what he'd do to you. Say, Betty, you'd better let me go in and
+telephone unless you're afraid to go back. If the Kepplers see you
+like that, they'll know there's been a row, and they'll insist on your
+staying with them."
+
+"Oh, I have to go back," said Betty in a panic. "Mrs. Peabody needs me.
+And I'm not afraid, if Doctor Guerin comes. I'll wait under this tree
+for you, Bob. Only please hurry." And the boy hurried off.
+
+"Doctor'll be right out," reported Bob, coming back after what seemed a
+long wait but was in reality a scant ten minutes. "I had a great time
+waking the Kepplers up and a worse time getting hold of Central. And
+of course Mrs. Keppler wanted all the details--just like a woman. But
+doc answered right away after I gave his number and said he'd be here
+in twenty minutes. He sure can run his car when he has a clear road at
+night."
+
+"Bob," whispered Betty, beginning to tremble, "I--I guess maybe I am
+afraid to go back to the house. Let's sit on the bank at the head of
+the lane and wait for Doctor Guerin. He'll take us in the car. Mr.
+Peabody won't dare do anything with a third person around."
+
+"Sure we will," agreed Bob. "It's fine and cool out here, isn't it?
+Wonder why it can't be like this in the daytime."
+
+They walked back to the lane, cross-lots, and sat down under a
+thorn-apple tree. Betty tucked her gown cosily around her feet and
+sat close to Bob, prepared to watch the stars and await quietly
+the doctor's coming. Then, to her astonishment as much as to Bob's
+consternation, she began to cry. She could not stop crying. And after
+she had cried a few minutes she began to laugh. She laughed and sobbed
+and could not stop herself, and in short, for the first time in her
+life, Betty had a case of hysterics.
+
+It was all very foolish, of course, and when Doctor Guerin found them
+there in the road at half-past two in the morning, he scolded them both
+soundly.
+
+"I gave you credit for more sense, Bob," said the doctor curtly, as he
+helped Betty into the machine. "You should have left Betty with Mrs.
+Keppler over night, or at least taken her straight home. If she hasn't
+a heavy cold to pay for this it won't be your fault. I never heard of
+anything quite so senseless!"
+
+"I wasn't going to stay with the Kepplers!" retorted Betty with vigor.
+"I don't know them at all, and I hadn't anything to wear down to
+breakfast! 'Sides there is Mrs. Peabody dreadfully sick with no one to
+help her and Bob has a festered finger. He had a high temperature this
+afternoon."
+
+"I'll look at the finger," promised Doctor Guerin grimly. "Don't let
+me have to hunt for you, either, young man; no hiding out of sight
+when you're wanted. And, Betty, you go to bed. I'll get Mrs. Peabody
+comfortable and give her something so that she'll sleep till I can
+send some one out from town. You can't nurse her and run the house,
+you know. Your Uncle Dick would come up and shoot us all. Go to bed
+immediately, and you'll be ready to help us in the morning."
+
+They had reached the house and Betty followed the doctor's orders.
+Every one obeyed Doctor Guerin. Even Mr. Peabody, summoned from the
+barn, though he was surly and far from pleasant, brought hot water and
+a teaspoon and a tumbler at his bidding. Mrs. Peabody had had these
+attacks before, and when she had taken the medicine was soon relieved.
+Doctor Guerin stayed with her till she fell asleep and then went down
+to the kitchen, taking the unwilling Bob with him. The cut finger was
+lanced and dressed and strict instructions issued that in two days Bob
+was to present himself at the doctor's office to have the dressing
+changed.
+
+"And you needn't assume that obstinate look," said the doctor, who
+watched him closely. "If you're so afraid you won't be able to pay me,
+we'll drive a bargain. You recollect that odd little wooden charm you
+made for Norma last summer? Well, the girls at boarding school have
+'gone crazy,' to quote my daughter, over the trinket, and one of them
+offered her a dollar for it. Carve me a couple more, when you have
+time, and that will make us square. The girls were wondering the other
+day if you could do more."
+
+"I'll make six----" Bob was beginning radiantly, when the doctor
+stopped him.
+
+"You will not," he said positively. "One dollar is your price, and two
+of them will fully meet your obligations to me. If you can be dog-gone
+businesslike, so can I."
+
+Doctor Guerin drove over again in the morning, bringing a tall
+raw-boned red-haired Irish-woman who looked as though she were able to
+protect herself from any insult or injury, real or fancied. Wapley and
+Lieson were pitiably in awe of her, and Mr. Peabody simply shriveled
+before her belligerent eye. She was to stay, said the doctor, for a
+week at least and as much longer as Mrs. Peabody needed her.
+
+"Did you see her spreading the butter on her bread?" demanded Bob in a
+whisper, meeting Betty on the kitchen doorstep after the first dinner
+Mrs. O'Hara had prepared.
+
+"Did you see Mr. Peabody?" returned Betty, in a twitter of delight. "I
+was afraid to look at him, or I should have laughed. She tells me to
+'run off, child, and play; young things should be outdoors all day,'
+and she does a barrel of work. Mrs. Peabody declares she is living like
+a queen, with her meals served up to her. Poor soul, she doesn't know
+what it means to have some one wait on her."
+
+Bob dared not stay away from Doctor Guerin's office; and indeed, after
+receiving the order for the wooden charms, he was willing to go. It was
+understood that he was to begin his carving as soon as the finger had
+healed, and Betty was interested in the little trinket he brought back
+with him to serve as a guide.
+
+"Did you really make that, Bob?" she cried in surprise. "Why, it's
+beautiful--such an odd shape and so beautifully stained. You must be
+ever so clever with your fingers. I believe, if you had some paints,
+you could paint designs and perhaps sell a lot of them to a city shop.
+Girls would just love to have them to wear on chains and cords."
+
+Bob was immediately fired with ambition to make some money, and indeed
+he could evolve marvelous and quaint little charms with no more
+elaborate tools than an old knife and a bit of sandpaper. He had an
+instinctive knowledge of the different grains, and the wood he picked
+up in the woodshed, carefully selecting smooth satiny bits.
+
+So all unknown to the Peabodys, Bob in his leisure time began to
+carve curious treasures, and with his carving to dream boyish dreams
+that lifted him out of the dreary present and carried him far away
+from Bramble Farm to big cities and open prairies, to freedom and
+opportunity.
+
+And Betty, who sometimes read aloud to him as he carved and sometimes
+sewed, sitting beside him, began to dream dreams too. Always of a
+home somewhere with Uncle Dick, a real home in which there should be
+a fireplace and an extra chair for Bob. For your girl dreamer always
+plans for her friends and for their happiness, and she seldom dreams
+for herself alone.
+
+So July with its heat and thunderstorms ran into August.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+AN OMINOUS QUARREL
+
+
+MRS. O'HARA went back to Glenside at the end of ten days, leaving Mrs.
+Peabody well enough to be about, though the doctor had cautioned her
+repeatedly not to overdo. Doctor Guerin came for Mrs. O'Hara in his
+car, and it was to be his last visit unless he was sent for again.
+Bob's finger had healed, and he was hard at work at his carving in
+spare moments.
+
+"Norma hopes you will come over to see her soon," said Doctor Guerin
+to Betty, as he was leaving. "She and Alice have their heads full of
+boarding school. By the way, Betty, what do you intend to do about
+school?"
+
+"Well, I keep hoping Uncle Dick will write. It's been three weeks since
+I've had any kind of letter," answered Betty. She had long ago told
+the doctor about her uncle and the reasons that led to her coming to
+Bramble Farm. "When he wrote he was in a town where there were only six
+houses and no hotel. He must come East soon, and then he will receive
+my letters and send for me. I'm sure I could go to school and keep
+house for him, too."
+
+The car with the doctor and his convincing personality and Mrs. O'Hara
+and her quick tongue and heavy hand were hardly out of sight, before
+Mr. Peabody assumed command of his household. He had been chafing under
+the rule of that "red-haired female," as he designated the capable
+Irish-woman, and now he was bound to make the most of his restored
+power.
+
+"Gee, he sure is a driver," whispered the perspiring Bob, as Betty came
+down to the field where the boy was cultivating corn. Betty had brought
+a pail of water and a dipper, and Bob drank gratefully.
+
+"No, don't give the horse any," he interposed, as Betty seemed about
+to hold the pail out to the sorrel who looked around with patient,
+pleading eyes. "He'll have to wait till noon. 'Tisn't good to water
+a horse when he's working, anyway. Put the pail under that tree and
+it'll keep cool. Lieson and Wapley go over to the spring when they're
+thirsty, but Peabody said he'd whale me if he caught me leaving the
+cultivator."
+
+"The mean old thing!" Betty could hardly find a word to express her
+indignation.
+
+"Oh, it's all in the day's work," returned Bob philosophically. "What
+are you doing?"
+
+"Hanging out clothes for Mrs. Peabody. She's getting another basketful
+ready now. She would wash, and that's as much as she'll let me do to
+help her, though of course when she irons I can be useful. I don't
+think she ought to get up and go to washing, but you can't stop her."
+
+"Having a woman come to wash about killed the old man," chuckled Bob,
+starting the horse as he saw Mr. Peabody climbing stiffly over the
+fence. "Thanks for the water, Betty."
+
+Betty had no wish to meet her host, for whom another check had come
+that morning from her uncle's lawyer. Betty herself was out of money,
+Uncle Dick having sent no letter for three weeks and apparently having
+made no provision to bridge the gap.
+
+She hung out clothes till dinner time, and then helped put the boiled
+dinner on the table in the hot, steamy kitchen. Wapley and Lieson ate
+in silence, and Bob found a chance to whisper to Betty that he thought
+there was "something doing" between them and their employer.
+
+Whatever this something was, there were no further developments till
+after supper. Peabody got up from the table and lurched out to the
+kitchen porch to sit on the top step, as was his invariable custom.
+He was too mean, his men said, to smoke a pipe, though he did chew
+tobacco. Bob had already taken the milk pails and gone to the barn.
+
+As Mrs. Peabody and Betty finished the dishes, Wapley and Lieson came
+downstairs, dressed in their good clothes, and went out on the porch
+where Mr. Peabody sat silently.
+
+"Can you let me have a couple of dollars to-night?" asked Lieson
+civilly. "Jim and me's going over to town for a few hours."
+
+"You'll get no money from me," was the surly answer. "Fooling away your
+time and money Saturday night ought to be enough, without using the
+middle of the week for such extravagance. Anyway, you know well enough
+I never pay out in advance."
+
+There was an angry murmur from Wapley.
+
+"Who's asking you for money in advance?" he snarled. "Lieson and me's
+both got money coming to us, and you know it. You pay us right up to
+the jot to-night or we quit!"
+
+Peabody was quite unmoved. He stood up, leaning against a porch post,
+his hands in his pockets.
