The Corner House Girls on a Tour

“Bears! bears!” whispered the excitable Dot.

“No-o,” Tess said, gravely. “It didn’t say anything about there being bears in this neighborhood, in that book of Neale’s. If there were bears, he’d have told us about them.”

“Well – well – whales, maybe.”

“Goodness, Dot! you are the tryingest child! Whales live in the sea.”

“Don’t they ever come out?”

“Of course not,” declared Tess, with conviction.

“Not even to rest themselves?” demanded Dot, with wonder. “I should think they would get awful tired swimming all the time. It must be more tireful than walking,” and she sighed.

“Tire-some,” corrected Tess, but without enthusiasm, and thinking of the whales. “Perhaps they come into shallow water and lie down on the bottom of the sea with their heads sticking out to breathe. Yes, that must be it.”

“Oh, dear!” sighed Dot, for at least the twentieth time, and with lapsing interest in the whale. “Oh, dear! I wish Tom Jonah were with us.”

“So do I! So do I!” agreed Tess, for as dusk came on she, like the smallest Corner House girl, was becoming truly frightened.

The disturbance in the bushes was repeated, and the children tried to run. A loud bell jangled – a most annoying bell; and in the distance a voice sounded:

“So, boss! So, boss! So, boss!”

It only frightened Tess and Dot the more to hear such strange sounds. They had never before heard the cows called home. And, besides, after their recent experience, they would have been only the more disturbed had they been aware that the thrashing in the bushes was Sukey, getting ready to go up to the bars to be milked.

No house did they see, however; not even a barn. They were on a back road, very seldom traveled, and the farms, what few there were in the neighborhood, faced on other highways.

The children trudged on, hand in hand, both crying now. Tess was weeping softly; but Dot was crying aloud, not caring who heard her.

When they came to a field beside the road, Tess stared all about for a light. But there was no beckoning lamp in a farmhouse window; nor even a flickering lantern to point the way to the farm outbuildings.

The streak of violet, shading to light blue, that evening had painted along the horizon with her careless brush, disappeared. Tall, black figures of trees upreared themselves between the children and the sky, and seemed to stalk nearer, threateningly.

A great nightbird floated out of the wood and swept low across the field with a “swish, swish, swish” of powerful wings. When it rose into the trees again it said:

“Who? Who-o? Who-o-o?”

“Oh! Who is he?” gasped Dot, clinging close to her sister.

“Mr. Owl,” said Tess, promptly. “You know you’ve heard about owls, Dot Kenway!”

“But – but I didn’t know they could talk,” breathed the smallest Corner House girl, with a sigh. “Tessie, I can’t walk any farther,” she suddenly announced. “It isn’t only that funny bone in my back; but my ankles are breaking right off – so now!”

“But – but there isn’t any good place for us to stop till our automobile comes along,” hesitated Tess.

“I don’t care, Tess Kenway! I’ve got to stop!”

That settled it. At the edge of the dark wood the two little girls crept up on a grassy bank, between two roots of a great tree, sheltered at the back by a thick brush clump, and there they sat, clinging to each other’s hand.

They were too frightened to talk. Too alarmed even to weep any more.

Around them, when they were still, scurried the little creatures of the night – the field mice, and the moles, perhaps, and the baby rabbits, and other small animals who shiver – as Dot did – when the great owl swoops low, crying his eternal question:

“Who? Who-o? Who-o-o shall I take for supper?”

The small fry of the fields and woods tremble at that cry more than did the two lost Corner House girls.

There may have been other enemies of the helpless, furry little animals lurking near, too – the weasel, the polecat, the ferret; even a red fox might have wandered that way and joined the bright-eyed company that kept watch and ward over two sleepy, sobbing children.

But nothing harmful was near them and, finally, Tess and Dot Kenway slept as sweetly and as soundly as though they were in their own beds in the old Corner House in Milton.

CHAPTER XIII – THE GREEN AND ORANGE PETTICOAT

Ruth and Agnes Kenway were in tears. Once before – when the Corner House girls were at Pleasant Cove – the two smaller sisters had been lost, and on that occasion circumstances seemed to blame Agnes.

Now neither of the older girls was to blame for the absence of Tess and Dot. Mrs. Heard said so. But both Ruth and Agnes felt condemned.

After searching the pasture and the patch of woodland beyond it, clear to the back road, Neale, disappointed, was inclined to scold Tom Jonah for not picking up the trail of the lost children.

