Lupo moved a step nearer and pointed his thumb at Phoebe.
"So you"re trying to make a lady of her, are you?"
Phoebe took not the slightest notice. She was watching the antics of a squirrel leaping in the branches of a giant oak tree, but she turned her eyes gratefully toward Billie, when that young woman burst out with:
"She is a lady and my friend. I think you"d better go now, Mr. Lupo."
"Whoever meddles with those two shall pay for it," cried the man fiercely, just as Ben seized him by the collar and flung him into a thicket of bushes, from where he presently crawled away out of sight, occasionally pausing to shake his fist in their direction.
"A nice return for hospitality," exclaimed Billie.
"He"s a dangerous fellow," said the doctor. "But I imagine he"s mostly talk. What do you know of him, Miss Phoebe?"
"I only know that years ago they tried to drive us away from our house.
But an old man who lived with us, protected us. He owned the cabin and he left it to father and me. There was a will that made it ours. It became a home." They smiled at her quaint expression. "And the Lupos have been turned against us always, but G.o.d has protected us from our enemies."
They looked at her silently. It was impossible not to feel deeply impressed with the earnestness of her tone. Billie felt ashamed. With all her advantages and the opportunities money and travel had brought her, Phoebe, raised in a cabin on the mountain side, had learned something she had not.
Presently she went over and sat beside the mysterious girl.
"I wish you would teach me a few things, Phoebe. I feel that I am very ignorant."
"But I have never been to school," replied Phoebe in astonishment.
"There are some things one doesn"t learn at school," answered Billie.
CHAPTER X.
ALBERDINA SCHOENBACHLER
"You no lig I shall dos clothes coog?" asked Alberdina, the Monday after her arrival.
"Boil, you mean?" corrected Miss Campbell. "Certainly. There is a clothes boiler, and goodness knows the things need it, and a good bleaching afterwards in the sun. They are as yellow as gold."
When Alberdina, the new German-Swiss maid, had alighted from the train with her absurd little iron-bound trunk, about as big as a bread basket, Billie had felt no misgivings. Here, indeed, was a creature too healthy to know the name of fear, and too good-natured to object to hard work.
The brilliant red cheeks and broad engaging smile immediately decided Billie to put all her acc.u.mulated linen in wash at once.
On top of Alberdina"s large peasant head was perched a small round hat, positively the most ludicrous thing ever seen in the shape of millinery.
With its band of red satin ribbon and tiny bunch of field flowers, it seemed to defy the world to find anything funnier.
"It"s a real comedy hat," Dr. Hume observed. "The kind they wear when they sing:
""Hi-lee-hi-lo-hi-lee-hi-lo, I joost come over; I joost come over.""
"But she"s really a ministering angel, you know," said Billie, "sent to do the washing and ironing and scullery work. Except for cooking meals, we expect to take life easy from now on."
And so, right gladly, they had carried Alberdina Schoenbachler over the twenty-five miles of mountain road and established her in Sunrise Camp.
"I think she is the very person we needed, Cousin Helen," Billie said.
"Not accomplished, you know, or trained in any way, but good enough for camping. And there is no reason now why we shouldn"t take the trip to the lower lake if you feel well enough. The weather is perfect."
"Do you think we ought to leave her on the first day?" Miss Campbell replied somewhat doubtfully.
"Why not? She has enough to occupy her, goodness knows, with all that washing."
"But suppose she should get lonely or frightened--?"
Just then a melodious Swiss yodel broke the stillness of the early morning and Billie laughed.
"She isn"t going to be lonesome. She is accustomed to the mountains. Do let"s take a holiday, Cousin Helen, please," and with Miss Helen"s a.s.sent, Billie rushed off to find the others and tell the good news.
Perhaps some people would regard it as a fault in Billie"s character that, having formed a plan, she was always filled with wild impatience to carry it out. But when we consider that Billie"s plans concerned the pleasure and entertainment of other people and that her impatience was only another form of earnest enthusiasm, it would be difficult to criticise her.
While three of the Motor Maids busied themselves preparing the luncheon, Billie and Ben worked over the motor car, putting it in condition for a long trip, and Percy, in blue overalls, washed the body of the car.
"I am so glad to save you this drudgery," he observed, with an ingratiating smile.
"You"re not half as glad as we are, Percival Algernon," answered Ben.
"It"s a double blessing, because it"s good discipline for you and it gives us a chance to show how much we know about machinery."
"Don"t boast, my son. You may have a sure enough chance before the sun sets," remarked Percy in the tone of a prophet.
"After you have washed him off well, rub him down with those cloths,"
ordered Billie from under the car. "Then stow the rubber curtains inside and see to the lights. It may be late before we get back."
"All right, Captain," answered Percy respectfully.
It was still not nine o"clock when the "Comet," polished and oiled and looking as neat in his dark blue and buff uniform as a soldier on parade, stood ready for departure. The hamper of luncheon was strapped on behind, and underneath the middle seats in a pan of ice were bottles of root beer and ginger ale. Presently he started down the steep road with his load. The rustic camp, perched on the ledge in the side of the mountain, with its guard of pine trees crowding almost to its doors, never looked more alluring.
"I declare I hate to leave the place," said Miss Campbell, peeping through the gla.s.s window in the back curtain of the car.
"It"s in good hands," laughed the doctor, as the voice of Alberdina floated to them, singing in fulsome tones:
"Ach, mein lieber Augustine, Augustine, Augustine!"
But the motor car with its load of campers had not been long gone when Alberdina withdrew her arms, elbow deep in soapsuds, from the wash tub, and looked around her.
"Ach, mein lieber Gott," she said turning her large cow-like eyes on the pile of linen, "I dis worg nod much lige. It is too many. I mag to coog dos clothes and rest. Dis life it all hard worg ees."
She lifted an armful of linen garments from the tub and stuffed them into the clothes boiler which she filled with water and set on the coal oil stove. Then drawing up a steamer chair, she settled herself comfortably and closed her eyes, not noticing that in the boilerful of white things she had plunged a red silk handkerchief of Percy"s. Nearly an hour had pa.s.sed when Alberdina awoke from her healthy, conscienceless slumber with a start. Turning her head lazily, she noticed that the clothes were boiling and the water was running over the sides of the boiler.
"Mein Gott!" she said in German. "That little mistress will make of me the Hamburger. I must do some work."
But to her horror and astonishment, when Alberdina made an effort to rise from the low, easy chair, she could not move. She had been bound to the chair with a stout rope, the clothes line in fact. Each fat red hand was secured to an arm of the chair, her feet tied together and her body strapped to the seat and back.