+
+"You can quit, and good riddance to you," he drawled. "But you won't
+get a cent out of me. You overdrew, both of you, last Saturday, and
+there's nothing coming to you till a week from this Saturday."
+
+The men were a little confused, neither accustomed to reckoning without
+the aid of pencil and paper, but Wapley held doggedly to his argument.
+
+"We quit anyway," he announced with more dignity than Betty thought
+he possessed. She and Mrs. Peabody were listening nervously at the
+window, both afraid of what the quarrel might lead to. "You go pack our
+suitcases, Lieson, and I will figure up what he owes us. Never again do
+we work for a man who cheats."
+
+Peabody leaned up against his post and chewed tobacco reflectively,
+while Wapley, tongue in cheek, struggled with a stub of pencil and a
+bit of brown wrapping paper.
+
+"There's twenty-five dollars coming to us," he announced. "Twelve and a
+half apiece. Pay us, and we go."
+
+"I don't know about the going, but I know there won't be any paying
+done," sneered Peabody, just as Lieson with the two heavy suitcases
+staggered through the door and Bob with his two foaming pails of milk
+came up the steps.
+
+Bob put down the milk pails to listen, and Wapley took a step toward
+Mr. Peabody, his face working convulsively.
+
+"You cheater!" he gasped. "You miserable sneak! You've held back money
+all season, just to keep us working through harvest. If I had a gun I'd
+shoot you!"
+
+The man was in a terrible rage, and Betty wondered how Mr. Peabody
+could face him so calmly. Suddenly she saw something glitter in his
+hand.
+
+"I've got my pistol right here," he said, raising his hand to wave
+the blunt-nosed revolver toward Wapley. "I'll give you two just three
+minutes to get off this place. Go on--I said go!"
+
+Wapley whirled about and saw the milk pails. He seized one in either
+hand, raised them high above his head and dashed the contents furiously
+over Bob, Mr. Peabody, the steps and the porch impartially, sprinkling
+himself and Lieson liberally, too.
+
+"I never knew how much milk those cows gave," Bob said later. "Seems
+like there must have been a regular ocean let loose."
+
+Mr. Peabody was furious and very likely would have fired, but Bob put
+out his foot and tripped him, though he managed to pass the matter off
+as an accident. Wapley and Lieson trudged slowly up the lane, carrying
+the heavy cheap leather suitcases. Betty watched them as far as she
+could see them, feeling inexpressibly sorry for the two who had worked
+through the long hot summer and were now leaving an unpleasant place
+with what she feared was only a too well-founded grievance.
+
+"Some of you women," Peabody included Betty in the magnificent gesture,
+"get to work out there and clean up the milk. There's several pounds of
+butter lost, thanks to those no-'count fools. I'm going after my gun."
+
+"Gun?" faltered Mrs. Peabody.
+
+"Yes, gun," snapped her husband. "I don't suppose it occurs to you
+those idiots may take it into their heads to come back and burn the
+barns? Bob and me will sit up all night and try to save the cattle, at
+least."
+
+Bob was furious at the idea of playing lookout all night, and he was
+in the frame of mind by early morning where he probably would have
+cheerfully supplied any arson-plotters with the necessary match. But
+nothing happened, and very cross and sleepy, he and Mr. Peabody came in
+to breakfast as usual.
+
+Betty, too, had not slept well, having wakened and pattered to the
+window many times to see if the barns were blazing. Indeed, if Lieson
+and Wapley had deliberately planned to upset the Peabody family, they
+could not have succeeded better.
+
+Bob made up his lost sleep the next night, but his appetite came in for
+Mr. Peabody's criticism.
+
+"You seem to be aiming to eat me out of house and home," he observed at
+dinner a day or two later. "You don't have to eat everything in sight,
+you know. There'll be another meal later."
+
+Bob blushed violently, not because of the reproof, for he was used
+to that, but because of the public disgrace. Betty, the cause of
+his distress, was as uncomfortable as he, and she experienced an
+un-Christianlike impulse to throw the dish of beans at the head of her
+host.
+
+The following day Bob did not come in to dinner, and Betty, thinking
+perhaps that he had not heard Mrs. Peabody call, rose from the table
+with the intention of calling him a second time.
+
+"Where are you going?" demanded Mr. Peabody suspiciously.
+
+"To call Bob to dinner," said Betty. "I'm afraid he didn't hear Mrs.
+Peabody. The meat will be all cold."
+
+"You sit down, and don't take things on yourself that are none of your
+concern," commanded Mr. Peabody shortly. "Bob isn't here for dinner,
+because I told him not to come. He's getting too big to thrash, and the
+only way to bring him to terms is to cut down his food. Living too high
+makes him difficult to handle. This morning he flatly disobeyed me, but
+I guess he'll learn not to do that again. Well, Miss, don't swallow
+your impudence. Out with it!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+IN THE NAME OF DISCIPLINE
+
+
+BETTY opened her mouth to speak hotly, then closed it again. Argument
+was useless, and the distressed expression on Mrs. Peabody's face
+reminded the girl that it takes two to make a quarrel.
+
+Dinner was finished in silence, and as soon as he had finished Mr.
+Peabody strode off to the barn.
+
+A plan that had been forming in Betty's mind took concrete form, and as
+she helped clear the table she did not carry all the food down cellar
+to the swinging shelf, but made several trips to one of the window
+sills. Then, after the last dish was wiped and Mrs. Peabody had gone
+upstairs to lie down, for her strength was markedly slow in returning,
+Betty slipped out to the cellar window, reached in and got her plate,
+and, carefully assuring herself that Mr. Peabody was nowhere in sight,
+flew down the road to where she knew Bob was trimming underbrush.
+
+"Gee, but you're a good little pal, Betty," said the boy gratefully,
+as she came up to him. "I'm about starved to death, that's a fact."
+
+"There isn't much there--just bread and potatoes and some corn," said
+Betty hurriedly. "Eat it quick, Bob. I didn't dare touch the meat,
+because it would be noticed at supper. Seems to me we have less to eat
+than ever."
+
+"Can't you see it's because Wapley and Lieson are gone?" demanded
+Bob, his mouth full. "We're lucky to get anything at all to eat. Your
+cupboard all bare?"
+
+"Haven't a single can of anything, nor one box of crackers," Betty
+announced dolefully. "The worst of it is, I haven't a cent of money.
+What can be the reason Uncle Dick doesn't write?"
+
+"Oh, you'll hear before very long. Jumping around the way he does, he
+can't write a letter every day," returned Bob absently.
+
+He handed back the plate to Betty and picked up his scythe.
+
+"Don't let old Peabody catch you with that plate," he warned her. "He's
+got a fierce grouch on to-day, because the road commissioners notified
+him to get this trimming done. He's so mean he hates to take any time
+off the farm to do road work."
+
+Betty went happily back to the house, forgetting to be cautious in
+her satisfaction of getting food to Bob, and at the kitchen door she
+walked plump into Mr. Peabody.
+
+"So that's what you've been up to!" he remarked unpleasantly. "Sneaking
+food out to that no-'count, lazy boy! I'll teach you to be so free with
+what isn't yours and to upset my discipline. Set that plate on the
+table!"
+
+Betty obeyed, rather frightened.
+
+"Now you come along with me." And, grasping her arm by the elbow, Mr.
+Peabody marched her upstairs to her own room very much as though she
+were a rebellious prisoner he had captured.
+
+"Sit down in that chair, and don't let me hear a word out of you," said
+the farmer, pushing her none too gently into the single chair the room
+contained.
+
+From his pocket he drew a handful of nails, and, using the door weight
+as a hammer, he proceeded deliberately to nail up the window that
+opened on to the porch roof.
+
+"Now there'll be no running away," he commented grimly, when he had
+finished. "Give kids what's coming to 'em, and they flare up and try to
+wriggle out of it. You'll stay right here and do a little thinking till
+I'm ready to tell you different. It's time you learned who's running
+this house."
+
+He went out, and Betty heard him turn a key in the lock as he closed
+the door.
+
+"So he's carried a key all the time!" cried the girl furiously. "I
+thought there wasn't any for that door! And the idea of speaking to me
+as he did--the miserable old curmudgeon!"
+
+She supposed she would have to stay locked in till it suited Mr.
+Peabody to release her, and quite likely she would have nothing to eat.
+If he could punish Bob in that fashion, there was no reason to think he
+intended to be any more lenient with her.
+
+"Even bread and water would be better than nothing at all," said Betty
+aloud.
+
+The sound of wheels attracted her attention, and she peered through
+the window to see Mr. Peabody in conversation with a stranger who had
+driven in with a horse and buggy.
+
+Mrs. Peabody was stirring, and presently Betty heard her go downstairs,
+and a few minutes later she came out into the yard ready to feed her
+chickens.
+
+"Don't let the hens out in the morning," ordered Mr. Peabody, meeting
+her directly under Betty's open window. The girl knelt down to listen,
+angry and resentful. "Ryerson was just here, and I've sold the whole
+yard to him. I want to try Wyandottes next. He'll be over about ten in
+the morning, and it won't hurt to keep them in the henhouses till then."
+
+"Oh, Joseph!" Mrs. Peabody's voice was reproachful. "I've just got
+those hens ready to be good layers this fall. You don't know how I've
+worked over 'em, and culled the best and sprayed those dirty old houses
+and kept 'em clean and disinfected. I don't want to try a new breed. I
+want a little of the money these will earn this winter."
+
+"Well, this happens to be my farm and my livestock," replied her
+husband cruelly. "If I see a chance to improve the strain, I'm going
+to take it. You just do as I say, and don't let the hens out to-morrow
+morning."
+
+His wife dragged herself out to the chicken yard, her brief insistence
+having completely collapsed. The girl listening wondered how any woman
+could give in so easily to such palpable injustice.
+
+"I suppose she doesn't care," thought Betty, stumbling on the heart of
+the matter blindly. "If she did have her own way, that wouldn't change
+him; he'd still be mean and small and not very honest and she'd have to
+despise him just as much as ever. Things wouldn't make up to her for
+the kind of man her husband is."
+
+Supper time came and went, and the odor of frying potatoes came up to
+Betty in delicious whiffs, though she had been known to turn up her
+little freckled nose when this dish was passed to her.
+
+About eight o'clock Mr. Peabody unlocked the door and set inside a
+plate of very dry bread and a small pitcher of water, locking the
+door after him. Betty slid the bolt angrily and this gave her some
+satisfaction. She ate her bread and water and listened for a while at
+the window, hoping to hear Bob's whistle. But nothing disturbed the
+velvety silence of the night, and by half-past nine Betty was undressed
+and in bed, asleep.
+
+She woke early, as usual, dressed and unbolted her door, hungry enough
+to be humble. But no bread and water arrived.
