Chapter 8 THE GYPSY CAMP

There were two things that encouraged Ruth Kenway, the oldest Corner House girl, to accompany Pearl Harrod's party through the woods without objection. Pearl told her that when they reached the highway on the other side of the timber in all probability they would be overtaken by an auto-bus that ran four times a day between a station on a rival railroad line and the Cove.

This was one thing. The other reason for Ruth's leaving the train with her sisters, and without objection, was the fact that the strangely dressed woman and the pretty, dark girl had left it already.

When the train first stopped and the brakeman announced the accident ahead, the woman had spoken to the girl and they both had risen and left the car. Perhaps nobody had noticed them but Ruth. The strange girl had not looked at Ruth when she passed her, but the woman had bowed and smiled in a cat-like fashion.

Pearl said they would follow a path through the timber to the road; and she pointed out the direction through the window. Ruth saw the woman and girl strike into this very path and disappear.

So curiosity, too, led the oldest Corner House girl to agree to Pearl's plan. The party of ten girls, including Ruth, Agnes, Tess and Dot Kenway, slipped out of the car without being questioned by any of the older people there. Nobody observed them enter the cool and fragrant woods. Chattering and laughing, they were quickly in the shadowy depths and out of sight of the hot train.

"Oh, isn't this heavenly!" cried Agnes, tossing up her hat by the ribbons that were supposed to tie it under her plump chin.

The green tunnel of the wood-path stretched a long way before them. It was paved with pine needles and last-year's oak leaves.

Ruth looked sharply ahead, but did not see either the woman or the girl, in whom she was so much interested. Either they had gone on very rapidly, or had turned aside into the wood.

Dot had made no complaint upon being forced to leave the train; but she clung very tightly now to the Alice-doll, and finally ventured to ask Tess:

"What-what do you think is the chance for bears in this wood, Tess? Don't you think there may be some?"

"Bears? Whoever heard the like? Of course not, child," said Tess, in her most elder-sisterly way. "What gave you such an idea as that?"

"Well-it's a strange woods, Tess. We aren't really acquainted here."

"But Pearl is," declared Tess, stoutly.

"I don't care. I'd rather have Tom Jonah with us. Suppose a bear should jump out and grab Alice?" and she hugged the doll all the closer in her arms. For her own safety she evidently was not anxious.

The girls, after their ride in the train, were like young colts let loose in a paddock. They sang and laughed and capered; and when they came to a softly carpeted hollow, Pearl Harrod led the way and rolled down the slope, instead of walking down in a "decorous manner, as high school young ladies should," quoth Carrie.

"If our dear, de-ar teachers should see us now!" gasped Pearl sitting up at the foot of the slide, with a peck of pine needles in her hair and her frock all tousled.

Their only baggage was the lunch baskets and boxes. All other of their personal possessions were on the train, in the baggage car. But the remains of the luncheons came in very nicely. Before they had gone a mile through the wood they were all loudly proclaiming their hunger.

So they found a spring, and camped about it, eating the remainder of the lunches to the very last crumb. And such a hilarious "feed" as it was!

Ruth forgot all about the Gypsy woman and the girl who had so puzzled her by her actions. The rest by the spring refreshed even Dot. She was plucky, if she was little; and she made no complaint at all about the long walk through the stretch of timber.

The party did not hurry after that rest. It was still early in the afternoon and Pearl, referring to her watch, said they would surely catch the auto-stage that passed on the main road about four o'clock.

"You see, there are no servants at the bungalow yet," Pearl explained. "Uncle has been taking his meals at one of the small boarding-houses nearby, that opens early. He is a great fisherman, and always goes down early and 'roughs it' at the bungalow until my aunt comes down.

"But she thought we girls would be able to get on all right-with Uncle Phil to give us a hand if we need him. We'll have to air bedclothes, and get in groceries, and otherwise start housekeeping to-night."

"Why! it will be great fun," Ruth said. "Just like playing house together."

