Alice B. Emerson

“ The world had never used a runaway worse than it had used Curly. All the way down the river from Pee Dee—where his money had run out, and his transportation, too—the boy had been knocked about. And farther north, as Ruth Fielding and Helen knew, Curly Smith’s path had not been strewn with roses. ”

“ Take good care of them, Uncle Simmy.”
“Ya-as’m, Miss Catalpa— Ah sho’ will.”
She kissed Helen, too, and possibly felt the tears on the girl’s cheek. She patted the hand she held and whispered: “Don’t weep for me, my dear. I am going to a better and a brighter world some day, I know. I am not through with this one yet—and I love it. There is nothing to weep for.”
“And if I were she I’d not only cry my eyes blind, but I’d cry them out!” whispered Helen to Ruth, as they followed the old coachman. ”

“ Cameron’s automobile deposited Ruth at the Red Mill—her arrival so soon being quite unexpected to the bent old woman rocking and sewing in the cheerful window of the farmhouse kitchen.
When Ruth ran up the steps and in at the door, Aunt Alvirah was quite startled. She dropped her sewing and rose up creakingly, with a murmured, “Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!” but she reached her thin arms out to clasp her hands at the back of Ruth Fielding’s neck, and looked long and earnestly into the girl’s eyes.
“My pretty’s growing up—she’s growing up!” cried Aunt Alvirah. “She ain’t a child no more. ”

“ The positive Miss Miggs had undoubtedly made an impression on their minds when she accused Ruth and Helen of stealing.
“What they really think of us, we can’t tell,” Ruth told herself. “It is awful to be so far from home and friends, and have no way of proving that one is of good character. Here is poor Curly. What is going to become of him? His grandmother hasn’t answered my letters, and perhaps she won’t have anything to do with him after all. What will become of him while he lies helpless? He can’t have earned much money in these few days over at the warehouse, for they don’t pay much.” ”

“ As for that woman,” she flashed, as a Parthian shot at Miss Miggs, “I think she must be crazy!”
The girls descended the stairs. At the foot Nettie put her arms about Ruth’s neck and then about Helen’s, and kissed them both. She was not naturally given to such displays of affection; but she was greatly moved.
“Oh, my dears!” she cried. “I would not have had this happen for anything! It is terrible that you should be so insulted—and among our own people. Aunt Rachel will be perfectly wild!” ”

“ The dogs and little negroes cheered the cavalcade as they passed in sight of the cabins. Had Mr. Lomaine not ordered them back, a dozen or more of 109 both pickaninnies and canines would have followed “de quality” around the plantation.
They rode down from the corn lands to the cotton fields. Negroes and mules were at work everywhere. “I do say!” gasped Helen. “I didn’t know there were so many mules in the whole world. Funny things! with their shaved tails and long ears.”
“And hind feet with the itch!” exclaimed Ruth. “I don’t want to get near the dangerous end of one of those creatures.” ”

“ At the back, the gallery was crowded with blacks, their shining faces thrust in at the windows to watch the white folk. In fact, the whole population of Holloway Island was at the hotel.
The last few guests who had arrived from the cottages came under umbrellas as it had begun to rain again. When the fiddles stopped they could hear the drumming of the rain on the porch roofs.
“I’m glad we aren’t obliged to go home to-night,” said Nettie, with a little shiver, as she stood with her friends near a porch window during an intermission. “Hear that rain pouring down!” ”

“ Nettie said. “Those blacks who were intelligent in the old days perhaps should have had their freedom. But few slaves went with empty stomachs in the old days, or had to worry about shelter.
“It is different now. Whites as well as blacks throughout the South often go hungry. Aunt Rachel keeps many more people on the Merredith plantation than she really needs to work it, so that there shall be fewer starving families on the outskirts of the estate.”
“Your aunt is a dear, good woman,” Ruth said warmly. “I am sure whatever she does is right.” ”

“ Ruth and Helen were rather used to boat travel they thought by this time, and they found this smaller craft quite as pleasant as the big steamer on which they had come down the coast.
While they were at table in the saloon the boat started, and so nicely was it eased off, and so quiet was the water, that the girls had no idea the vessel had started.
The girls ran out on deck, arranged a comfortable place for Mrs. Parsons, and there watched the panoramic view of the roads and the shores until darkness fell. ”

“ Incidents of this great party at the Merredith plantation, and of other famous entertainments there, were still as fresh in Mammy Dilsey’s mind as the occurrences of yesterday. 125
“Oh, goodness,” sighed Helen, “there never will be any fun for girls again. And nowadays the boys only care to go to baseball games, or to go hunting and fishing. They refuse to come at our beck and call as they used to in these times Mammy Dilsey tells about.”
“I guess we make ourselves too much like themselves,” laughed Ruth. “That’s why the boys of to-day are different. ”