+
+The rattle of milk pails and the sounds which indicated that breakfast
+was in progress ceased after a while and the house seemed unusually
+quiet. Then, just as Betty decided to try tying the bedclothes into a
+rope and lowering herself from the window, she heard Bob's familiar
+whistle.
+
+"Hello, Princess Golden Hair!" Bob grinned up at her from the old
+shelter of the lilac bush. "Let down your hair, and I'll send you up
+some breakfast."
+
+This was an old joke with them, because Betty's hair was dark, and
+while thick and smooth was not especially long.
+
+"I want you to help me get out of here!" hissed Betty furiously. "I
+won't stay locked in here like a naughty little child. Can't you get me
+a ladder or _something_, Bob, and not stand there like an idiot?"
+
+"Gee, you are hungry," said Bob with commiseration. "Dangle me down a
+string, Princess, and I'll send you up some bread with butter on it. I
+helped myself to both. We can talk while you eat."
+
+Betty managed to find a strong, long string, and she threw one end down
+to Bob, who tied the packet to it; then Betty hauled it up and fell
+upon the food ravenously.
+
+"I got you into this pickle," said Bob regretfully. "Old Peabody licked
+me for good measure last night, or I would have been round at this
+window trying to talk to you. Awfully sorry, Betty. It must be hot,
+too, with that other window nailed up."
+
+"Do you mean he whipped you?" gasped Betty, horrified. "Why? And what
+did you do yesterday?"
+
+"Oh, yesterday I wouldn't back him up in a lie he tried to tell the
+road commissioner," said Bob cheerfully. "And last night I sassed him
+when I heard what he'd done to you. So we had an old-fashioned session
+in the woodshed. But that's nothing for you to worry over."
+
+"Where is he now?" asked Betty fearfully.
+
+"Gone over to Kepplers to see about buying more chickens," answered
+Bob. "Mrs. Peabody has gone to salt the sheep, and I'm supposed to be
+cleaning harness in the barn."
+
+"Get me a ladder--now's my time!" planned Betty swiftly. "I could bob
+my hair and you might lend me a pair of overalls, Bob. For I simply
+won't come back here. It's too far to jump to the ground, or I should
+have tried it. Hurry up, and bring me a ladder."
+
+"I'll get a ladder on one condition," announced Bob stubbornly. "You
+must promise to go to Doctor Guerin's. Not cutting your hair and
+wandering around the country in boy's clothes. Promise?"
+
+Betty shook her head obstinately.
+
+"All right, you stay where you are," decreed Bob. "I have to go to
+Laurel Grove, anyway, and I ought to be hitching up right now."
+
+He turned away.
+
+"All right, I promise," capitulated Betty, "Hurry with the ladder
+before Mr. Peabody comes back and catches us."
+
+Bob ran to the barn and was back in a few minutes with a long ladder.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE ESCAPE
+
+
+BETTY capered exultantly when she was on the ground.
+
+"I packed my things last night," she informed Bob. "If Mr. Peabody
+isn't too mean, he'll keep the trunk for me and send it when I write
+him to. Here, I'll help you carry back the ladder."
+
+"Take your sweater and hat," advised the practical Bob, pointing to
+these articles lying on a chair on the porch where Betty had left them
+the afternoon before. "You don't want to travel too light. I think
+we'll have a storm before noon."
+
+Betty helped carry the ladder back to the barn and put it in place.
+Then she hung around watching Bob harness up the sorrel to the
+dilapidated old wagon preparatory to driving to Laurel Grove, a town to
+the east of Glenside.
+
+"I'd kind of like to say good-bye to Mrs. Peabody," ventured Betty,
+trying to fix a buckle.
+
+"Well, you can't. That would get us both in trouble," returned Bob
+shortly. "There! you've dawdled till here comes the old man. Scoot out
+the side door and keep close to the hedge. If I overtake you before
+you get to the crossroads I'll give you a lift. Doc Guerin will know
+what you ought to do."
+
+Her heart quaking, Betty scuttled for the narrow side door and crept
+down the lane, keeping close to the osage orange hedge that made a
+thick screen for the fence. Evidently she was not seen, for she reached
+the main road safely, hearing no hue and cry behind her.
+
+"So you haven't started?" Peabody greeted the somewhat flustered Bob,
+entering the barn and looking, for him, almost amiable. "Well, hitch
+the horse, and go over to Kepplers. He wants you to help him catch a
+crate of chickens. The horse can wait and you can come home at twelve
+and go to Laurel Grove after dinner."
+
+Bob would have preferred to start on his errand at once, so that he
+might be at a safe distance when Betty's absence should be discovered;
+but he hoped that Peabody might not go near her room till afternoon,
+and he knew Mrs. Peabody was too thoroughly cowed to try to communicate
+with Betty, fond as she was of her.
+
+"I'll take a chance," thought Bob. "Anyway, the worst he can do to me
+is to kill me."
+
+This not especially cheerful observation had seen Bob through many
+a tight place in the past, and now he tied the patient horse under
+a shady tree and went whistling over to the Keppler farm to chase
+chickens for a hot morning's work.
+
+"Oh, Bob!" To his amazement, Mrs. Peabody came running to meet him when
+he came back at noon to get his dinner. "Oh, Bob!"
+
+Poor Bob felt a wobbling sensation in his knees.
+
+"Yes?" he asked shakily. "Yes, what is it?"
+
+"The most awful thing has happened!" Mrs. Peabody wiped the
+perspiration from her forehead with her apron. "The most awful thing! I
+never saw Joseph in such a temper, never! He swore till I thought he'd
+shrivel up the grass! And before Mr. Ryerson, too!"
+
+Bob's face cleared.
+
+"Did he try to cheat Ryerson?" he asked eagerly. "That is, er--I mean
+did he think Ryerson was trying to cheat him?"
+
+"Cheat?" repeated Mrs. Peabody, sitting down on an old tree stump to
+get her breath. "No one said anything about cheating. I don't know
+exactly how to tell you, Bob. Betty has gone and she's taken all the
+chickens with her!"
+
+Bob opened his eyes and mouth to their widest extent. Chickens! Betty!
+The words danced through his brain stupidly.
+
+"I don't wonder you look like that," said Mrs. Peabody. "I was in a
+daze myself."
+
+"But she couldn't have taken the chickens!" argued Bob, restraining a
+mad desire to laugh. "How could she? And what would she want with them?"
+
+"Well, of course, I don't mean she took them with her," admitted Mrs.
+Peabody. "But she was mad at Joseph, you know, for locking her in her
+room, and he says she's just driven the hens off to the woods to spite
+him."
+
+Bob walked out to the poultry yard, followed by Mrs. Peabody. The doors
+of the henhouses were flung wide open, and there was not a fowl in
+sight.
+
+"When did you find it out?" he asked.
+
+"When Mr. Ryerson drove in for the hens," answered Mrs. Peabody.
+"Joseph went out with him to help him bag 'em, and the minute he opened
+the door he gave a yell. I was making beds, but I heard him. The way he
+carried on, Bob, was a perfect scandal. I never heard such talk, never!"
+
+"Where is he now?" said Bob briefly.
+
+"He's gone over to the woods, hunting for the hens," replied Mrs.
+Peabody. "He wouldn't stop for dinner, or even to take the horse. He
+says you're to start for Laurel Grove, soon as you've eaten. He's going
+to search the woods and then follow the Glenside road, looking for
+Betty."
+
+Bob did not worry over the possibility of Betty being overtaken by the
+angry farmer. He counted on her getting a lift to Glenside, since the
+road was well traveled in the morning, and probably she was at this
+very moment sitting down to lunch with the doctor's family. He was
+puzzled about the loss of the chickens, and curious to know how the
+Peabodys had discovered Betty's escape.
+
+He and Mrs. Peabody sat down to dinner, and, partly because of her
+excitement and partly because in her husband's absence she dared to be
+more generous, Bob made an excellent meal. Over his second piece of pie
+he ventured to ask when they had found out that Betty was not in her
+room.
+
+"Oh, Joseph thought of her as soon as he missed the chickens," answered
+Mrs. Peabody. "I never thought she would be spiteful, but I declare
+it's queer, anyway you look at it. Joseph flew up to her room and
+unlocked the door, and she wasn't there! Do you suppose she could have
+jumped from the window and hurt herself?"
+
+Bob thought it quite possible.
+
+"Well, I don't," said Mrs. Peabody shrewdly. "However, I'm not asking
+questions, so there's no call for you to get all red. Joseph seemed to
+think she had jumped out, and he's furious because he didn't nail up
+both windows, though how he expected Betty to breathe in that case is
+more than I can see."
+
+Bob was relieved to learn that apparently Mr. Peabody did not connect
+him with Betty's disappearance. He finished his dinner and went out to
+do the few noon chores. Then he started on the drive to Laurel Grove.
+
+"Looks like a storm," he muttered to himself, as he noted the heavy
+white clouds piling up toward the south. "I wish to goodness, old
+Peabody would spend a few cents and get an awning for the seat of this
+wagon. Last time I was caught in a storm I got soaked, and my clothes
+didn't dry overnight. I'll be hanged if I'm going to get wet this
+time--I'll drive in somewhere first."
+
+Bob's predictions of a storm proved correct, and before he had gone two
+miles he heard distant thunder.
+
+With the first splash of rain Bob hurried the sorrel, keeping his eyes
+open for a mail-box that would mark the home of some farmer where he
+might drive into the barn and wait till the shower was over.
+
+He came within sight of some prosperous looking red barns before the
+rain was heavy, and drove into a narrow lane just as the first vivid
+streak of lightning ripped a jagged rent in the black clouds.
+
+"Come right on in," called out the farmer, who had seen him coming
+and thrown open the double doors. "Looks like it might be a hummer,
+doesn't it? There's a ring there in the wall where you can tie your
+horse."
+
+"He stands without hitching," grinned Bob. "Only too glad to get the
+chance. Gee, that wind feels good!"
+
+The farmer brought out a couple of boxes and turned them up to serve as
+seats.
+
+"I like to watch a storm," he observed. "The house is all locked
+up--women-folk gone to an all-day session of the sewing circle--or I'd
+take you in. We'd get soaked walking that short distance, though. You
+don't live around here, do you?"
+
+"Bramble Farm. I'm a poorhouse rat the Peabodys took to bring up."
+
+He had seldom used that phrase since Betty's coming, but it always
+irritated him to try to explain who he was and where he came from.
+
+"I was bound out myself," retorted the farmer quickly. "Knocked around
+a good bit, but now I own this ninety acres, free and clear. You've got
+just as good a chance as the boy with too much done for him. Don't you
+forget that, young man."
+
+They were silent for a few moments, watching the play of lightning
+through the wide doors.
+
+"Didn't two men named Wapley and Lieson used to work for Peabody?"