Tom Jonah, however, was not a hunting dog; his nose was not as keen as some breeds possess – especially now that he was old. But he showed almost as much anxiety as his human friends on this occasion.

“Don’t scold him, Neale,” begged Agnes, sobbing. “He’d find Tess and Dot if he could – poor old fellow. See! he knows what I am saying.”

The dog whined and lay down, panting. Indeed, it did seem as though there was nothing more to do here. The children, whether they had wandered away or had been carried off, certainly were not in the vicinity.

“Two hours have been wasted,” said Mrs. Heard; “although we did not know we were wasting them, of course. We had to do what we could toward finding the children near by. But now we must waste no more hours. We must get help.”

“Oh! what help?” cried Agnes.

“We must run to the next town – Frog Hollow,” said Neale, in an undertone“ – and get the constable or sheriff or somebody. We must start a crowd with lanterns to beat the woods. Maybe somebody has seen the children. They may be safe already in somebody’s house.”

“Or in the police station,” put in Sammy Pinkney. “I got lost once and that’s where they found me. Of course, I was a kid then. The cops was real good to me. One of ’em bought me ten cents worth of butter-scotch – you know, that awful, sticky, pully candy, Neale. And when my father come I couldn’t holler to him ’cause my teeth was all stuck up.”

“I bet that cop gave you the candy on purpose to shut your mouth,” growled Neale. “You were talking them to death, it is probable.”

“Oh, dear, me!” cried Agnes, “don’t let us just talk; let’s do something.”

“Mrs. Heard is quite right, I can see,” Ruth observed, recovered now in a measure from her first panic. “We must ask the authorities to help us. I should have been more careful.”

“Why, Ruth,” said the chaperone, “don’t blame yourself. How could you have foreseen this?”

“I should not have allowed them out of my sight without Tom Jonah with them,” the oldest Corner House girl declared. “Nor will I again on this trip, you may be sure.”

“Come on, now,” growled Neale, who felt very much disturbed about the loss of the little girls but who, boy like, did not wish to show his feelings. “Come on, now; we’ve talked enough. Let’s do something. Get in here, Tom Jonah – you useless old thing! You’re not half a dog or you’d have been able to follow ’em.”

The big Newfoundland, with drooping flag and sheepish look, scrambled into the front of the car. So did Sammy. The automobile started and they sped away toward Frog Hollow, or Arbutusville, each revolution of the wheels taking them farther and farther from the lost children, sleeping under the great tree at the edge of the distant wood lot.

The automobile party were to spend a very anxious night – much more so than Tess and Dot Kenway, who had sobbed themselves to sleep among the huge tree-roots. Their sylvan couch was soft; the night was warm; and not a thing disturbed them after their eyes were shut.

A fretful bird, crying in the dusk of early dawn, aroused Dot for a moment; but she found Tess beside her, so went off to sleep again without realizing that she was not in her own bed at home.

Dawn soon smeared her pink finger-prints along the gray horizon. Other birds sleepily awoke. The morning breeze rustled the leaves, which took up their eternal gossip again just where it had ceased when the night wind died.

One morning call after another resounded through the forest patch. The light grew stronger and the tiny, furry things crept away to bed. The owl had long since ceased his querulous call. A feathered martinet that had at intervals, all the night long, declared for the castigation of “poor Will,” pitched for a last time upon a dead limb at the edge of the wood and shouted forty-three times in succession: “Whip-poor-will!” without awakening Tess and Dot Kenway.

They slept on as day broke and the World yawned and threw off the coverlet of night to hop out of bed. The first red ray of the sun finally slanted over the tree-tops and struck right into the face and eyes of the smallest Corner House girl.

“Oh, my! I don’t like that sun,” complained Dot. “Mo – move over, Tess Kenway.”

Tess’ eyes popped open and she was immediately wide awake, while Dot was still snuggling down and trying to go to sleep again.

“Well, Dot Kenway!” exclaimed the older girl, “do you know what we’ve done?”

“No-o,” mumbled Dot.

“Why! we’ve slept all through the night.”

“Aw – ri’,” Dot said, with very little interest.

“And do you know where we are?” pursued the lively Tess.

“I – I – Oh! is it time to get up?” yawned Dot.

Then she opened her eyes, too, and saw what Tess saw – the curve of the shaded road stretching away into the wood. The two little girls had been well sheltered under the thick umbrella of the tree; but in the open the grass blades sparkled with dew.