“ The girls followed suit; but as they came out of their stateroom there was the omnipresent colored man, in his porter’s uniform now, ready to take the bags.
Ruth and Helen let him take the bags, though they were very well able to carry them, for he was insistent. The stewardess—a comfortable looking old “aunty” in starched cap and apron—was likewise bobbing courtesies to them as they went through the saloon. Helen’s ready purse drew the colored population of that boat as a honey-pot does bees. ”

“ The lights burning on the hotel porch showed all this to the girls. Ruth and Helen, already wet half-way to their knees, had ventured out on the porch again in their excitement. Ruth screamed when she saw the danger Curly was in.
The boy had helped save Mr. Jimson; but the negro and he were being swept right past the hotel porch. They must both sink and be drowned if somebody did not help them—and no man was at hand. ”

“ Leaving the train at a small station in the forest, they were met by this handsome equipage and were now approaching the Merredith plantation. Ruth, as silent as her companions, was contrasting in her own mind this beautiful carriage and pair with the old Grogan barouche, the knock-kneed horse, and Unc’ Simmy.
“Two phases of the new South,” she thought, for Ruth was rather prone to a kind of mental problem that does not usually interest young folk of her age. “Here is the progressive, up-to-date, money-making class represented by Mrs. Parsons, reviving the ancient fortunes of her house. ”

“ Mrs. Holloway’s hand went to the bosom of her gown, she fumbled there a minute, and then brought forth her purse. The feel of the money in it seemed to reassure her; but Ruth knew what the gesture meant. What she had heard her cousin say had impressed the hotel keeper’s wife strongly.
Hearing the school teacher accuse the two Northern girls of stealing from her, Mrs. Holloway considered herself unsafe in Ruth’s hands.
“Oh, come away,” urged Helen, who had likewise observed the woman’s action. “These people make me ill. I wish we were back North again among our own kind.” ”

“ Helen understood now why they had come. That afternoon the girls were left to their own devices while Mrs. Parsons sought out Colonel Wilder and made some provision for helping in the support of Miss Catalpa and her old servant.
“No, my dear,” she said to Ruth. “You may help a little; but not much. Wait until you become a self-supporting woman—as you will be, I know. Then you can have the full pleasure of helping other people as you desire. I can only enjoy it because my cotton fields have made me rich. ”

“ Helen said. “You let me alone, Ruth Fielding, and I’ll loll around just like Nettie does and let the colored people fetch and carry for me.”
“You lazy little thing!” Ruth threw at her, laughing. “It doesn’t become your father’s daughter to long for such methods and habits. Goodness! the negroes themselves are so slow they give me the fidgets.”
In the morning they awoke from sleep as the boat was being docked. It was another beautiful, sunshiny day. The negro dockhands lolled upon the wharves. Up the river they could see the bridge to Manchester and the rapids, up which no boat could sail. ”

“ It can’t be done. If we girls want the boys to be gallant and dance attendance on us, and cater to our whims—as they certainly did in our grandmothers’ days—we must not be rough and ready friends with them: play golf, tennis, swim, run, bat balls, and—and talk slang—the equal of our boy friends in every particular.”
“You’re so funny, Ruthie,” laughed Nettie.
“Lecture by Miss Ruth Fielding, the famous woman’s rights advocate,” groaned Helen.
“I am not sure I advocate it, my dear,” sighed Ruth. “‘I, too, would love and live in Arcady.’”
“Goodness! hear her exude sentiment,” gasped Helen. ”

“ Parsons, I fear, could not stop the law in its course.”
“I don’t know. She is pretty powerful,” returned her chum, grinning. “See how nice they have all begun to treat us since Nettie threatened them with the terrors of her Aunt Rachel’s displeasure.”
“Perhaps. But I would rather they were nice to us for our own sakes,” Ruth said thoughtfully. “If it were not for Nettie, and Curly and the concert we want to give for his benefit, I wouldn’t care whether many of them spoke to us or not. And every time that Miggs woman is in sight she makes me feel awfully unhappy,” confessed Ruth. ”

“ For even Ruth, with all her good sense and soberness, loved to hear of pretty ladies, in pretty frocks, and with beautifully dressed gentlemen dancing attendance upon them, such as in the old times often filled Merredith House. ”

“ Only she doesn’t like boys—nor understand them,” Ruth said, as she folded the letter with a sigh. “Poor Curly!”
“Come on! let’s get out on deck and see them start. I do just long to see the wonderful New York skyline that everybody talks about.”
“And the tall buildings that we couldn’t see from the taxicab window,” added Ruth.
“Who’s going to keep the key?” demanded Helen, as Ruth locked the stateroom door.
“I am. You’re not to be trusted, young lady,” laughed Ruth. “Where’s your handbag?” ”

