CHAPTER IX
A STRANGE MEETING
Breakfast on the farm was just such another meal as supper had been. Again Bessie wondered at the profusion of good things that, at the Hoovers, had always been kept for sale instead of being used on the table. There was rich, thick cream, for instance, fresh fruit and all sorts of good things, so that anyone whose whole acquaintance with country fare was confined to what the Mercer farm provided might well have believed all the tales of the good food of the farm. Bessie knew, of course, without ever having thought much about it, that on many American farms, despite the ease with which fresh fruits and vegetables are to be had, a great deal of canned stuff is used.
"Bessie," said Eleanor, after breakfast, "this is rather different from the Hoovers, isn't it?"
"It certainly is," agreed Bessie.
"Well, of course it isn't possible right now, Bessie, but I've been thinking that some time, when Maw Hoover has gotten over her dislike for you, you may be able to teach her and some of the other farm women in Hedgeville how much more pleasant their lives could be."
Bessie looked surprised.
"Why, I don't believe I'll ever dare go back there," she said. "I believe Maw Hoover would be willing to put me in prison if she could for setting that barn on fire. I'm sure she thinks I did it. She wouldn't believe it was Jake, with his silly trick of trying to frighten me with those burning sticks."
"She'll find out the truth some time, Bessie, never fear. And think about what I said. One of the great things this Camp Fire movement is trying to do is to make women's lives healthier and happier all over the country. And I don't believe that we've thought half enough of the women on the farms so far. You've made me realize that."
"But there are lots and lots of Camp Fires in country places, aren't there, Miss Eleanor? I read about ever so many of them."
"Yes, but not in the sort of country places I mean. There are Camp Fires, and plenty of them, in the towns in the country, and even in the bigger villages. But the places I'm thinking of are those like Hedgeville, where all the village there is is just a post office and two or three stores, where the people come in from the farms for miles around to get their mail and buy a few things. You know how much good a Camp Fire would do in Hedgeville, but it would be pretty hard to get one started."
Bessie's eyes shone.
"Oh, I wish there was one!" she cried. "I know lots of the girls on the farms there would love to do the things we do. They're nice girls, lots of them, though they didn't like me much. You see, Jake Hoover used to tell his maw lies about me, and she told them to her friends, and they told their girls—and they believed them, of course. I think that was one reason why I couldn't get along very well with the other girls."
"I think that's probably the real reason, Bessie, just as you say. But if you go back you can make it different, I'm sure. You needn't be afraid of Jake Hoover any more, I think, especially after what he did at General Seeley's."
"Killing that poor pheasant? Wasn't that a mean thing for him to do? They used to say he did some poaching, sometimes, around Hedgeville, but then about everyone did there, I guess. But I didn't think he'd ever try to catch such beautiful birds as the ones General Seeley had."
"I could forgive him for killing the bird much more easily than for trying to get you blamed for doing it, Bessie. But let's change the subject. How did you and Dolly Ransom get along?"
Bessie smiled at the recollection of the stream of questions she had had to answer from her new roommate.
"She's great!" she said, enthusiastically. "I think we're going to be fine friends, Miss Eleanor."
"I hope so. There isn't a bit of real harm in Dolly, but she's mischievous and loves to tease, and I'm afraid that some time she'll go too far and get herself into trouble without meaning to at all."
"She doesn't like her aunt, Miss Eleanor—the one she lives with now that her father's away so much."
Miss Mercer made a wry face.
"Miss Ransom's lovely in many ways," she said, "but she doesn't understand young girls, and she seems to think that Dolly ought to be just as wise and staid and sober as if she were grown up. I think that is the chief reason for Dolly's mischief. It has to have some way to escape, and she's pretty well tied down at home. So I overlook a lot of her tricks, when, if one of the other girls was guilty, I'd have to speak pretty severely about it. Well, here she is now! Go off with her if you like, Bessie."
"Oh, Miss Mercer, what do we have to do this morning?" shouted Dolly as soon as she saw Bessie and the Guardian.
"What you like until after lunch, Dolly. Then perhaps we may want to arrange to do something all together—have a cooking lesson, or learn something about the farm. We'll see. But you and Bessie might as well go over the place now and get acquainted with it. Bessie can probably find her way about easier than you city girls."
"Oh, I'm so glad!" cried Dolly. "Come on, Bessie! I bet we can have lots of sport."
So they went off, and, though Bessie wanted to see the great barn in which the horses were kept, Dolly wanted to go toward the road at the entrance of the place, and Bessie yielded, since the choice of direction didn't seem a bit important then.
"I saw one of those boys who drove us up last night going off this way," Dolly explained, guilelessly, "and, Bessie, he looked ever so much nicer in his blue overalls than he did in that horrible, stiff, black suit he was wearing last night."
"You shouldn't laugh at his clothes. They're his very best, Dolly. The overalls are just his working clothes, and you'd hurt his feelings terribly if he knew that you were laughing at the store clothes. He probably had to save up his money for a long time to buy them."
"Oh, well, I don't care! I wonder if there's any place around here where you can buy ice-cream soda? I'm just dying to have some."