Birds hopped about, hunting their breakfasts – big, fat robins in their red vests; a chattering jay that flirted his topknot knowingly as he peered at the two Corner House girls; a clape, running spirals around a neighboring tree trunk like a little striped mouse, and looking at the children with interest. Across a broken wall a red squirrel ran – that pirate of his tribe. A rabbit started suddenly from his form in the grass, and, with a resounding thump or two, shot off across the field as though hearing a sudden call to breakfast at his house. The stirring of the little girls stirred everything else here to sudden activity.

“Why, dear me, Tess Kenway,” gasped Dot, “we – we didn’t get home, did we?”

“I guess we didn’t,” cried Tess, getting up quickly.

“Oh! nor we didn’t find the automobile,” added Dot, the memory of what had happened returning quickly. “Why, Tess! we’re lost.”

“Well, I guess we are,” admitted her sister. “I thought Ruth and Agnes and the others were lost; but I guess it’s us, after all, who don’t know where we are.”

“Wha – what’ll we do?” asked Dot, yawning again, and scarcely alert enough yet to appreciate the serious side of the situation.

“Well! we needn’t be afraid of anything now that it’s daylight. Come along, Dot – let’s find a brook,” said the practical Tess. “I want to wash my face.”

“We haven’t any towels,” objected Dot, trotting along the road beside her sister. “Nor any soap, Tess.”

“Why! what do you suppose the squirrels and the rabbits and all the other woodsy things do for towels and soap?” demanded Tess, briskly. “I guess water’s clean; it’ll wash you.”

“And our teeth-brushes, Tess?”

Tess overcame even that seemingly insurmountable difficulty. After they had found the brook – a quiet brown pool beside the road – and had bathed their faces and hands, Tess broke a twig and chewed the end to a brush-like swab, and so brushed her teeth thoroughly. Dot followed her example, and laughed.

“We are two wild girls,” she declared. “We haven’t any home – nor anything. That is, for a little while,” she added, rather doubtful as to how this new game would “pan out.”

“Why, when our clothes wear out we’ll have to make new ones. And for Alice, too.”

“How?” asked Tess, in turn curious. “What out of?”

“Oh, we’ll weave new dresses out of grass and leaves, and trim them with flowers,” declared the smallest girl, gaily.

“Well, so we could,” agreed Tess, catching fire from her sister’s enthusiasm.

“Of course. And shoes – ”

“Oh, I know!” Tess cried. “We’d find rushes beside the pond and weave basket-work sandals to wear ‘stead of shoes. And we might weave hats – like the Chinese do. And we’d build ourselves a house, and thatch it all over to keep the rain out – ”

Dot had suddenly grown silent and allowed Tess to do all the talking. Tess looked at the smallest Corner House girl quickly. Dot’s lips were puckered into a pout and her dark eyes were filling rapidly.

“What is the matter now, dear?” Tess asked, tenderly.

“Do – don’t let’s talk about it any more,” choked Dot. “Besides, I’m hungry.”

Tragedy stalked into the situation right then and there. They had no more imagination to waste upon the supposed life of a “wild girl.” The principal question was: How were two little girls, fast becoming “wild,” to eat?

They were walking along the road again when Tess suddenly spied something which brought a cry of delight from her lips.

“Look! Look, Dot!” she said. “What’s on those bushes?”

The bushes in question overhung the bank above their heads.

“Oh, Dot! aren’t those blueberries?” the older girl added.

“Of course they are, Tess Kenway,” agreed her sister. “My, I could eat just bushels of ’em.”

They scrambled up the bank and climbed the wall. Not only was there this clump of berry bushes which they had first sighted; but back of the wall was a great field, rocky and barren otherwise, but a fine berry pasture.

Farther out where the sun shone, the berries were larger and more had ripened. The little girls went on and on, picking the berries in handfuls and actually cramming them into their mouths. They were very hungry.

Their fingers and lips became stained; and if the truth were told some of the crushed berries left stains upon their mussed frocks as well as upon their faces. They reached the farther end of the field before they realized that they were so far from the road.

Tess was about to suggest that they go back. Somebody might come by on the lonely road they had been following. And then she saw the orange and green petticoat fluttering in the bushes.

“Oh, Dot! what’s that, do you suppose?” Tess whispered, seizing her sister quickly by the hand.