+asked the farmer abruptly. "I thought so," as Bob nodded. "They were
+around the other day asking for jobs."
+
+"Are you sure?" asked Bob. "I thought they had left the state. Lieson,
+I know, had folks across the line."
+
+"Well, they may have gone now," was the reply. "But I know that two
+days ago they wanted work. I've a couple of men, all I can use just
+now, but I sent them on to a neighbor. They looked strong, and good
+farm help is mighty scarce."
+
+Bob waited till the rain had stopped and the clouds were lifting, then
+drove on, thanking the friendly farmer for his cordiality.
+
+"Don't be calling yourself names, but plan what you want to make of
+yourself," was that individual's parting advice.
+
+"If I had a nickel," said Bob to himself, urging the sorrel to a brisk
+trot, for the time spent in waiting must be made up, "I'd telephone to
+Betty from Laurel Grove. But pshaw! I know she must be all right."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+STORMBOUND ON THE WAY
+
+
+BOB would not have dismissed his misgivings so contentedly had he been
+able to see Betty just at that moment.
+
+When she shook the dust of Bramble Farm from her feet, which she
+did literally at the boundary line on the main road, to the great
+delight of two curious robins and a puzzled chipmunk, she said firmly
+that it was forever. As she tramped along the road she kept looking
+back, hoping to hear the rattle of wheels and to see Bob and the
+sorrel coming after her. But she reached the crossroads without being
+overtaken.
+
+Years ago some thoughtful person had taken the trouble to build a
+rude little seat around the four sides of the guidepost where the
+road to Laurel Grove and Glenside crossed, and in a nearby field was
+a boarded-up spring of ice-cold water, so that travelers, on foot and
+in motor-cars and wagons, made it a point to rest for a few minutes
+and refresh themselves there. Betty was a trifle embarrassed to find a
+group of men loitering about the guide-post when she came up to it.
+They were all strangers to her, but with the ready friendliness of the
+country, they nodded respectfully.
+
+"Want to sit down a minute, Miss?" asked a gray-haired man civilly,
+standing up to make room for her. "Didn't expect to see so many idle
+farmers about on a clear morning, did you?"
+
+Betty shook her head, smiling.
+
+"I won't sit down, thank you," she said in her clear girlish voice.
+"I'll just get a drink of water and go on; I want to reach Glenside
+before noon."
+
+"Glenside road's closed," announced one of the younger men, shortly.
+
+"Closed!" echoed Betty. "Oh, no! I have to get there, I tell you."
+
+Her quick, frightened glance fell on the man who had first spoken to
+her, and she appealed to him.
+
+"The road isn't closed, is it?" she asked breathlessly. "That isn't why
+you're all here?"
+
+"Now, now, there's nothing to worry your head about," answered the
+gray-haired farmer soothingly. "Jerry, here, is always a bit abrupt
+with his tongue. As a matter of fact, the road is closed; but if you
+don't mind a longer walk, you can make a detour and get to Glenside
+easily enough."
+
+Betty gazed at him uncertainly.
+
+"You see," he explained, "King Charles, the prize bull at Greenfields,
+the big dairy farm, got out this morning, and we suppose he is roaming
+up and down between here and Glenside. He's worth a mint of money,
+so they don't want to shoot him, and the dairy has offered a good
+reward for his safe return. He's got a famous temper, and no one would
+deliberately set out to meet him unarmed; so we're posted here to warn
+folks. A few automobiles took a chance and went on, but the horses and
+wagons and foot passengers take the road to Laurel Grove. You turn off
+to the left at the first road and follow that and it brings you into
+Glenside at the north end of town. You'll be all right."
+
+"A girl shouldn't try to make it alone," objected another one of the
+group. "You take my advice, Sis, and wait till your father or brother
+can take you over in the buggy. Suppose you met a camp of Gypsies?"
+
+"Oh, I'm not afraid," Betty assured him. "That is, not of people. But I
+don't know what in the world I should do if I met an angry bull. I'll
+take the detour, and everything will be all right. I'm used to walking."
+
+The men repeated the directions again, to make sure she understood
+clearly. Then Betty drank a cup of the fresh, cold spring water, and
+bravely set off on the new road.
+
+The gray-haired man came running after her.
+
+"If it should storm," he cried, coming up with her, "don't run under
+a tree. Better stay out in the rain till you reach a house. You'll be
+safe in any farmhouse."
+
+He meant safe as far as the kind of people she would meet were
+concerned, but Betty, who had never in her life feared any one, thought
+he referred to protection from the elements. She thanked him, and
+trudged on.
+
+"I certainly am hungry," she said, after a half hour of tramping. "Now
+I know how Bob feels without a cent in his pocket. I'll have to ask
+Doctor Guerin for some money. I can't get along without a nickel. Uncle
+Dick must be awfully busy, or else he's sick. Otherwise he would surely
+let me hear from him."
+
+When she came to an old apple orchard where the trees drooped over a
+crumbling stone wall, Betty had no scruples about filling the pockets
+and sleeves of her sweater with the apples that lay on the ground. Bob
+had told her that portions of trees that grew over the roadside were
+public property, and she intended to explain to the farmer, if she met
+him, how she had come to carry off some of his fruit. But she met no
+one and saw no house, and presently the rumble of distant thunder put
+all thoughts of apples out of her mind.
+
+"My goodness!" She looked at the mountain of white clouds piling up
+with something like panic. "I haven't even come to the road that turns,
+and I just know this will be a hard thunderstorm. Mrs. Peabody said
+last week that the August storms are terrors. I'll run, and perhaps
+I'll come to a house."
+
+Holding her sweater stuffed with apples in her arms, and jamming
+her hat firmly on her head, Betty flew down the road, bouncing over
+stones, jumping over, without a shudder, a mashed black-snake flattened
+out in the road by some passing car, and, in defiance of all speed
+regulations, refusing to slow up at a sharp turn in the road ahead. She
+took it at top speed, and as she rounded the curve the first drops of
+rain splashed her nose. But her flight was rewarded.
+
+A long, low, comfortable-looking farmhouse sat back in an overgrown
+garden on one side of the road.
+
+"D. Smith," read Betty on the mail box at the gate. "Well, Mrs. D.
+Smith, I hope you're at home, and I hope you'll ask me to come in and
+rest till the storm's over. Shall I knock at the back or the front
+door?"
+
+A vivid flash of lightning sent her scurrying across the road and up
+the garden path. As she lifted the black iron knocker on the front door
+a peal of thunder rattled the loose casements of the windows.
+
+Betty lifted the knocker and let it fall three times before she decided
+that either Mrs. D. Smith did not welcome callers at the front of her
+house, or else she could not hear the knocker from where she was. But a
+prolonged rat-a-tat-tat on the back door produced no further results.
+
+"She may be out getting the poultry in," said Betty to herself,
+recalling how hard Mrs. Peabody worked every time a storm came up.
+"Wonder where the poultry yard is?"
+
+The rain was driving now, and the thunder irritatingly incessant. Betty
+walked to the end of the back porch and stood on her tiptoes trying to
+see the outbuildings. Then, for the first time, she noticed what she
+would surely have seen in one glance at a less exciting time.
+
+There were no outbuildings, only burned and blackened holes in the
+ground! A few loose bricks marked the site of masonry-work, and a
+charred beam or two fallen across the gaps showed only too plainly what
+had been the fate of barns and crib houses.
+
+Betty ran impulsively to a window, and, holding up her hands to shut
+out the light, peered in. Cobwebs, dust and dirt and a few empty tins
+in the sink were the only furniture of the kitchen.
+
+"It's empty!" gasped Betty. "No one lives here! Oh, gracious!"
+
+A great fork of lightning shot across the sky, followed at once by a
+deafening crash of thunder. Far across the field, on the other side of
+the road, Betty saw a tall oak split and fall.
+
+"I'm going in out of this," she decided, "if I have to break a window
+or a lock!"
+
+She leaned her sturdy weight against the wooden door, automatically
+turning the knob without thought of result. The door swung easily
+open--there had been nothing to hinder her walking in--and she tumbled
+in so suddenly that she had difficulty in keeping her feet.
+
+Betty closed the door and looked about her.
+
+The storm shut out, she immediately felt a sense of security, though
+a hasty survey of the three rooms on one side of the hall failed
+to reveal any materials for a fire or a meal, two comforts she was
+beginning to crave. She took an apple from her sweater pocket, and,
+munching that, set out to explore the rooms on the other side of the
+hall.
+
+A curious, yet familiar, noise drew her attention to the front room,
+probably in happier days the parlor of the farmhouse. Peering in
+through the partly open folding doors, Betty saw seven crates of
+chickens!
+
+"Why--how funny!" She was puzzled. "Where could they have come from?
+And what are they doing here? Even if they saved them from the fire,
+they wouldn't be left after all the furniture was moved out."
+
+She went up to the crates and examined them more closely.
+
+"That black rooster is the living image of Mrs. Peabody's," she
+thought, "And the White Leghorns look like hers, too. But, then, I
+suppose all chickens look alike. I never could see how their hen
+mothers told them apart."
+
+Still carrying her sweater with the apples, she wandered upstairs,
+trying to people the vacant, dusty rooms and wondering what had
+happened to those who had dwelt here and where they had gone.
+
+"I wonder if the fire was at night and whether they were terribly
+frightened," she mused. "I should say they were mighty lucky to save
+the house, though perhaps the barns are the most necessary buildings on
+a farm. Why didn't they build them up again, instead of moving out? I
+would."
+
+She was standing in one of the back rooms, and from the window she
+could look down and see what had once been the garden. The drenched
+rosebushes still showed a late blossom or two, and there was a faint
+outline of orderly paths and a tangle of brilliant color where flowers,
+self-sown, struggled to force their way through the choking weeds.
+The drip, drip of the rain sounded dolefully on the tin roof, and a
+cascade ran off at one corner of the house showing where a leader was
+broken. Toward the west the clouds were lifting, though the thunder
+still grumbled angrily.
+
+Betty went through the rather narrow hall and entered a pleasant,
+prettily papered room where a low white rocking chair and a pink sock
+on the floor spoke mutely of the baby whose kingdom had been bounded by
+the wide bay window.
+
+"They forgot the rocker," said Betty, drawing it up to the window and
+resting her elbows on the narrow window ledge. "I hope he was a fat,
+pretty baby," she went on, picking up the sock and holding it in her
+hand. "Is that some one coming down the road?"
+
+It was--two people in fact; and as they drew nearer Betty's eyes almost
+popped out with astonishment. The pair talking together so earnestly,
+completely oblivious of the rain, were Lieson and Wapley, the two men
+who had worked for Mr Peabody! And they were turning in at the path
+guarded by the mail box inscribed "D. Smith."
