"Yes, Mr. Gordon," said Ida. "I read it in the paper. But the notice must have referred to my dear little mare. I never dreamed she had been sent over here. I never dreamed of it!"
"No?"
"Of course I didn"t! And when I got to Cliffdale there was n.o.body who had ever heard of my aunt. There are two hotels. One of them is closed at this time of year. At the other there was no such guest."
"Dear me! How disappointed you must have felt," murmured Betty.
"You can"t imagine! But in talking with the clerk at the hotel I got news of my little darling."
"Meaning the mare, of course?" suggested Uncle d.i.c.k.
"Yes. She had arrived the night before and had been taken directly to Candace Farm. The clerk told me how to get there. I did not feel that I could afford to hire anybody to take me there. And I knew n.o.body. So I set out to walk day before yesterday morning."
"Before it began to snow?" asked Betty.
"Yes, Miss Gordon."
"Oh, please," cried Betty, "call me Betty. I"m not old enough to be Miss Gordon. To a girl, anyway," she added. "With a strange boy it would be different."
The English girl consented, and then went on with her story.
"It was cloudy but I did not know anything about such storms as you have here. Oh, dear me, how it snowed and blew! I got to that little house and I could open the door. If I had had to go many yards farther I would have fallen down and been covered by the snow."
"You poor dear!" murmured Betty, putting an arm around the other girl.
Ida gave her a tearful smile, and Betty kissed her. And then the latter suddenly remembered again her lost locket. She gave a little jump in her chair. But she did not speak of it.
Not for a moment did she believe Ida Bellethorne would be guilty of stealing her trinket. Uncle d.i.c.k evidently did not think of that possibility, either. Could Betty suggest such a matter when already Ida was in so much trouble? At least, she would wait and see what came of it.
So she hugged Ida more closely and said:
"Go on. What else?"
"Not much else, Betty," said the English girl, wiping her eyes again and smiling. "I just stayed there in that house until you came along and saved me. There was nothing to burn but the furniture in the house, and I burned it. I suppose the poor man who owns it will want to be paid. Oh, dear!"
"I wouldn"t worry about that," said Mr. Gordon, cheerfully. "You seem to have come through a good deal. I"d take it easy now. Mrs. Canary and the girls are glad to have you here. When we go back to town we will take you with us and see what can be done."
"Thank you, Mr. Gordon. You are very kind. I should like to know about my little mare. She is a darling! How this Mr. Bolter came to get her----"
"Oh, Ida!" cried Betty, breaking in suddenly, "do you know a little man, a crooked little man, named Hunchie Slattery?"
"My goodness, Betty! Of course I remember Hunchie. He worked in our stables."
"He is with Ida Bellethorne, your pretty mare. He takes care of her. I talked with him at Mr. Bolter"s farm in Virginia. The mare has a cough, and she was sent up here to get well. And I heard Mr. Bolter himself tell Hunchie Slattery that he was to go with her."
"Dear me, Betty! if I could find Hunchie, too, I"d feel better. He might be able to tell me how it came that my mare was taken away and sold. She really did belong to me, Mr. Gordon. Mr. Jackwood, father"s administrator and my guardian, showed me the bill of sale making me Ida"s owner. And even if I was a minor, wouldn"t that be a legal transfer paper?"
"I am not sure of the English law, my dear. But it seems to me it would be in this country. At any rate, that will be another thing to consult my lawyers about. I understand Bolter paid somewhere near twenty thousand dollars for the mare. It would be quite a fortune for you, Ida."
"Indeed it would. And the mare is worth all of four thousand pounds, I know. Father always said there was no better mare in all England than Ida Bellethorne, and Aunt Ida might be proud to have such a horse named after her."
"We are not far from the Candace Farm and perhaps we can get over there before we leave Mountain Camp," Mr. Gordon said kindly. "Then you can see your horse and the man from home. I will get a statement from this jockey, or hostler, or whatever he is, and it may aid my lawyers in their search for the facts regarding the sale of the mare to Mr. Bolter."