“Oh-ee! A bear?” returned Dot, without even seeing the gay garment beyond the brush clump.

“Goodness! A bear that color?” demanded Tess, with some exasperation.

Suddenly the wearer of the gay garment stood up. She was a very brown woman, with great hoops of gold in her ears, and she wore other gay garments besides the green and orange petticoat.

“Oh!” murmured Tess, again, “I – I believe she must be a Gypsy woman, Dot Kenway.”

Had the two little Corner House girls not been so much excited at just this minute they must have heard the passing of an automobile on the road, now out of their sight. Or, if Neale O’Neil had chanced to blow the horn just then Tess and Dot would surely have been attracted by the sound.

To the older Corner House girls and to Mrs. Heard that night had certainly been one of extreme anxiety. Neale had found lodgings for them in the squalid little village which the post-office authorities recognized as “Arbutusville,” but which was still “Frog Holler” in the minds of the older inhabitants.

Neale found, too, a number of kind-hearted persons who were easily interested in the fate of Tess and Dot Kenway. There was a constable, and with that official at their head a dozen men started abroad at nine o’clock, with lanterns and a pack of “’coon dogs,” to beat up the woods all about the place where the automobilists had camped.

Neale went with them; but despite Agnes’ determination to attend she was refused the privilege. And Sammy, of course, remained with the women – they needing the protection of some manly spirit – and fell asleep in two minutes.

Neale O’Neil dragged back about dawn. The search had been resultless – save that the dogs had started a raccoon – and the party had swept woods, fields, and swamps for miles as well as it could be done at night. They had shouted. They had roused every householder. Nobody had heard of the lost children or seen them.

But Neale had heard one thing that greatly troubled him; and yet which offered a possible clue to the little girls’ disappearance.

On the way back to the village somebody in the crowd of searchers had told him that one of the aroused householders had mentioned the fact that there was a Gypsy encampment not many miles away.

The boy was instantly excited. He learned from his informant just where the camp was, and immediately put the idea before the constable.

“Why, that’s too fur away, bub,” said Constable Munro. “It’s five mile beyond where you an’ your folks stopped to eat – and on another road.”

“The children might not have walked all that way,” said Neale O’Neil. “They might have been carried there.”

“Uh-huh? Against their will?”

“Well, why not?” returned Neale. “We hear all kind of stories about Gypsies. I’ve seen some bad ones myself.”

“Aw, they’re petty thieves, and bad horse traders sometimes. But to steal a couple of kids – I dunno ’bout that. Still – if you air bound to go there – ”

“I am,” Neale declared. “I’ll have the machine ready as soon as I get a bite of breakfast.”

He was sorry to have no good report to make to the girls and Mrs. Heard, and could only tell them, while he ate his hasty breakfast, where he was going and what he hoped to accomplish.

“I’m going with you,” announced Agnes and Sammy in a breath.

“No,” he said to the girl. “You can’t go. The constable won’t like it.”

“Well, I don’t see – ”

“I am sure you would not like to go with a party of rough men,” said Mrs. Heard, with such finality that Agnes became quiet.

But that did not stop Sammy’s teasing. “Say, us men ought to go, anyway,” he said. “Come on! Lemme go, Neale. I won’t be in the way. Tom Jonah’s going.”

So in the car that had passed so near the two little lost girls as they picked berries, were Neale and Sammy, as well as Tom Jonah and the constable, Mr. Munro. Tess and Dot were too greatly interested just then, however, in that vivid petticoat and in the strange looking woman who wore it to think about anything else.

CHAPTER XIV – WITH THE ROMANY FOLK

The woman had a very brown face and wore great hoops of gold in her ears, while on her head was a sort of turban with a fringed end hanging down behind. She certainly was dressed in very gay colors.

She had bright, beady black eyes, and when she saw Tess and Dot Kenway she looked at them very kindly indeed. At least, her smile was broad and her voice, when she spoke, was pleasant. She carried a heaping basket of berries.

“You leetle children out early to pick the berry, eh?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Tess, gravely.

But Dot was more communicative. She said promptly: “We’ve been out all night.”

“Picking berries?” queried the woman. “Not alone, eh?”

“We only just found the berries,” declared Dot, the chatterbox. “And, oh! we were so hungry.”

“You are out all night?” asked the puzzled woman. “Is it so?”

“We – we got lost from our folks,” Tess said, at last.