"Say!" cried Agnes. "We want more than 'play-house' food to eat-now I warn you! No sweet crackers and 'cambric tea' for mine, if you please!"

"Oh! if I ask him," said Pearl, laughing, "I know Uncle Phil will take us to his boarding-house to supper to-night-if we get there late. But I want to show him what ten girls can do toward housekeeping."

"There'll be plenty of cooks to spoil the broth," sighed Agnes. "Did you ever see me fry an egg?"

Ruth began to laugh. The single occasion when Agnes had tried her hand at the breakfast eggs was a day marked for remembrance at the old Corner House.

"What can you do to a defenseless egg, Aggie?" Lucy Poole demanded.

"Plenty!" declared Agnes, shaking her head. "When I get through with an egg, a lump of butter, and a frying-pan, there is left a residue of charred 'what is it?' in the bottom of the pan, an odor of burned grease in the kitchen-and me in hysterics! It was an awful occasion when I tackled that egg. I've not felt just right about approaching an egg since that never-to-be-forgotten day."

"I was left home to cook for my father, once," said Carrie Poole, seriously, "and he asked to have boiled rice for supper. Mother never let me cook much, and I didn't know a thing about rice.

"But I saw the grains were awfully small, and I knew my father liked a great, heaping bowlful when he had it, so I told the grocery boy to bring two pounds, and I tried to cook it all."

A general laugh hailed this announcement. Agnes asked: "What happened, Carrie? I don't know anything about rice myself-'cepting that it's good in cakes and you throw it after brides for luck-and-and Chinamen live on it."

"Wait!" urged Carrie, solemnly. "It's nothing to laugh at. I began cooking it in a four quart saucepan, so as to give it plenty of room; and when father came in just before supper time, I had the whole top of our big range covered with pots and pans into which I had dipped the overflow of that two pounds of rice!

"Oh, yes, I had!" said Carrie, warmly, while the others screamed with laughter. "And I had gotten so excited by that time that I begged father to go out to the washhouse and bring in the big clothes boiler, so's to see if I could keep the stuff from running over onto the stove.

"You never saw such a mess," concluded Carrie, shaking her head. "And we had to eat rice for a week!"

It was just here that Agnes spied something far ahead beside the woodspath.

"Oh!" she cried, "are we in sight of the tent colony you tell about, so soon?"

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Pearl Harrod. "We're nowhere near the river."

"But there's a tent!" exclaimed Agnes, earnestly.

"And I see the top of another," said Lucy Poole.

"Dirty brown things, both of them. Look more like Indian wigwams," announced Ann Presby.

"My goodness, girls! there are the Gypsies Uncle Phil wrote about," said Pearl, in some excitement. "Let's get our fortunes told."

"Oh, dear me," said Ruth, rather worriedly. "I don't just like Gypsies."

"Oh, you haven't got to hug and kiss them!" laughed Pearl. "Come on! they're lots of fun."

But when the party of girls drew nearer to the Gypsy camp, this particular tribe of Nomads did not appear to be "lots of fun," after all.

In the first place, the tents-as Ann had said-were very shabby and dirty. The two covered wagons were dilapidated, too. Gypsies usually have good horses, but those the girls saw feeding in the little glade were mere "crowbaits."

Several low-browed, roughly dressed men sat in a group on the grass playing cards. They were smoking, and one was tipping a black bottle to his lips just as the girls from Milton came near.

"Let's hurry right by, Pearl!" begged Ruth.

Pearl, however, was not as observant as the Corner House girl. She failed to see danger in the situation, or in the looks the disturbed men cast upon the unprotected party of girls. As several of the fellows rose, Pearl called to them:

"Where's your Pythoness? Where is the Queen of the Gypsies? We want our fortunes told."

One man-a tall fellow with a scarred face-turned and shouted something in a strange tongue at the tents. Ruth recognized the language in which the woman had talked to the dark-faced girl on the train.

And then, the next moment, Ruth caught sight of the face of the very woman in question, peering from between the flaps of one of the dingy tents.