"Thank you very kindly, Mr. Gordon."
The conference broke up and Betty ran out to join her mates on the lake.
Ida could not skate. And, anyway, she preferred to sit indoors with Mrs.
Canary. Ida had the silk for another sweater in her bag, and that very hour she began to knit an over-blouse for Libbie, who had expressed a desire to possess one like those Betty and Bobby had bought.
The skating was fine, but the wind had risen again and this time it was a warm wind. The snow grew soft on the surface, and when the party came up the bluff for luncheon it was not easy to walk and they sank deeply into the snow.
"This is a weather breeder," said Mr. Canary, standing on the porch to greet them. "I fear you young folks have come to Mountain Camp at the beginning of the roughest part of the winter."
"Don"t apologize for your weather, Jack," laughed Uncle d.i.c.k. "If it grows too boisterous or unpleasant outside, these young people must find their fun indoors."
And this is what they did for the next two days. The temperature moderated a good deal, and then it rained. Not a hard downpour, but a drifting "Scotch mist" that settled the snowdrifts and finally left them saturated with water.
Then back came the frost--sharp, snappy and robust. The air cleared like magic. The sun shone out of a perfectly clear sky. Just to put one"s head out of the door make the blood tingle.
Meanwhile both the girls and boys had found plenty of interesting things to do indoors, as Uncle d.i.c.k had prophesied. Especially the boys. Under the teaching of Uncle d.i.c.k and Mr. Canary they had learned to string snowshoes. Mr. Canary had the frames and the thongs of which the webs are woven. Even Timothy neglected the library to engage in this fascinating work.
Of course, the girls must have webs as well. Betty and Bobby were particularly eager to learn to walk on snowshoes and, as Bob Henderson said, they "pestered" the boys until sufficient pairs of webs were made to enable the entire party to try walking on them when the time was ripe.
On the third morning, just at dawn, there was a heavy snow squall for an hour. It left about four inches of downy snow upon the hard-packed and slippery surface of the drifts.
"This is an ideal condition," said Mr. Gordon with enthusiasm. "My feet itch to be off on the webs myself. After breakfast we will try them out.
Now remember the rules I have been telling you, and see how well you can all learn to shuffle over this snow."
Thoughtful Bob had strung an extra pair of shoes for Ida. He knew that Betty did not want the English girl left out of their good times. And all the crowd liked Ida. Although she was in the main a very quiet girl, as one grew to know her she proved to possess charming qualities both of mind and heart.
Ida was not as warmly dressed for venturing into the open as the other girls. But Mrs. Canary, one of the kindest souls in the world, mended this defect. She furnished Ida with a fur coat and gloves that secured her from frostbite.
The whole party turned out gaily. Having been confined to the house for almost forty-eight hours, they were as full of life as colts. But in a few minutes the nine of them were on snowshoes and watched and instructed by Uncle d.i.c.k were learning their first lesson in the rather ticklish art of scuffling over the soft snow without tripping and plunging headlong into it.
Not that there were not many laughable accidents. The capers both boys and girls involuntarily cut led to shouts of laughter, and sometimes to a little pain. For the frozen crust underneath the light surface snow offered a rather hard foundation when one fell flat.
The necessary falls incident to learning the right trick of handling one"s self on snowshoes soon cured the first enthusiasm of several of the party.
Louise, for instance, found it too strenuous for her liking. And Timothy got a b.u.mp on the back of his head that no phrenologist could have easily described.
The second day, however, Betty, Bobby and Ida, with Bob and Tommy Tucker, were just as enthusiastic on the subject of snowshoeing as at first. While the others swept off a part of the lake just below the Outlook, the snowshoeing party set off on their first real hike through the woods; and that hike led to an unexpected adventure.
CHAPTER XVIII
GREAT EXCITEMENT
Mr. Richard Gordon was, as Betty and Bob often declared, the very best uncle that ever lived! One good thing about him they thought was that he never "fussed."