LOOKING FOR RUBY.
People who are sick are very quick to hear when anything is wrong, and as soon as the doctor opened the door of the sick-room, Ruby"s mamma asked anxiously,--
"Is anything wrong with Ruby? Where is she?"
Just then the only possible explanation of her absence occurred to the doctor, and he answered,
"She is not in her bed, my dear, and I am afraid she has run away and gone over to Ruthy"s to spend the night. You know she asked permission to stay all night the last time she went over there for supper, and I suppose she has made up her mind to go without permission. It is too bad in her to act this way and worry you. I will drive over after her right away, and bring her back in a few minutes."
"I don"t believe she would go all the way up to Ruthy"s after dark,"
said her mother, in anxious tones. "I am afraid something has happened to her, though I cannot imagine what it could be."
"Don"t think about it till I bring her back safe and sound," said the doctor as he hurried away.
But it was a great deal easier to give this advice than to follow it.
Ruby"s mamma could not help worrying about her little girl, and while naughty little Ruby was curled up in her blankets, sleeping as sweetly as a little bird in its nest, her mamma was listening to the wheels of the doctor"s buggy, rolling out of the yard, with a beating heart, and wondering what had happened to the little girl who had gone to bed not two hours ago.
It did not take very long to drive over to Ruthy"s house, and the doctor did not wait to hitch staid old Dobbin, but jumped out and ran up the steps to the house, anxious to know whether Ruby was really there. Although he was quite sure that she must be, yet he was impatient to satisfy himself.
"Is Ruby here?" were his first words, when Mr. Warren opened the door.
"Why, no," Mr. Warren answered. "I don"t think she has been here to-day."
"Oh, yes, she was here a little while this afternoon," said Mrs. Warren coming to the door. "Why, what is the matter, doctor? Is n"t Ruby at home?"
"No, she went to bed all right, but a little while ago when her aunt came and went to look for her, she was gone," said the doctor, feeling as if he did not know now where to turn to look for the little runaway; for where could she possibly be at that time of night, if she had not come over to visit her little friend? "Where can the child be?"
"Is n"t she in the house somewhere?" asked Mrs. Warren.
"No, we have looked through the house," the doctor answered. "I don"t know what will become of her mother, if I have to go back without Ruby.
No one could have come into the house and stolen her, that is certain, and yet I cannot conceive where she could have gone to at this hour in the evening. This is dreadful."
Neither Mr. Warren nor his wife could suggest any place to look for Ruby. It was certainly a very strange thing that she could have disappeared from her bed after dark, without any one knowing anything about it. The doctor got into his buggy again and started towards home, wondering what he should do when he had to tell Ruby"s mother that her little girl could not be found.
If Ruby could have known what a heartache her father had, as he drove slowly homeward, dreading to take such sad news back with him, I am quite sure the little girl would have tried to be good, and not make those who loved her so anxious about her.
In the mean time, Ruby had stirred uneasily in her sleep, and at last when the owl who lived in the tall elm-tree close by, gave a long, mournful hoot, she awakened, and sat up, wondering, as she rubbed her eyes open, where she was.
The cool evening breeze fanned her face, and the stars looked down upon her, and all at once Ruby remembered where she had gone to sleep. In the very depths of her heart she wished that she was back again in her own little bed, with her head on her pillow, and the white spread drawn over her. It seemed so very, very desolate to be down here at the end of the garden all alone, with a long, dark walk before her if she should go back to the house; and she began to think that the Swiss Family Robinson had a better time than Robinson Crusoe, since they were all together, and poor Crusoe must often have been very lonely all by himself, before his man Friday came to live with him.
If Ruthy had only been there, Ruby thought she would have made a very good man Friday, but she was quite sure that nothing would have persuaded Ruthy to stay out of doors at night.
"I am not a little "fraid-cat like Ruthy," said Ruby to herself, trying to pretend that she was not at all lonely nor frightened. "I would just as lief stay out here every night. I wonder what time it is. I guess it must be nearly morning. I was asleep just hours and hours, I think. I am dreadfully hungry, so it must be ever so long since I had my supper. I had better eat some provisions, maybe."
Ruby was not really very hungry, but she wanted to be as much like the Swiss Family Robinson as possible, so she sat up and sleepily nibbled at some cookies.
"I don"t think these are very nice cookies," she said, as she tried to keep up the pretence that she was very hungry. "I wish they were cocoanuts. They would be ever so much nicer."
"I wish this was a big, tall cocoanut-tree," Ruby went on. "And that it was just full of cocoanuts, and that some monkeys had a nest in it, and would throw me down cocoanuts whenever I wanted one. It would hurt if they hit me on the head though. I guess I would have to live under another tree, so as to be sure the cocoanuts would n"t drop on me. I wonder if monkeys live in nests. Of course they don"t live in bird"s-nests, but maybe they take sticks up into trees, and make little nests, and--and--"
Ruby nodded so hard that she woke up again. She had nearly gone to sleep sitting straight up, she was so sleepy.
"I don"t want to go to sleep just yet," she said. "I am going to stay awake, so. I might just as well be in bed as keep asleep out here all the time. I guess I will make a fire, and then that will be just like a real castaway."
The sticks and matches were all ready, and Ruby struck a match and lighted the little fire. It was not a very large pile of sticks, and Ruby had not thought that it would make much of a blaze, but the shavings underneath, and the light, dry sticks upon the top, were very ready to take fire and make as large a blaze as they could, so Ruby was quite dismayed at the size of her fire.