+
+Betty flew to the door of the room where she sat and drew the bolt.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE CHICKEN THIEVES
+
+
+OVER in one corner of the bay-window room, as Betty had already named
+it, was a black register in the floor, designed to let the warm air
+from a stove in the parlor below heat the bedroom above. Toward this
+Betty crept cautiously, testing each floor board for creaks before she
+trusted her whole weight to it. She reached the register, which was
+open, and was startled at the view it opened up for her. She drew back
+hastily, afraid that she would be discovered.
+
+Lieson and Wapley stood almost squarely under the register, above the
+crates of chickens and looking down on the fowls.
+
+"I began to think you wasn't coming," Lieson said slowly, putting a
+hand on his companion's shoulder to steady himself as he lurched and
+swayed. "I got soaked to the skin waiting for you in those bushes."
+
+"Well, it's some jaunt to Laurel Grove," came Wapley's response. "I got
+a man, though. Coming at ten to-night. There's no moon, and he says he
+can make the run to Petria in six or seven hours, barring tire trouble."
+
+"Does he take us, too?" demanded Lieson. "I'm tired of hanging around
+here. What kind of a truck has he got?"
+
+Wapley was so long in answering that Betty nervously wondered if he
+could have discovered the register. She risked a peep and found that
+both men were absorbed in filling their pipes. These lighted and
+drawing well, Wapley consented to answer his companion's question.
+
+"Got a one-ton truck. Plenty of room under the seat for us. He's kind
+of leery of the constables, 'cause he's been doing a nice little night
+trade between Laurel Grove and Petria carrying one thing and another,
+but he's willing to do the job on shares."
+
+Lieson yawned noisily.
+
+"Wish we had some grub," he observed. "Guess the training we got at
+Peabody's will come in handy if we don't eat again till we sell the
+chickens. Wouldn't you like to have seen the old miser's face when he
+found his chickens were gone?"
+
+So, thought Betty, she had not been mistaken; the black rooster was the
+same one who had been the pride of Mrs. Peabody's heart.
+
+A burst of harsh laughter from Wapley startled her. Leaning forward,
+she could see him stretched out on the floor, his head resting on his
+coat, doubled up to form a pillow.
+
+"What do you know!" he gurgled, the tears standing in his eyes. "Didn't
+I run into Bob Henderson, of all people!"
+
+Lieson was incredulous.
+
+"You're fooling," he said sullenly. "What would Bob be doing in Laurel
+Grove? Unless he was playing ferret! I'd wring his neck with pleasure
+if I thought the old man sent him over to spy."
+
+"Don't worry," counseled Wapley, waving his pipe airily. "The lad
+doesn't hook us up with the missing biddies. They never knew they were
+stolen till ten o'clock this morning. The old man sold 'em to Ryerson,
+and the hen houses stayed shut up till he came to get 'em. Can you beat
+that for luck?"
+
+Both men went off into roars of laughter.
+
+"We needn't have spent the night lifting 'em," said Lieson when he
+could speak. "I hate to lose my night's rest. What did Bob say about
+it? Was the old man mad?"
+
+"'Bout crazy," admitted Wapley gravely. "Bob wasn't home, but the old
+lady told him he carried on somethin' great. Wish we could 'a' heard
+him rave. But, Lieson, you haven't got it all. Betty Gordon's run off,
+and Peabody's doped it out she ran off with the hens!"
+
+The girl in the room above clapped her hand to her mouth. She had
+almost cried out. So Mr. Peabody could accuse her of being a thief! But
+what were the men saying?
+
+"What would the girl do with hens?" propounded Lieson. "Bob think she
+stole 'em?"
+
+"Bob's so close-mouthed," growled Wapley. "But I guess he knows where
+she went all right. He says she had nothing to do with the hens
+disappearing, and I told him I thought he was right! But Peabody
+figures out she was mad and chased 'em into the woods to spite him. And
+he's hunting for her and his hens with fire in his eye."
+
+Lieson knocked the ashes from his pipe and yawned again.
+
+"Wonder what Peabody's got against her now?" he speculated. "For a
+boarder, that kid had a pretty pindling time. Well, if we're going to
+be bumped around in a truck all night, I'll say we ought to take a nap
+while we can get it."
+
+"All right," agreed Wapley. "But I ain't aiming to go on any such trip
+without a bite of supper. The rain's stopped, and I'm going to snooze a
+bit and then go down the road to that farmhouse and see how they feel
+about feeding a poor unfortunate who's starving. I'll milk for 'em for
+a square meal."
+
+Betty, shivering with excitement, crouched on the floor afraid to risk
+moving until they should be asleep. Her one thought was to get away
+from the house and find Bob. Bob would know what to do. Bob would
+get the chickens back to the Peabodys and herself over to the haven
+of Doctor Guerin's house, somehow. Bob would be sorry for Wapley and
+Lieson even if they had turned chicken thieves. If she could only get
+to Bob before he set out for home or if she might meet him on the road,
+everything would be all right, Bob _must_ wait for her.
+
+There were no back stairs to the house, and it required grit to go
+softly down the one flight of stairs and steal past the door of the
+parlor where the two men lay, but Betty set her teeth and did it. Once
+on the porch she put on her hat and sweater, for a cool wind had sprung
+up; and then how she ran!
+
+The road was muddy, and her skirt was splashed before she slowed down
+to gain her breath. Anxiously she scanned the road ahead, wondering if
+there was another way Bob could take to reach Bramble Farm. As usual
+when one is worried, a brand-new torment assailed her. Suppose he
+should take the road to Glenside, that he might stop in to see her! He,
+of course, pictured her safe at the doctor's.
+
+"Want a lift?" drawled a lazy, pleasant voice.
+
+A gawky, blue-eyed boy about Bob Henderson's age beamed at her from a
+dilapidated old buggy. The fat, white horse also seemed to regard her
+benevolently.
+
+"It's sort of muddy," said the boy diffidently. "If you don't mind
+the stuffing on the seat--it's worn through--I can give you a ride to
+Laurel Grove."
+
+Betty accepted thankfully, but she was not very good company, it must
+be confessed, her thoughts being divided between schemes to hasten the
+desultory pace of the fat white horse and wonder as to how she was to
+find Bob in the town.
+
+The fat white horse stopped of his own accord at a pleasant looking
+house on the outskirts of the town, and Betty, in a brown study, was
+suddenly conscious that the boy was waiting for her.
+
+"Oh!" she said in some confusion. "Is this your house? Well, you were
+ever so kind to give me a lift, and I truly thank you!"
+
+She smiled at him and climbed out, and the lad, who had been secretly
+admiring her and wondering what she could be thinking about so
+absorbedly, wished for the tenth time that he had a sister.
+
+Laurel Grove was a bustling country town, a bit livelier than Glenside,
+and Betty, when she had traversed the main street twice, began to be
+aware that curious glances were being cast at her.
+
+"I'd go shopping, I'd do anything, for an excuse to go into every
+store," she thought distractedly, "if only I had a dollar bill! Where
+can Bob be? I can't have missed him!"
+
+There was every reason to think she had missed him, except her
+determined optimism, but after she had been to the drug store and the
+hardware store and the post-office, all more or less public meeting
+places, and found no sign of Bob, Betty began to feel a trifle
+discouraged. Then two men on the curb gave her a clue.
+
+"I've been hanging around all day," declared one, evidently a thrifty
+farmer. "Came over to get some grinding done, and the blame mill
+machinery broke. They just started grinding an hour ago."
+
+So there was a mill, and Bob often had to go to mills for Mr. Peabody.
+Betty did not know why he should have to come so far, but it was quite
+possible that some whim of the master of Bramble Farm had sent him to
+the Laurel Grove mill. Betty stepped up to the farmer and addressed him
+quietly.
+
+"Please, will you tell me where the mill is?" she asked.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+SPREADING THE NET
+
+
+HE was a nice, fatherly kind of person, and he insisted on walking with
+Betty to the corner and pointing out the low roof of the mill down a
+side street.
+
+"No water power, just electricity," he explained. "Give me a water
+mill, every time; this current stuff is mighty unreliable."
+
+Betty thanked him, and hurried down the street. She was sure she saw
+the sorrel tied outside the mill, and when she reached the hitching
+posts, sure enough, there was the familiar old wagon, with some filled
+bags in it, and the drooping, tired old sorrel horse that had come to
+meet her when she stepped from the train at Hagar's Corners.
+
+"Betty! For the love of Mike!" Bob's language was expressive, if not
+elegant.
+
+Betty whirled. She had not seen the boy come down the steps of the mill
+office, and she was totally unprepared to hear his voice.
+
+"Why, Bob!" The unmistakable relief and gladness that shone in her
+tired face brought a little catch to Bob's throat.
+
+To hide it, he spoke gruffly.
+
+"What are you doing here? It's after four o'clock, and I'll get Hail
+Columbia when I get back. Mill's been out of order all day, and I had
+to wait. Haven't you been to Doctor Guerin's?"
+
+"No, not yet." Betty pulled at his sleeve nervously. "Oh, Bob, there's
+so much I must tell you! And after ten o'clock it will be too late. To
+think he thought I stole his old chickens! And where is Petria?"
+
+Bob gazed at her in amazement. This incoherent stream of words meant
+nothing to him.
+
+"Petria?" he repeated, catching at a straw. "Why, Petria's a big city,
+sort of a center for farm products. All the commission houses have home
+offices there. Why?"
+
+"That's where Mr. Peabody's chickens are going," Betty informed him,
+"unless you can think of a way to stop 'em."
+
+"Mr. Peabody's chickens? Have you got 'em?" asked Bob in wonder.
+
+Betty stamped her foot.
+
+"Bob Henderson, how can you be so stupid!" she stormed. "What would I
+be doing with stolen chickens--unless you think I stole them?"
+
+"Now don't go off into a temper," said Bob placidly. "I see where I
+have to drive you to Glenside, anyway. Might as well go the whole show
+and be half a day late while I'm about it. Hop in, Betty, and you can
+tell me this wonderful tale while we're traveling."
+
+Betty was tired out from excitement, fear, insufficient food and the
+long distance she had walked. Her nerves protested loudly, and to Bob's
+astonishment and dismay she burst into violent weeping.
+
+"Oh, I say!" he felt vainly in his pocket for a handkerchief. "Betty,
+don't cry like that! What did I say wrong? Don't you want to go to
+Glenside? What do you want me to do?"
+
+"I want you to listen," sobbed Betty. "I'm trying to tell you as fast
+as I can that Wapley and Lieson stole Mr. Peabody's chickens. They've
+got 'em all crated, and an automobile truck is coming at ten o'clock
+to-night to take them to Petria. So there!"
+
+Bob asked a few direct questions that soon put him in possession of all
+the facts. When he had heard the full story he took out the hitching
+rope he had put under the seat and tied the sorrel to the railing again.
