"Don"t be frightened, dear," Ruth said to the startled woman. "These are my friends."
Then she called to Helen that she was coming. Colonel Marchand hurried forward with an amazed question.
"Never mind! Don"t bother her," Ruth said. "The poor creature has been through enough--out in all this storm, alone. We must get her to where she is stopping as soon as possible. See the condition her clothes are in!"
"But, Mademoiselle Ruth!" gasped the Frenchman. "We are stalled until Captain Tom comes back with the gasoline--is it not?"
"We are going to have gas in a very few minutes," returned Ruth gaily. "I did more than find this poor woman up on the hill. Wait!"
Helen and Jennie sprang at Ruth like a pair of terriers after a cat, demanding information and explanation all in a breath. But when they realized the state of mind of the strange woman, they calmed down.
They wrapped her in a dry raincoat and put her in the back of the big car.
She remained quietly there with Jennie"s Aunt Kate while Ruth related her adventure with Mr. Peterby Paul and the "Whosis."
"Goodness!" gasped Helen, "I guess he named her rightly. There must be something altogether wrong with the poor creature to make her wander about these wet woods, screeching like a loon."
"I"d screech, too," said Jennie Stone, "if I"d torn a perfectly good silk dress to tatters as she has."
"Think of going huckleberrying in a frock like that," murmured Ruth. "I guess you are both right. And Mr. Peterby Paul did have good reason for calling her a "Whosis"."
CHAPTER XII
ALONGSh.o.r.e
Mr. Peterby Paul appeared after a short time striding down the wooded hillside balancing a five-gallon gasoline can in either hand.
"I reckon you can get to Ridgeton on this here," he said jovially. "Guess I"d better set up a sign down here so"s other of you autermobile folks kin take heart if ye git stuck."
"You are just as welcome as the flowers in spring, tra-la!" cried Helen, fairly dancing with delight.
"You are an angel visitor, Mr. Paul," said the plump girl.
"I been called a lot o" things besides an angel," the bearded woodsman said, his eyes twinkling. "My wife, "fore she died, had an almighty tart tongue."
"And _now_?" queried Helen wickedly.
"Wal, wherever the poor critter"s gone, I reckon she"s l"arned to bridle her tongue," said Mr. Peterby Paul cheerfully. "Howsomever, as the feller said, that"s another day"s job. Mr. Frenchy, let"s pour this gasoline into them tanks."
Ruth insisted upon paying for the gasoline, and paying well. Then Peterby Paul gave them careful directions as to the situation of Abby Drake"s house, at which it seemed the lost woman must belong.
"Abby always has her house full of city folks in the summer," the woodsman said. "She is pretty near a Whosis herself, Abby Drake is."
With which rather unfavorable intimation regarding the despised "city folks," Mr. Peterby Paul saw them start on over the now badly rutted road.
Helen drove the smaller car with Ruth sitting beside her. Henri Marchand took the wheel of the touring car, and the run to Boston was resumed.
"But we must not over-run Tom," said Ruth to her chum. "No knowing what by-path he might have tried in search of the elusive gasoline."
"I"ll keep the horn blowing," Helen said, suiting action to her speech and sounding a musical blast through the wooded country that lay all about.
"He ought to know his own auto-horn."
The tone of the horn was peculiar. Ruth could always distinguish it from any other as Tom speeded along the Cheslow road toward the Red Mill. But then, she was perhaps subconsciously listening for its mellow note.
She tacitly agreed with Helen, however, that it might be a good thing to toot the horn frequently. And the signal brought to the roadside an anxious group of women at a sprawling farmhouse not a mile beyond the spot where the two cars had been stalled.
"That is the Drake place. It must be!" Ruth exclaimed, putting out a hand to warn Colonel Marchand that they were about to halt.
A fleshy woman with a very ruddy face under her sunbonnet came eagerly out into the road, leading the group of evidently much worried women.
"Have you folks seen anything of----"
"_Abby!_" shrieked the woman Ruth had found, and she struggled to get out of the car.
"Well, I declare, Mary Marsden!" gasped the sunbonneted woman, who was plainly Abby Drake. "If you ain"t a sight!"
"I--I"m so scared!" quavered the unforunate victim of her own nerves, as Ruth ran back to help her out of the touring car. "G.o.d is going to punish me, Abby."
"I certainly hope He will," declared her friend, in rather a hard-hearted way. "I told you, you ought to be punished for wearing that dress up there into the berry pasture, and---- Land"s sakes alive! Look at her dress!"
Afterward, when Ruth had been thanked by Mrs. Drake and the other women, and the cars were rolling along the highway again, the girl of the Red Mill said to Helen Cameron:
"I guess Tom is more than half right. Altogether, the most serious topic of conversation for all kinds and conditions of female humans is the matter of dress--in one way or another."
"How dare you slur your own s.e.x so?" demanded Helen.
"Well, look at this case," her chum observed. "This Mary Marsden had been lost in the storm and killed for all they knew, yet Abby Drake"s first thought was for the woman"s dress."
"Well, it was a pity about the dress," Helen remarked, proving that she agreed with Abby Drake and the bulk of womankind--as her twin brother oft and again acclaimed.
Ruth laughed. "And now if we could see poor dear Tommy----"
The car rounded a sharp turn in the highway. The Drake house was perhaps a mile behind. Ahead was a long stretch of rain-drenched road, and Helen instantly cried:
"There he is!"
The figure of Tom Cameron with the empty gasoline can in his hand could scarcely be mistaken, although he was at least a mile in advance. Helen began to punch the horn madly.
"He"ll know that," Ruth cried. "Yes, he looks back! Won"t he be astonished?"
Tom certainly was amazed. He proceeded to sit down on the can and wait for the cars to overtake him.
"What are you traveling on?" he shouted, when Helen stopped with the engine running just in front of him. "Fairy gasoline?"
"Why, Tommy, you"re not so smart!" laughed his sister. "It takes Ruth to find gas stations. We were stalled right in front of one, and you did not know it. Hop in here and take my place and I"ll run back to the other car.