She was a little frightened, too. She had made the fire in the front of her little house, and she could not get past it to go out. The fence made a strong back wall to the house, over which she could not climb, and she could not possibly get away from the smoke and heat without going so near the fire that she was sure her night-gown would take fire.
Suppose the boards that she used in making the house should take fire, what would become of her then. I do not wonder that Ruby was frightened when she looked at the little bonfire, crackling and snapping away as cheerily as if a frightened child was not watching it with tears in her eyes.
"Oh, I shall be all burned up," she cried. "And no one will ever know what became of me. My mamma will cry and cry and wonder where Ruby is, but she will never think that I came down here and made a fire, and burned myself all entirely up. Oh, oh, I do wish I had n"t. I do wish I had n"t. I wonder if I screamed and screamed for papa, whether he would come down and hear me and come down and get me out. Perhaps he could n"t. I don"t see how anybody could get past that dreadful blaze.
He would just have to see me all burning up and he could n"t do one thing to save me. Oh, how sorry he would be," and Ruby cried harder than ever at the thought of her father"s distress.
The smoke made her eyes smart and sting, and it choked her so that she coughed and strangled, and I need not tell you that she would have given anything in the world to have been back in her own little bed again.
Just then papa drove through the gate, and you can imagine how much surprised he was to see a fire under some boards down at the end of the yard. He jumped out of the buggy and went down there as quickly as he could, to find out what it was.
He looked into the little house, and there beyond the fire, crying so hard that she did not see nor hear him, was the little girl he had been looking for.
"Why, Ruby!" he exclaimed in amazement; and Ruby looked up, as much surprised at finding her father there, as he had been a second before when he saw her.
"Oh, papa, papa, must I be all burned up?" she cried, but papa was already answering that question. He threw down the boards out of which Ruby had made her house, and striding past the fire, lifted her in his arms, and started up to the house with her.
He was so glad that he had found her, and could take her back to her mother safe and unharmed, that he forgot everything else, and of course, Ruby was happy at being in those strong arms, when she had been so sure that she was going to be burned up; and all the way up to the house she resolved, as she had so many times before, that she would surely, surely be good now, for whenever she was naughty, and did things that she knew would not please her father and mother, she always got into trouble, and was not half as happy as she would have been if she had tried to please them. After all, papas and mammas did know what was best for little girls.
CHAPTER IV.
CONSEQUENCES.
Ruby really had very good reason to be sorry for this last piece of naughtiness. By the time her papa carried her into the house they found that her mamma was very ill with the anxiety about Ruby, and her papa just let her kiss the white face once, and then he hurried her away to bed, so that he might do all that he could for the invalid.
Ruby was very much surprised to find every one up in the house. She had been so sure that it was nearly morning that she could not understand how it was that, after all she had been doing, and the long sleep she had had out in her little cabin, it should only be a little after ten o"clock.
It was some time before Ruby went to sleep, and in that quiet time she had a good opportunity to think how very naughty she had been. "I wish I had n"t played Swiss Family Robinson," she said to herself. "I wish I had never, never heard anything about that old book. I should never have thought of it by myself, and then, of course, I would never have done such a thing. And now, it is just perfectly dreadful. I know papa thinks I have been too bad to love any more, and mamma is so sick, and Ann looked as cross at me as if she would just like to bite my head off, and I most know she will scold and scold at me to-morrow, and there, Aunt Emma had to come the first time I ever did such a thing, and now, I suppose she thinks I run away every night, and I never, never did before, and it is n"t fair, so;" and Ruby cried softly. "Oh, dear, I do wish I had n"t, and it don"t make the least speck of difference how many times I wish I had n"t now, "cause it is too late. I wish I always knew beforehand how sorry I would be, and then I would n"t do things that make me feel so dreadful bad. I wish I knew how mamma is. If she was n"t sick, she would come and love me, and make me feel better; she always does when I have been doing things.
It is n"t my fault if I do bad things. When my mamma"s sick, how can I help doing things. I should n"t think anybody would "spect me to mind Ann, cause she"s so cross, and anyway she is n"t my mamma, so she need n"t pretend that she can tell me when I must n"t do things. I won"t let anybody but my mamma tell me what I must n"t do, "cept maybe my papa. I think it will be too bad for people to scold me for going out to-night, when I never had one bit a nice time. I can tell Ruthy I went, though, anyway, and she will be just as "sprised, and she will say, "I don"t see how you ever dared, Ruby Harper." Ruthy would n"t dare go out in the dark. She is a real little "fraid-cat, that is what she is. I "m glad I am not so "fraid of everything."
Ruby flounced about upon her pillow. She wanted to find fault with some one else, so as not to have to listen to what her conscience was telling her about herself, but it was not of much use to try to find fault with gentle little Ruthy. Ruby knew that even if she had not been afraid of going out in the dark, she would never have done anything that she knew would make her mamma and papa feel so badly.
Ruthy did things sometimes that she ought not to do, and sometimes forgot her tasks, but it was rarely, if ever, that she deliberately planned a piece of mischief; and if she was concerned in one, it was almost always because Ruby had coaxed her into it.
"If Ann was n"t so cross, I don"t believe I would do so many things,"
Ruby went on, still trying to find some one else to blame. "I never did so many things when mamma was well. I am going to ask her to send Ann away, "cause it is her fault."
But Ruby know better than that. It was because she was so very sure that it had been all her fault that she had done something that she had known perfectly well would displease her mamma and papa if they should know it, and that had worried her papa and made her mamma worse, that she was so anxious to lay the blame upon some one else.
She turned her pillow over and over, and thumped it at last, she grew so impatient because she could not go to sleep.