+
+"Come on," he said briefly.
+
+"Where--where are we going?" quavered Betty, a little in awe of this
+stern new Bob with the resolute chin.
+
+"To the police recorder's," was the uncompromising reply.
+
+The recorder was young and possessed of plenty of what Bob termed
+"pep," and when he heard what Bob had to tell him, for Betty was
+stricken with sudden dumbness, he immediately mapped out a plan that
+should catch all the wrong-doers in one net.
+
+"The fellow we want to get hold of is this truck driver," he explained.
+"You didn't hear his name?"
+
+Betty shook her head.
+
+"Well, to get him, our men will have to wait till he comes for the
+crates," said the recorder. "I'll send a couple of 'em out to this
+farm--they know the old D. Smith place well enough--and they can hang
+around till the truck comes and then take 'em all in. I'm sorry, but
+I'll have to hold the girl here as a witness. My wife will look after
+her, and she'll be all right."
+
+"I'll stay, too, Betty," Bob promised her hastily, noting the plea in
+her eyes.
+
+"All right, so much the better," said the recorder heartily. "We'll put
+you both up for the night. It won't be necessary for you to see the
+prisoners to-night, and to-morrow you'll both be mighty good witnesses
+for this Mr. Peabody. I'll send for him in the morning."
+
+Bob's sense of humor was tickled at the thought of stabling the sorrel
+in a livery stable and charging the bill to his employer. A vision of
+what would be said to him caused his eyes to dance as he gave orders to
+the stableman to see that the horse had an extra good measure of oats.
+
+But when he came back to the recorder's for supper he found Betty
+sitting close beside the recorder's wife, crying as though her heart
+would break.
+
+"Why, Betty!" he protested. "You don't usually act like this. What does
+ail you--are you sick?"
+
+"It isn't fair!" protested Betty passionately. "Wapley and Lieson
+worked so hard and Mr. Peabody was mean to 'em! I don't want to save
+his old chickens for him! I'd much rather the hired men got the money.
+And I won't be a witness for him and get them into prison!"
+
+Bob looked shocked at this outburst, but Mrs. Bender only continued to
+soothe the girl, and presently Betty's sobs grew less violent, and by
+and by ceased.
+
+After supper Mrs. Bender played for them and sang a little, and then,
+declaring that Betty looked tired to death, took her upstairs to the
+blue and white guest-room, where, after she had helped her to undress
+and loaned her one of her own pretty nightgowns, she turned off the
+lights and sat beside her till she fell asleep. For the first time in
+months, Betty was encouraged to talk about her mother, and she told
+this new friend of her great loss, her life with the Arnolds, and
+about her Uncle Dick. It both rested and refreshed her to give this
+confidence, and her sleep that night was unbroken and dreamless.
+
+Long after Betty was asleep, Bob and the recorder played checkers, Mrs.
+Bender sitting near with her sewing. Bob was starved for companionship,
+and something about the lad, his eager eyes, perhaps, or his evident
+need of interested guidance, appealed to Recorder Bender.
+
+"You say you were born in the poorhouse?" he asked, between games. "Was
+your mother born in this township?"
+
+Bob explained, and the Benders were both interested in the mention of
+the box of papers. Encouraged by friendly auditors, Bob told his meager
+story, unfolding in its recital a very fair picture of conditions as
+they existed at Bramble Farm.
+
+Betty lay in dreamless sleep, but Bob, in a room across the hall,
+tossed and turned restlessly. At half-past ten he heard the recorder
+go out, and knew he was going to see if the chicken thieves and motor
+truck driver had been brought in by his men. Bob wondered how it
+seemed to be arrested, and he fervently resolved never to court the
+experience. He was asleep before the recorder returned, but woke once
+during the night. A heavy truck was lumbering through the street, the
+driver singing in a high sweet tenor voice, probably to keep himself
+awake, Bob's swift thoughts flew to Wapley and Lieson, and he wondered
+if they were asleep. How could they sleep in jail?
+
+Breakfast in the Bender household was just as pleasant and cheerful and
+unhurried as supper had been. Mrs. Bender in a white and green morning
+frock beamed upon Bob and Betty and urged delicious viands upon them
+till they begged for mercy. It was, she said, so nice to have "four at
+the table."
+
+Mr. Bender pushed back his chair at last, glancing at his watch.
+
+"The hearing is set for ten o'clock," he announced quietly. "Mr.
+Peabody has been notified and should be here any minute. I think we had
+better walk down to the office. Catherine, if you're ready----"
+
+Mrs. Bender smiled at Betty. She had promised to see her through.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+IN AMIABLE CONFERENCE
+
+
+BETTY'S sole idea of a court had been gained from a scene or two in the
+once-a-week Pineville motion picture theater, and Bob had even less
+knowledge. They both thought there might be a crowd, a judge in a black
+gown, and some noise and excitement.
+
+Instead Recorder Bender unlocked the door of a little one-story
+building and ushered them into a small room furnished simply with a
+long table, a few chairs, and a case of law books.
+
+Presently two men came in, nodded to Mrs. Bender, and conferred in
+whispers with Mr. Bender. There was a scuffling step outside the door
+and Mr. Peabody entered.
+
+"Huh, there you are!" he greeted Bob. "For all of you, I might have
+been hunting my horse and wagon all night. Mighty afraid to let any one
+know where you are."
+
+"Mr. Peabody?" asked the recorder crisply, and suddenly all his quiet
+friendliness was gone and an able official with a clear, direct gaze
+and a rather stern chin faced the farmer. "Sit down, please, until
+we're all ready."
+
+Mr. Peabody subsided into a chair, and the two men went away. They were
+back in a few moments, and with them they brought Wapley and Lieson and
+a lad, little more than a boy, who was evidently the truck driver.
+
+"Close the door," directed the recorder. "Now, Mr. Peabody, if you'll
+just sit here--" he indicated a chair at one side of the table. With a
+clever shifting of the group he soon had them arranged so that Wapley,
+Lieson, the truck driver, and the two men who had brought them in were
+sitting on one side of the table, and Betty, Bob, Mrs. Bender and Mr.
+Peabody on the other. He himself took a seat between Betty and Mr.
+Peabody.
+
+"Now you all understand," he said pleasantly, "that this is merely an
+informal hearing. We want to learn what both sides have to say."
+
+Mr. Peabody gave a short laugh.
+
+"I don't see what the other side can have to say!" he exclaimed
+contemptuously. "They've been caught red-handed, stealing my chickens."
+
+The recorder ignored this, and turned to Lieson.
+
+"You've worked for farmers about here in other seasons," he said. "And,
+from all I can hear, your record was all right. What made you put
+yourself in line for a workhouse term?"
+
+Lieson cleared his throat, glancing at Wapley.
+
+"It can't be proved we was stealing," he argued sullenly. "Them
+chickens was going to be sold on commission."
+
+"Taking 'em off at ten o'clock at night to save 'em from sunburn,
+wasn't you?" demanded Mr. Peabody sarcastically. "You never was a quick
+thinker, Lieson."
+
+"Now, Lieson," struck in Mr. Bender patiently, "that's no sort of use.
+Miss Gordon here overheard your plans. We know those chickens came from
+the Peabody farm, and that you and Wapley had a bargain with Tubbs to
+sell them in Petria. What I want to hear is your excuse. It's been my
+experience that every one who takes what doesn't belong to him has an
+excuse, good or bad. What's yours?"
+
+At the mention of Betty's name, Lieson and Wapley had shot her a quick
+look. She made a little gesture of helplessness, infinitely appealing.
+
+"I'm so sorry," the expressive brown eyes told them, "I just have to
+tell what I heard, if I'm asked, but I wouldn't willingly do you harm."
+
+Lieson threw back his head and struck the table a sounding blow.
+
+"I'll tell you why we took those blamed chickens!" he cried. "You can
+believe it or not, but we were going to sell 'em in Petria, and all
+over and above twenty-five dollars they brought, Peabody would have got
+back. He owes us that amount. Ask him."
+
+"It's a lie!" shouted Peabody, rising, his face crimson. "A lie, I tell
+you! A lie cooked up by a sneaking, crooked, chicken-thief to save
+himself!"
+
+Lieson and Wapley were on their feet, and Betty saw the glint of
+something shiny in Peabody's hand.
+
+"Sit down, and keep quiet!" said the recorder levelly. "That will be
+about all the shouting, please, this morning. And, Mr. Peabody, I'll
+trouble you for that automatic!"
+
+The men dropped into their chairs, and Peabody pushed his pistol across
+the table. The recorder opened a drawer and dropped the evil little
+thing into it.
+
+"Can you prove that wages are owed you by Mr. Peabody?" he asked, as if
+nothing had happened.
+
+Wapley, who had been silent all along, pulled a dirty scrap of paper
+from his pocket.
+
+"There's when we came to Bramble Farm and when we left, and the money
+we've had," he said harshly. "And when we left, it was 'cause he
+wouldn't give us what was coming to us--not just a dollar or two of it
+to spend in Glenside, Miss Betty can tell you that."
+
+"Yes," said Betty eagerly. "That was what they quarreled about."
+
+The recorder, who had been studying the bit of paper, asked a question
+without raising his eyes.
+
+"What's this thirty-four cents subtracted from this two dollars
+for--June twenty-fourth, it seems to be?"
+
+"Oh, that was when we had the machinist who came to fix the binder stay
+to supper," explained Wapley simply. "Lieson and me paid Peabody for
+butter on the table that night, 'cause Edgeworth's mighty particular
+about what he gets to eat. He'd come ten miles to fix the machine, and
+we wanted him to have a good meal."
+
+Mr. Peabody turned a vivid scarlet. He did not relish these disclosures
+of his domestic economy.
+
+"What in tarnation has that got to do with stealing my chickens?" he
+demanded testily, "Ain't you going to commit these varmints?"
+
+The truck driver, who had been studying Mr. Peabody with disconcerting
+steadiness, suddenly announced the result of his scrutiny, apparently
+not in the last in awe of the jail sentence shadow under which he stood.
+
+"Well, you poor, little, mean-livered, low-down, pesky, slithering
+snake-in-the-grass," he said slowly and distinctly, addressing himself
+to Mr. Peabody with unflattering directness, "now I know where I've
+seen your homely mug before. You're the skunk that scattered ground
+glass on that stretch of road between the crossroads and Miller's Pond,
+and then laughed when I ruined four of my good tires. I knew I'd seen
+you somewhere, but I couldn't place you.
+
+"Why, do you know, Mr. Bender," he turned excitedly to the recorder,
+"that low-down coward wouldn't put ground glass on his own road--might
+get him into trouble with the authorities. No, he goes and scatters
+the stuff on some other farmer's highway, and when I lodge a complaint
+against the man whose name was on the mail box and face him in
+Glenside, he isn't the man I saw laughing at all! I made a complete
+fool of myself. I suppose this guy had a grudge against some neighbor
+and took that way of paying it out; and getting some motorist in Dutch,
+too. These rubes hates automobiles, anyway."