“ Both were bound by the system; but it was the negro who got the best of it, for every half dollar that the white man 106 earned he had to pay for food to keep his slaves. Now,” added Nettie, smiling, “the law even lets the bad white man cheat the ignorant black out of the wages he earns, and the poor black may starve.”
“Dear me!” cried Helen, “we’re getting as sociological as one of Miss Brokaw’s lectures. Let’s not. Keep your information to yourself, please, Miss Parsons. Positively I refuse to learn anything about social conditions in the South while I am in the Land of Cotton. ”

“ Helen declared. “I don’t like your cousin Mapes, Nettie.”
“I am not sure that a girl might not, after all, fill your cousin’s ‘bill of particulars,’ if she would,” Ruth said, laughing. “‘Friend Wife’ can still be a good comrade, and darn her husband’s socks. I guess, after all, not many young fellows would want to marry the kind of girl his grandmother was.”
The trio of girls did not spend all their rainy hours with Mammy Dilsey, or in such discussions as the above. Besides, now and then the sun broke through the clouds and then the whole world seemed to steam. ”

“ The other seats sold merrily. No one hesitated over paying the admission fee. There is nobody in the world as generous both in spirit and actual practice as these Southern people.
Almost two hundred dollars was raised for Curly’s benefit. The concert was held the afternoon following the auctioning of the seats, and the chums covered themselves with glory.
The piano was rolled out into the hall and the negroes knocked together a platform on which Ruth and Helen could stand and play, while Nettie perched herself on the piano bench to accompany them, and kept her feet out of the water. ”

“ Riding in the comfortable open carriage, behind a handsome pair of bay horses, and driven by a liveried coachman with a footman likewise caparisoned on the seat beside him, Ruth and Helen, as guests of Mrs. Rachel Parsons and Nettie, had already come twenty miles from the railroad station.
Despite the moisture and the heat, the girls from the North were enjoying themselves hugely. 95 The week that had passed since they had met Nettie and her aunt at Old Point Comfort had been a most delightful one for the chums. ”

“ And no ladies around. Unless they have mermaids visit them,” and Helen chuckled too. “Wouldn’t it be fun to hire a nice big launch—a whole party of us Briarwood girls, for instance—and sail out there and go aboard that lightship? Wouldn’t the crew be surprised to see us?”
“Maybe,” said Ruth seriously, “they wouldn’t let us aboard. Maybe it’s against the rules. Or 20 perhaps they only select men who are misanthropes, or women-haters, to tend lightships.”
“Are there such things as women-haters?” demanded Helen, big-eyed and innocent looking. ”

“ She has the ability of turning every event in her life into the most absorbing and astounding adventures, and when she is sent to visit her only other Uncle in the British West Indies, it proves to be the beginning of not only an entirely new mode of living, but a series of tremendously thrilling adventures and stirring deeds that every girl will thoroughly enjoy. ”

“ Parsons seemed to know all of them by name, and she shook hands with the older women, and spoke particularly to some of the young women with babies in their arms. Noticeably there were no children over seven or eight years old at home; nor were there any young men or women, save the few married girls with infants. Everybody else was at work in the fields, Ruth learned. And she learned, too, in time, that the Merredith plantation was one of the largest cotton farms in the state, and one of the most productive. ”

“ Ruth assured him. “And are Mrs. Parsons’ rooms yonder?”
“Right through that door,” replied the man. “There are the buttons. Ring for any attendance you may need. If everything is not perfectly satisfactory, young ladies, let me know.” 53
He bowed himself out. Helen performed several stately steps about the first room. “I tell you, my dear, we are very important. Nettie’s Aunt Rachel is a dear! Or are all people down here in Dixie as polite as this person with the side whiskers?”
“Why! I think people are kind to us almost everywhere,” said Ruth, laying off her hat and coat. ”

“ I have never traveled without matches since the time we girls were lost in the snow up in the woods that time. Remember?”
“I should say I do remember our adventures at Snow Camp,” sighed Helen. “But I never would have remembered to carry matches, just the same.”
“Now, I break the head off this one. Do you see? One is now shorter than the other. I put them together—so. Now I hide them in my hand. You pull one, Helen. If you pull the longer one you get the lower berth.” ”

“ Mr. Jimson said later, and in a hoarse aside to Ruth Fielding, “the sheriff’s a good old sport. He took it laffin’—after the fust s’prise. You make much of him, Miss Ruth—you and Miss Helen and Miss Nettie—an’ yo’ll keep him eatin’ out o’ your hand, he’s that gentled.”
Ruth was afraid at first that somebody would suspect the negro of unleashing the launch. She did not think Mr. Jimson knew who did it. In the first heat, Mr. Ricketts accused his man, Tom, of being careless. ”