Ruth Fielding Down East | Page 9

hair."
"That is what we get at college," said Helen seriously. "Dear old Ardmore! Ruth! won't you be glad to get back to the grind again?"
"I--don't--know," said her chum slowly. "We have seen so much greater things than college. It's going to be rather tame, isn't it?"
But this conversation was all before they were distributed into their seats and had started. Colonel Marchand was an excellent driver, and he soon understood clearly the mechanism of the smaller car. Tom gave him the directions for the first few miles and they pulled out of the yard with Mr. Curtis, the station master, and his lame daughter, who now acted as telegraph operator, waving the party good-bye.
They would not go by the way of the Red Mill, for that would take them out of the way they had chosen. The inn they had in mind to stop at on this first night was a long four hours' ride.
"Eastward, Ho!" shouted Tom. "This is to be a voyage of discovery, but don't discover any punctures or blow-outs this evening."
Then he glanced at Ruth's rather serious face beside him and muttered to himself:
"And we want to discover principally the smile that Ruth Fielding seems to have permanently lost!"
CHAPTER VI
"THE NEVERGETOVERS"
After crossing the Cheslow Hills and the Lumano by the Long Bridge about twenty miles below the Red Mill, the touring party debouched upon one of the very best State roads. They left much of the dust from which they had first suffered behind them, and Tom could now lead the way with the big car without smothering the occupants of the honeymoon car in the rear.
The highway wound along a pretty ridge for some miles, with farms dotting the landscape and lush meadows or fruit-growing farms dipping to the edge of the distant river.
"Ah," sighed Henri Marchand. "Like la belle France before the war. Such peace and quietude we knew, too. Fortunate you are, my friends, that le Boche has not trampled these fields into bloody mire."
This comment he made when they halted the cars at a certain overlook to view the landscape. But they could not stop often. Their first objective inn was still a long way ahead.
They did not, however, reach the inn, which was a resort well known to motorists. Five miles away Tom noticed that the car was acting strangely.
"What is it, Tom?" demanded Ruth quickly.
"Steering gear, I am afraid. Something is loose."
It did not take him long to make an examination, and in the meantime the second car came alongside.
"It might hold out until we get to the hotel ahead; but I think we had better stop before that time if we can," was Tom's comment. "I do not want the thing to break and send us flying over a stone wall or up a tree."
"But you can fix it, Tom?" questioned Ruth.
"Sure! But it will take half an hour or more."
After that they ran along slowly and presently came in sight of a place called the Drovers' Tavern.
"Not a very inviting place, but I guess it will do," was Ruth's announcement after they had looked the inn over.
The girls and Aunt Kate alighted at the steps while the young men wheeled the cars around to the sheds.
The housekeeper, who immediately announced herself as Susan Timmins, was fussily determined to see that all was as it should be in the ladies' chambers.
"I can't trust this gal I got to do the upstairs work," she declared, saying it through her nose and with emphasis. "Just as sure as kin be, if ye go for to help a poor relation you air always sorry for it."
She led the way up the main flight of stairs as she talked.
"This here gal will give me the nevergitovers, I know! She's my own sister's child that married a good-for-nothing and is jest like her father."
"Bella! You Bella! Turn on the light in these rooms. Is the pitchers filled? And the beds turned down? If I find a speck of dust on this furniture I'll nigh 'bout have the nevergitovers! That gal will drive me to my grave, she will. Bella!"
Bella appeared--a rather good looking child of fourteen or so, slim as a lath and with hungry eyes. She was dark--almost Gypsy-like. She stared at Ruth, Helen and Jennie with all the amazement of the usual yokel. But it was their dress, not themselves, Ruth saw, engaged Bella's interest.
"When you ladies want any help, you call for Bella," announced Miss Susan Timmins. "And if she don't come running, you let me know, and I'll give her her nevergitovers, now I tell ye!"
"No wonder this hotel is called 'Drovers' Tavern,'" said Jennie Stone. "That woman certainly is a driver--a slave driver."
Ruth, meanwhile, was trying to make a friend of Bella.
"What is your name, my dear?" she asked