+
+"It's a lie!" retorted Mr. Peabody, but his tone did not carry
+conviction. "I never scattered any ground glass."
+
+The recorder fluttered a batch of papers impressively.
+
+"Well, I've two complaints that may be filed against you," he announced
+decisively. "One for uncollected wages due James Wapley and Enos
+Lieson, and one charging that you willfully made a public highway
+dangerous for automobile traffic. Also, I believe, this boy, Bob
+Henderson, has not been sent to school regularly."
+
+This was a surprise to Bob, who had long ago accepted the fact that
+school for him was over. But Mr. Peabody was plainly worried.
+
+"What you want me to do?" he whined. "I'm willing to be fair. No man
+can say I'm not just."
+
+The recorder leaned back in his chair, and his good wife, watching,
+knew that he had gained his point.
+
+"Litigation and law-squabble," he said tranquilly, "waste money, time,
+and too often defeat the ends. Why, in this instance, don't we effect
+a compromise? You, Mr. Peabody, pay these men the money you owe them
+and drop the charge of stealing; you will have your chickens back and
+the knowledge that their enmity toward you is removed. Tubbs, I'm sure,
+will agree to forget the broken glass, and the schooling charge may
+lapse, provided something along that line is done for Bob this winter."
+
+Mr. Peabody was shrewd enough to see that he could not hope for better
+terms. As long as he had the chickens to sell to Ryerson, he had no
+grounds for complaint. He hated "like sin" as Bob said, to pay the
+money to Wapley and Lieson, but under the recorder's unwavering eye,
+he counted out twenty-five dollars--twelve dollars and fifty cents
+apiece--which the men pocketed smilingly. A word or two of friendly
+admonition from Mr. Bender, and the men were dismissed.
+
+"I'm so glad," sighed Betty as they left the room, "that I didn't have
+to say anything against them."
+
+"Well, are you coming along with me?" asked Peabody, almost graciously
+for him. "There's a letter there for you, Betty. From your uncle, I
+calculate, since the postmark is Washington. And my word, Bob, you
+don't seem in any great hurry to get back to your chores; the sorrel
+must be eating his head off in Haverford's stable."
+
+The recorder exchanged a look with his wife.
+
+"Mr. Peabody," he said, "I shall be detained here an hour or so, and I
+don't want these young folks to leave until I have a word with them.
+Mrs. Bender will be only too glad to have you stay for lunch with us,
+and I'll meet you up at the house. My wife, Mr. Peabody."
+
+"Pleased to meet you, Ma'am," stammered Mr. Peabody awkwardly. "I ought
+to be getting on toward home. But I suppose, if the chickens were fed
+this morning, they can wait."
+
+"I'm sure you're hungry yourself," answered Mrs. Bender, slipping an
+arm about Betty. "Suppose we walk up to the house now, Mr. Peabody,
+and I'll have lunch ready by the time Mr. Bender is free."
+
+Betty looked back as they were leaving the room and saw the truck
+driver slouched disconsolately in a chair opposite the recorder.
+
+"Is--is he arrested?" she whispered half-fearfully to Mrs. Bender. Mr.
+Peabody and Bob were walking on ahead.
+
+"No, dear," was the answer. "But Mr. Bender will doubtless give him a
+good raking over the coals, which is just what he needs. Fred Tubbs
+is a Laurel Grove boy, and his mother is one of the sweetest women in
+town. He's always been a little wild, and lately he's been in with all
+kinds of riff-raff. Harry heard rumors that he was trucking in shady
+transactions, but he never could get hold of proof. Now he has him just
+where he wants him. He'll tell Fred a few truths and maybe knock some
+sense into him before he does something that will send him to state's
+prison."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+A NEW ACQUAINTANCE
+
+
+MRS. BENDER insisted that Mr. Peabody should sit down on her shady
+front porch while she set the table and got luncheon. Betty followed
+her like a shadow, and while they were laying the silver together the
+woman smiled at the downcast face.
+
+"What is it, dear?" she asked gently. "You don't want to go back to
+Bramble Farm; is that it?"
+
+Betty nodded miserably.
+
+"Why do I have to?" she argued. "Can't I go and stay with the Guerins?
+They'd like to have me, I'm sure they would."
+
+"Well, we'll see what Mr. Bender has to say," answered Mrs. Bender
+diplomatically. "Here he comes now. You call Bob and Mr. Peabody, and
+mind, not a word while we're at the table. Mr. Bender hates to have an
+argument while he's eating."
+
+The luncheon was delicious, and Mr. Peabody thoroughly enjoyed it, if
+the service was rather confusing. He thought the Benders were very
+foolish to live as they did instead of saving up money for their old
+age, but since they did, he was glad they did not retrench when they
+had company. That, by the way, was Mr. Peabody's original conception of
+hospitality--to save on his guests by serving smaller portions of food.
+
+"We'll go into the living-room and have a little talk now," proposed
+the recorder, leading the way into the pleasant front room where a big
+divan fairly invited three to sit upon it.
+
+"Betty and Bob on either side of me," said Mr. Bender cordially,
+pointing to the sofa, "and, Mr. Peabody, just roll up that big chair."
+
+Mrs. Bender sat down in a rocking chair, and the recorder seated
+himself between the two young folks.
+
+"Betty doesn't want to come back with me," said Mr. Peabody
+resentfully. "I can tell by the way she acts. But her uncle sent her
+up to us, and there she should stay, I say, till he sends for her
+again. It doesn't look right for a girl to be gallivanting all over the
+township."
+
+"I could stay with the Guerins," declared Betty stubbornly. "Mrs.
+Guerin is lovely to me."
+
+"I should think you'd have a little pride about asking 'em to take you
+in, when they've got two daughters of their own and he as hard up as
+most country doctors are," said the astute Mr. Peabody. "Your uncle
+pays me for your board and I certainly don't intend to turn over any
+checks to Doc Guerin."
+
+Betty flushed. She had not thought at all about the monetary side
+of the question. She knew that Doctor Guerin's practice was largely
+among the farmers, who paid him in produce as often as in cash, and,
+as Mr. Peabody said, he could not be expected to take a guest for an
+indefinite time.
+
+"You know you could stay with me, Betty," Mrs. Bender broke in quickly,
+"but we're going away for a month next week, and there isn't time to
+change the plans. Mr. Bender has his vacation."
+
+"Gee, Betty," came from Bob, "if you're not coming back, what'll I do?"
+
+"Work," said Mr. Peabody grimly.
+
+Betty's quick temper flared up suddenly.
+
+"I won't go back!" she declared passionately. "I'll do housework, I'll
+scrub or wash dishes, anything! I hate Bramble Farm!"
+
+"Now, now, sister," said the recorder in his even, pleasant voice.
+"Keep cool, and we'll find a way. There's this letter Mr. Peabody
+speaks about. Perhaps that will bring you good news."
+
+"I suppose it's from Uncle Dick," admitted Betty, wiping her eyes.
+"Maybe he will want me to come where he is."
+
+"Well now, Betty," Mr. Peabody spoke persuasively, "you come along
+home with me and maybe things will be more to your liking. Perhaps
+I haven't always done just as you'd like. But then, you recollect, I
+ain't used to girls and their notions. Your uncle won't think you're
+fit to be trusted to travel alone if I write him and tell him you run
+away from the farm."
+
+Betty looked dumbly at Mr. Bender.
+
+"I think you had better go with Mr. Peabody," he said kindly, answering
+her unspoken question. "You see, Betty, it isn't very easy to explain,
+but when you want to leave a place, any place, always go openly and
+as far as possible avoid the significance of running away. You do not
+have to stay for one moment where any one is actively unkind to you,
+but since your uncle placed you in the care of Mr. and Mrs. Peabody, if
+you can, it is wiser to wait till you hear from him before making any
+change."
+
+"Make him be nicer to Bob," urged Betty obstinately.
+
+"I aim to send him to school this winter," said Mr. Peabody, rushing
+to his own defense. "And I can get a man now to help out with the
+chores. He's lame, but a good milker. Can get him right away, too--this
+afternoon. Came by asking for work and I guess he'll stay all winter.
+Bob can take it easy for a day or two."
+
+"Then he can drive over with Betty Saturday afternoon and spend Sunday
+with us." Mrs. Bender was quick to seize this advantage. "That will
+be fine. We'll see you, Betty, before we go away. And, dear, you must
+write to me often."
+
+So it was settled that Betty was to return to Bramble Farm. The Benders
+were warmly interested in both young folks, and they were not the sort
+of people to lose sight of any one for whom they cared. Mr. Peabody
+knew that Bob and Betty had gained friends who would be actively
+concerned for their welfare, and he was entirely sincere in promising
+to make it easier for them in the future.
+
+He and Bob and Betty and the crated chickens drove into the lane
+leading to Bramble Farm about half-past four.
+
+Betty's first thought was for her letter. The moment she saw the
+hand-writing, she knew it was from her uncle.
+
+"Bob, Bob! Where are you?" she called, running out to the barn, waving
+the letter wildly after the first reading. "Oh, Bob, why aren't you
+ever where I want you?"
+
+Mr. Peabody and his wife were still busy over the chickens.
+
+Bob, it seemed, was engaged in the unlovely task of cleaning the cow
+stables, after having, on Mr. Peabody's orders, gone after the lame
+man to engage him for the fall and winter work. But Betty was so eager
+to share her news with him that she stood just outside the stable and
+read him bits of the letter through the open window.
+
+"Uncle Dick's in Washington!" she announced blithely. "He's been there
+a week, and he hopes he can send for me before the month is up. Won't
+that be fine, Bob? I'm not going to unpack my trunk, because I want
+to be able to go the minute he sends me word. And, oh, yes, he sends
+me another check. Now we can have some more goodies from the grocery
+store, next time you go to Glenside."
+
+"You cash that check and put the money away where you and no one else
+can find it," advised Bob seriously. "Don't let yourself get out of
+funds again, Betty. It may be another long wait before you hear from
+your uncle."
+
+"Oh, no, that won't happen again," said Betty carelessly. "He's in
+Washington, so everything must be all right. But, Bob, isn't it funny?
+he hasn't had one of my letters! He says he supposes there's a pile
+of mail for him at the lawyer's office, but he hasn't had time to run
+up there, and, anyway, the lawyer is ill and his office is in great
+confusion. Uncle Dick writes he is glad to think of me enjoying the
+delights of Bramble Farm instead of the city's heat--Washington is
+hot in summer, I know daddy used to say so. And he sends the kindest
+messages to Mr. and Mrs. Peabody--I wish he knew that old miser! I've
+written him all about you, but of course he hasn't read the letters."