“You leeve near here, eh?”

“Oh, no,” said Tess, now more communicative, “We live in Milton. We were riding in an automobile – ”

“No, we weren’t!” interposed Dot, rather impolite in her eagerness to get the story perfectly straight. “We were stopping for lunch. Right beside the road. And Tess and I came to pick flowers.”

“So you wandered from your friends?” asked the Gypsy. “I see. I see.”

“And,” added Dot, confidently, “we’re hungry.”

“Oh, Dot!” exclaimed the scandalized Tess. “Not now! Not after eating all these berries!”

“Huh! what’s berries?” demanded the smallest Corner House girl. “I want an egg – and milk – and hot muffins – and – ”

The Gypsy woman laughed merrily. Although she did not speak English quite like other people, she seemed to understand the language well enough.

“You leetle ‘Merican girls come wit’ me,” she said. “I will find you food. Then we will find your friends.”

Tess was a little doubtful of their new acquaintance. She had some fear of Gypsies as a tribe. This one seemed kind enough, and looked kind enough. Nevertheless, Tess felt that they should be careful while in her company.

But she could not explain this to Dot, and Dot was a prattler. The smaller girl’s tongue went as fast as a mill-clapper, as Aunt Sarah Maltby often said; and it was particularly energetic this morning as she trotted along beside the Gypsy woman in the green and orange petticoat.

“Ah,” said the woman, at last, “your people are reech, eh? They have one of these motor cars, and you leeve in a fine, big house? They will give reward, then, to get you back, eh?”

Just then, before either Tess or Dot could make a rejoinder, they broke through the bushes and entered a beautiful little park in which was pitched the Gypsy camp.

Of course, the two smallest Corner House girls had often heard of Gypsies. Indeed, they had seen more than a few of them. The women often came into Milton to sell basket-work and to tell fortunes.

Indeed, the summer before, when the Corner House girls and Neale O’Neil were at Pleasant Cove, they had had quite an experience with Gypsies – and not a very pleasant experience at that. Tess remembered this, though Dot did not; therefore the older sister was a little troubled as they approached the Gypsy encampment with the gaily dressed woman.

This opening in the woods, with a grassy road running through its center, which was plainly no main-traveled highway, was a lovely spot. The Gypsies are thorough exponents of the out-of-door life, now so much talked about; and they have, too, some idea of the beautiful and picturesque.

This encampment had been selected because of the pleasant little brook running near, and the real beauty of the spot. There were six big covered wagons, all brightly painted. Besides, four tents were set up, and there were coops of chickens and other signs that the encampment was more or less permanent.

On the appearance of the two strange little girls with the Gypsy woman, there was a rush of dogs, chickens, goats, pigs and children toward the newcomers. Tess and Dot clung together and tried to get behind the green and orange petticoat. The woman shouted something in a strange tongue, and drove the children and dogs back. The other curious riff-raff of the camp had to be actually kicked out of the path.

There were several cooking fires in the camp, a number of men and women in sight, and at least fifty horses grazing at one end of the park, watched by several half-grown youths. Plainly there was a big tribe of the Romany folk encamped in this spot.

The woman with the gay petticoat, having given up her basket of berries to a girl, led the visitors by the hand, one on either side, to the nearest fire, where a big man in brown velveteen garments, including a peaked cap, and wearing gold hoops in his ears and a heavy gold chain around his neck, was sitting in a green-painted easy chair.

This man was a person of much importance, it was evident. Nobody else came near him as the woman approached with the two little Corner House girls.

He was not a bad looking man at all, though his face was deeply graven in lines, and wind and weather had tanned his face and hands like leather. Again in that strange language which Tess and Dot did not know, the woman spoke to this man, who was certainly the leader of the Gypsies.

The man’s eyes twinkled at the children, and he smiled. But he did not win their confidence. However, he shouted for another woman almost at once, and she came from the fire with two plates of steaming hot stew – either of rabbits or squirrels, Tess did not know which. And neither she nor Dot cared.

They were, indeed, very hungry. A diet of blueberries is not a filling one – especially when one has been without anything else to eat for so long as had the little Corner House girls. The woman with whom they had come into the camp sat down with them, having reported to the big man, and ate, too. They sat cross-legged on the grass, and had only spoons to eat with, and thick slices of very good ryebread to sop up the gravy of the stew. The woman said her name was Mira, and the children found her very pleasant and talkative.