CHAPTER IV
THE CRYING NEED
Tom Cameron chased about the neighborhood for more than two hours in his fast car hunting the trail of the man who he had decided must be a wandering theatrical performer. Of course, this was a “long shot,” Tom said; but the trampish individual of whom Ben had told was much more likely to be an actor than a preacher.
Tom, however, was able to find no trace of the fellow until he got to the outskirts of Cheslow, the nearest town. Here he found a man who had seen a long-haired fellow in a shabby frock coat and black hat riding toward the railroad station beside one of the farmers who lived beyond the Red Mill. This was following the tempest which had burst over the neighborhood at mid-afternoon.
Trailing this information farther, Tom learned that the shabby man had been seen about the railroad yards. Mr. Curtis, the railroad station master, had observed him. But suddenly the tramp had disappeared. Whether he had hopped Number 10, bound north, or Number 43, bound south, both of which trains had pulled out of Cheslow within the hour, nobody could be sure.
Tom returned to the Red Mill at dusk, forced to report utter failure.
“If that bum actor stole your play, Ruth, he’s got clear way with it,” Tom said bluntly. “I’m awfully sorry——”
“Does that help?” demanded his sister snappishly, as though it were somewhat Tom’s fault. “You go home, Tom. I’m going to stay with Ruthie to-night,” and she followed her chum into the bedroom to which she had fled at Tom’s announcement of failure.
“Jimminy!” murmured Tom to the old miller who was still at the supper table. “And we aren’t even sure that that fellow did steal the scenario.”
“Humph!” rejoined Uncle Jabez. “You’ll find, if you live to be old enough, young feller, that women folks is kittle cattle. No knowing how they’ll take anything. That pen cost five dollars, I allow; but them papers only had writing on ’em, and it does seem to me that what you have writ once you ought to be able to write again. That’s the woman of it. She don’t say a thing about that pen, Ruthie don’t.”
However, Tom Cameron saw farther into the mystery than Uncle Jabez appeared to. And after a day or two, with Ruth still “moping about like a moulting hen,” as the miller expressed it, the young officer felt that he must do something to change the atmosphere of the Red Mill farmhouse.
“Our morale has gone stale, girls,” he declared to his sister and Ruth. “Worrying never did any good yet.”
“That’s a true word, Sonny,” said Aunt Alvirah, from her chair. “‘Care killed the cat.’ my old mother always said, and she had ten children to bring up and a drunken husband who was a trial. He warn’t my father. He was her second, an’ she took him, I guess, ’cause he was ornamental. He was a sign painter when he worked. But he mostly advertised King Alcohol by painting his nose red.
“We children sartain sure despised that man. But mother was faithful to her vows, and she made quite a decent member of the community of that man before she left off. And, le’s see! We was talkin’ about cats, warn’t we?”
“You were, Aunty dear,” said Ruth, laughing for the first time in several days.
“Hurrah!” said Tom, plunging head-first into his idea. “That’s just what I wanted to hear.”
“What?” demanded Helen.
“I have wanted to hear Ruth laugh. And we all need to laugh. Why, we are becoming a trio of old fogies!”
“Speak for yourself, Master Tom,” pouted his sister.
“I do. And for you. And certainly Ruth is about as cheerful as a funeral mute. What we all need is some fun.”
“Oh, Tom, I don’t feel at all like ‘funning,’” sighed Ruth.
“You be right, Sonny,” interjected Aunt Alvirah, who sometimes forgot that Tom, as well as the girls, was grown up. She rose from her chair with her usual, “Oh, my back! and oh, my bones! You young folks should be dancing and frolicking——”
“But the war, Auntie!” murmured Ruth.
“You’ll neither make peace nor mar it by worriting. No, no, my pretty! And ’tis a bad thing when young folks grow old before their time.”
“You’re always saying that, Aunt Alvirah,” Ruth complained. “But how can one be jolly if one does not feel jolly?”
“My goodness!” cried Tom, “you were notoriously the jolliest girl in that French hospital. Didn’t the poilus call you the jolly American? And listen to Grandmother Grunt now!”
“I suppose it is so,” sighed Ruth. “But I must have used up all my fund of cheerfulness for those poor blessés. It does seem as though the font of my jollity had quite dried up.”
“I wish Heavy Stone were here,” said Helen suddenly. “She’d make us laugh.”
“She and her French colonel are spooning down there at Lighthouse Point,” scoffed Ruth—and not at all as Ruth Fielding was wont to speak.
“Say!” Tom interjected, “I bet Heavy is funny even when she is in love.”
“That’s a reputation!” murmured Ruth.
“They are not at Lighthouse Point. The Stones did not go there this summer, I understand,” Helen observed.
“I am sorry for Jennie and Colonel Marchand if they are at the Stones’ city house at this time of the year,” the girl of the Red Mill said.
“Bully!” cried Tom, with sudden animation. “That’s just what we will do!”
“What will we do, crazy?” demanded his twin.
“We’ll get Jennie Stone and Henri Marchand—he’s a good sport, too, as I very well know—and we’ll all go for a motor trip. Jimminy Christmas! that will be just the thing, Sis. We’ll go all over New England, if you like. We’ll go Down East and introduce Colonel Marchand to some of our hard-headed and tight-fisted Yankees that have done their share towards injecting America into the war. We will——”
“Oh!” cried Ruth, breaking in with some small enthusiasm, “let’s go to Beach Plum Point.”
“Where is that?” asked Helen.
“It is down in Maine. Beyond Portland. And Mr. Hammond and his company are there making my ‘Seaside Idyl.’”
“Oh, bully!” cried Helen, repeating one of her brother’s favorite phrases, and now quite as excited over the idea as he. “I do so love to act in movies. Is there a part in that ‘Idyl’ story for me?”
“I cannot promise that,” Ruth said. “It would be up to the director. I wasn’t taking much interest in this particular picture. I wrote the scenario, you know, before I went to France. I have been giving all my thought to——
“Oh, dear! If we could only find my lost story!”
“Come on!” interrupted Tom. “Let’s not talk about that. Will you write to Jennie Stone?”
“I will. At once,” his sister declared.
“Do. I’ll take it to the post office and send it special delivery. Tell her to wire her answer, and let it be ‘yes.’ We’ll take both cars. Father won’t mind.”
“Oh, but!” cried Helen. “How about a chaperon?”
“Oh, shucks! I wish you’d marry some nice fellow, Sis, so that we’d always have a chaperon on tap and handy.”
She made a little face at him. “I am going to be old-maid aunt to your many children, Tommy-boy. I am sure you will have a full quiver. We will have to look for a chaperon.”
“Aunt Kate!” exclaimed Ruth. “Heavy’s Aunt Kate. She is just what Helen declares she wants to be—an old-maid aunt.”
“And a lovely lady,” cried Helen.
“Sure. Ask her. Beg her,” agreed Tom. “Tell her it is the crying need. We have positively got to have some fun.”
“Well, I suppose we may as well,” Ruth sighed, in agreement.
“Yes. We have always pampered the boy,” declared Helen, her eyes twinkling. “I know just what I’ll wear, Ruthie.”
“Oh, we’ve clothes enough,” admitted the girl of the Red Mill rather listlessly.
“Shucks!” said Tom again. “Never mind the fashions. Get that letter written, Sis.”
So it was agreed. Helen wrote, the letter was sent. With Jennie Stone’s usual impulsiveness she accepted for herself and “mon Henri” and Aunt Kate, promising to be at Cheslow within three days, and all within the limits of a ten-word telegram!