+
+All through supper and the brief evening that followed Betty was
+light-hearted and gay. She re-read her Uncle Dick's letter twenty
+times, and because of the relief it promised her found it easy to be
+gracious to Mr. Peabody. That man was put out because his new hired
+hand refused to sleep in the attic, declaring that the barn was cooler,
+as in fact it was.
+
+"If I catch you smoking in there, I'll wring your neck," was the
+farmer's amiable good-night to the lame man as he limped out toward his
+selected sleeping place.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THEIR MUTUAL SECRETS
+
+
+BETTY woke to find her room almost as light as day. She had been
+dreaming of breakfasting with her uncle in a blue and gold dining-room
+of her own furnishing, and for the moment she thought it was morning.
+But the light flickered too much for sunlight, and as she became more
+fully awake, she realized it was a red glare. Fire!
+
+"Fire!" Bob's voice vocalized her cry for her, and he came tumbling
+down the uncarpeted attic stairs with a wild clatter of shoes.
+
+She called to him to wait; but he did not hear, and raced on out to the
+barn. The inarticulate bellow of Mr. Peabody sounded next as, yelling
+loudly, he rushed down the stairs and out through the kitchen.
+
+"Betty!" Mrs. Peabody ran in as Betty struggled hastily to dress.
+"Betty! the barn's on fire! No one knows how long it's been burning. If
+we only had a dog, he might have barked! Or a telephone!"
+
+Betty stifled a hysterical desire to laugh as she followed the moaning
+Mrs. Peabody downstairs. It was not the main barn, she saw with a
+little throb of relief as they ran through the yard. Instead it was
+the corncrib and wagon house which stood a little apart from the rest
+of the buildings. The cribs were practically empty of corn, for of
+course the new crop had not yet matured, and the only loss would be the
+two shabby old wagons and a quantity of more or less worn machinery
+stored in the loft overhead. A huge rat, driven from his home under the
+corncrib, ran past Betty in the dark.
+
+"It's all insured," said Mr. Peabody complacently, watching Bob dash
+buckets of water on the tool shed, which was beginning to blister from
+the heat. "Well, Keppler, see the blaze from your place? Nice little
+bonfire, ain't it?"
+
+Mr. Keppler and his two half-grown sons had run all the way and were
+too out of breath to reply immediately. They were not on especially
+good terms with Mr. Peabody, but as his nearest neighbor they could not
+let his buildings burn down without making an effort to help him. They
+had left the mother of the family at the telephone with instructions
+to call the surrounding neighbors if Mr. Keppler signaled her to do so
+with the pistol he carried.
+
+"Guess you won't need any more help," said Mr. Keppler, regaining his
+breath. "How'd she start?"
+
+"Why, when I thought it was the barn, I said to myself that lazy
+good-for-nothing lame Phil's been smoking," replied Mr. Peabody. "But I
+don't know how he could set the corncribs afire."
+
+"Where is he now?" cried Betty, remembering the man's affliction. "He
+couldn't run--perhaps he tried to sleep in the wagon and is burned."
+
+"No, he isn't," said Phil behind her.
+
+He had been watching the fire from the safe vantage point of a boulder
+in the apple orchard, he admitted when cross-questioned. Yes, the
+flames had awakened him in the barn where he slept. No, he couldn't
+guess how they had started unless it could have been spontaneous
+combustion from the oiled rags he had noticed packed tightly in a
+corner of the wagon shed that afternoon.
+
+"Spontaneous combustion!" ejaculated Mr. Peabody angrily. "If you know
+that much, why couldn't you drop me a word, or take away the rags?"
+
+The lame man looked at him with irritating intentness.
+
+"I thought you might wring my neck if I did," he said.
+
+"I don't know whether Phil's a fool or not," confided Bob to Betty the
+next morning; "but he has old Peabody guessing, that's sure. He was
+quoting Shakespeare to him at the pump this morning."
+
+Betty lost little time in speculation concerning Phil, for another
+worry claimed her attention.
+
+"How can we go to see the Benders Saturday?" she asked Bob. "Both
+wagons are burned up."
+
+"Well, we still have the horse," Bob reminded her cheerfully. "A wagon
+without a horse isn't much good, but a horse without a wagon is far
+from hopeless. You leave it to me."
+
+Betty was willing. She was dreaming day dreams about Washington and
+Uncle Dick, dreams in which she generously included Bob and the Benders
+and Norma Guerin. It was fortunate for her that she could not see
+ahead, or know how slowly the weeks were to drag by without another
+letter. How Betty waited and waited and finally went to the Capitol
+City to find her uncle herself will be told in the next volume of
+this series, to be called, "Betty Gordon in Washington; or, Strange
+Adventures in a Great City." High-spirited, headstrong, pretty Betty
+finds adventures aplenty, not unmixed with a spice of danger, in the
+beautiful city of Washington, and quite unexpectedly she again meets
+Bob Henderson, who has left Bramble Farm to seek his fortune.
+
+That Bob was planning a surprise in connection with their visit to the
+Benders, she was well aware, but she would not spoil his enjoyment by
+trying to force him to divulge his secret. Betty had a secret of her
+own, saved up for the eventful day, which she had no idea of disclosing
+till the proper time should arrive.
+
+Saturday morning dawned warm and fair, and Bob tore into his morning's
+work, determined to leave Mr. Peabody no loophole for criticism and,
+possibly, detention, though he had promised Bob the afternoon off. Phil
+was with them no more, having ambled off one night without warning and
+taken his peculiarities to a possibly more appreciative circle.
+
+Bob was hungry at noon, but he hardly touched his dinner, so eager was
+he to get away from the table and wash and dress ready for the trip to
+Laurel Grove. Poor Bob had no best clothes, but he resolutely refused
+to wear overalls to the Benders, and he had coaxed Mrs. Peabody to get
+his heavy winter trousers out of the mothballs and newspapers in which
+she had packed them away. She had washed and ironed a faded shirt for
+him, and at least he would be whole and clean.
+
+"Bob," drawled Mr. Peabody, as that youth declined dessert and prepared
+to rise from the table, "before you go, I want to see the wood box
+filled, some fresh litter in the pig pens and some fodder in all the
+cow mangers. If I'm to do the milking, I don't want to have to pitch
+all the fodder, too."
+
+Bob scowled angrily.
+
+"I haven't time," he muttered. "That'll take me till two or half-past.
+You said I could have the afternoon."
+
+"And I also told you to fill the wood box yesterday," retorted Mr.
+Peabody. "You'll do as I say, or stay home altogether. Take your
+choice."
+
+"He's the meanest man who ever lived!" scolded Betty, following Bob out
+to the woodshed. "I'll fill up that old box, Bob, and you go do the
+other chores. I'd like to throw this stick at his head."
+
+Bob laughed, for he had a naturally sweet temper and seldom brooded
+over his wrongs.
+
+"He did tell me to fill the box yesterday and I forgot," he confessed.
+"Take your time, Betty, and don't get all hot. And don't scratch your
+hands--they looked as pretty as Mrs. Bender's; I noticed 'em at the
+table."
+
+Betty stared after him as he went whistling to the barn, her apron
+sagging with the wood she had piled into it. She glanced scrutinizingly
+at her strong, shapely tanned little hands. Did Bob think they were
+pretty? Betty herself admired very white hands with slim pointed
+fingers like Norma Guerin's.
+
+She worked to such good purpose that she had the wood box filled and
+was brushing her hair when she heard Bob go thumping past her door on
+his way to his room. She was dressed and downstairs when he came down,
+and he caught hold of her impulsively and whirled her around the porch.
+
+"Betty, you're a wonder!" he cried in admiration. "How did you ever
+guess the size? And when did you buy it? You could have knocked me down
+with a feather when I saw it spread out there on the bed."
+
+"I'm glad it fits you so well," answered Betty demurely, surveying the
+neat blue and white shirt she had bought for him. "I took one of your
+old ones over to Glenside. Oh, it didn't cost much!" she hastened to
+assure him, interpreting the look he gave her. "I'm saving the money
+Uncle Dick sent, honestly I am."
+
+Bob insisted that she sit down on the porch and let him drive round
+for her, and now it was Betty's turn to be surprised. The sorrel was
+harnessed to a smart rubber-tired runabout.
+
+"Bob Henderson! where did you get it? Whose is it? Does Mr. Peabody
+know? Let's go through Glenside and show 'em we look right sometimes,"
+suggested the astonished Betty.
+
+Bob, beaming with pride, helped her in and Mrs. Peabody waved them
+a friendly good-bye. She betrayed no surprise at the sight of the
+runabout and was evidently in the secret.
+
+"She knows about it," explained Bob, as they drove off. "I borrowed it
+from the Kepplers. Tried to get a horse, too, but they're going driving
+Sunday and need the team. This is their single harness. Nifty buckles,
+aren't they?"
+
+Betty praised the runabout to his heart's content, and they actually
+did drive through Glenside, though it was a longer way around, and had
+the satisfaction of meeting the Guerins.
+
+Recorder Bender and his wife were delighted to see them again, and
+they had a happy time all planned for them. Saturday night there was a
+moving picture show in Laurel Grove, and the Benders took their guests.
+Betty had not been to motion pictures since leaving Pineville and it
+was Bob's second experience with the films.
+
+Sunday morning they all went to church, and the long, delightful summer
+Sunday afternoon they spent on the cool, shady porch, exchanging
+confidences and making plans for the future.
+
+"I'm saving the money I get for the carvings," said Bob, "and when I
+get enough I'll dig up the little black tin box and off I'll go. I've
+got to get some education and amount to something, and if I stay with
+the Peabody's till I'm eighteen, my chance will be gone."
+
+"Promise us one thing, Bob," urged Mrs. Bender earnestly. "That you
+won't go without consulting us, or at least leaving some word for us.
+And that, wherever you go, you'll write."
+
+"I promise," said Bob gratefully. "I haven't so many friends that I can
+afford to lose one. You and Mr. Bender have been awfully good to me."
+
+"We like you!" returned the recorder, with one of his rare whimsical
+flashes. "I want to exact the same promise from Betty--to write to us
+wherever she may go."
+
+"Of course I will!" promised Betty. "I don't seem to have much luck
+running away; but when I do go, I'll surely write and let you know
+where I am. And I'll probably be writing to you very soon from
+Washington!"
+
+    THE END
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+Obvious punctuation errors repaired.
+
+Page 41, "Aronld" changed to "Arnold" (morning Betty and Mrs. Arnold)
+
+Page 66, "Leisen" changed to "Leison" (as Wapley or Leison)
+
+Page 172, "her's" changed to "hers" (look like hers, too)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Betty Gordon at Bramble Farm, by Alice B. Emerson
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 43907 ***