"I thought you were going without soda and candy for a month to get an honor bead, Dolly."
"Oh, bother! I was, but it was too hard. I got a soda when I'd gone without for two weeks, and I never thought of the old honor bead until I'd begun to drink it. So that discouraged me, and I gave it up."
"But don't you feel much better when you don't eat candy and drink sodas between meals?"
"I don't know—maybe I do. Yes, I guess I do. But they taste so good, Bessie!"
"Well, I'm afraid you'll have to do without the soda here."
Dolly was still really leading the way, and now, her eyes on a blue clad figure, she decided to leave the avenue of trees that led to the road and cut across a field.
"Don't you love the smell of hay, Bessie?" asked Dolly. "I think it's fine. That's one of the things I like best about the country, and being on a farm."
"I guess I know it too well to get excited about it, Dolly. You see, I've lived on a farm almost all my life, and so things like that aren't new to me. But it is lovely and, yes, I do believe I've missed it, there in the city."
"Wouldn't you rather live in the city, though?"
"Yes, because I wasn't happy where I was in the country, and in the city I've had everything to make me happy. I suppose you'd rather live in the country, though?"
"No, indeed! I like to hear the city noises at night, and to see all the people. And I like to go to the theatre, when my aunt lets me go to a matinee, and to the moving picture shows, and everything like that. Don't you love the movies?"
"I never went, so I don't know."
"Not really? You don't mean they haven't even got a moving picture place In Hedgeville? I never heard of such a thing!"
Bessie laughed.
"Moving pictures are pretty new, Dolly. No one could go to them until a little while ago, no matter where they lived, or how much money they had. And I guess people got along all right without them."
"Yes, but they had to get along without lots of things until they were invented—telephones and electric lights, and lots and lots of useful things like that. But you wouldn't expect us to get along without them now, would you?"
"I guess it's only the things we know about that we really need, Dolly. If we don't know about a lot of these modern things, we keep right along getting on without them. Like Hedgeville—the only man there who has a telephone is Farmer Weeks."
"Yes," said Dolly triumphantly, "and he's got more money than all the rest of the people in the place put together, hasn't he!"
Bessie laughed.
"And all this just because you want an ice-cream soda! What will you do if you really can't have one, Dolly?"
"I don't know! I'm just hankering for one—my mouth is watering from thinking about it!"
"We might ask this boy. Miss Eleanor said his name was Stubbs, Walter Stubbs."
Bessie smiled to herself as she saw how surprised Dolly was trying to seem at the discovery that they had come to the part of the field where Walter was working. He was red to the ears, but Bessie could tell from the way he was looking at Dolly that the city girl, with her smart clothes and her pretty face, had already made a deep impression on the farm boy. Now as the two girls approached, he looked at them sheepishly, standing first on one foot, and then on the other.
"Do you work all the time?" Dolly asked him, impishly, darting a look at Bessie.
"Cal'late to—most of the time," said Walter.
"Don't you ever have any fun? Don't you ever meet a couple of girls and treat them to ice-cream soda, for instance?"
"Oh, sure!" said Walter. "Year ago come October Si Hinkle an' I, we went to the city for the day with the gals we was buzzin' then an' we bought 'em each an ice-cream sody."
"Did you have to go to the city to do that?" said Dolly.
"Sure! Ain't no place nigher'n that. Over to Deer Crossin' there's a man has lemon pop in bottles sometimes, but he ain't got no founting like we saw in the city, nor no ice-cream, neither."
Dolly was a picture of woe and disappointment.
"Tell yer what, though," said Walter, bashfully. "Saturday night there's a goin' to be an ice-cream festival over to the Methodist Church at the Crossing, an' I'm aimin' ter go, though my folks is Baptists. I'll treat yer to a plate of ice-cream over there."
"Will you, really?" said Dolly, brightening up and looking as pleased as if the ice-cream soda she wanted so much had suddenly been set down before her in the field.
"I sure will," said Walter, hugely pleased. "Say, they play all sorts of games over there—forfeits an' post office an'—"
Bessie had to laugh at Dolly's look of mystification.
"Come on, Dolly," she said. "We mustn't keep Walter from his work or he'll be getting into trouble. We can see him again some time when he isn't so busy." And as they walked off she told Dolly about the country games the boy had spoken of—games in which kissing played a large part.
"The country isn't as nice as I thought," said Dolly dolefully. "I'm so thirsty, and there's no place to buy even sarsaparilla!"
"Maybe not, but I can show you something better than that for your thirst, Dolly. See that rocky place over there, under the trees! I'll bet there's a spring there. Let's find out."
Sure enough, there was a spring, carefully covered, and a cup, so that anyone working in the fields could get water, and even Dolly had to admit that no ice-cream soda had ever quenched her thirst as well.
"What delicious water!" she exclaimed. "Where's the ice?"
"There isn't any, silly!" laughed Bessie. "It's cold like that because it comes bubbling right up out of the ground."
"I bet that's just the sort of water they sell in bottles in the city, because it's so much purer than the city water," said Dolly. "But that's an awfully little spring, Bessie."
"The basin isn't very big, but that doesn't mean that there isn't always plenty of water. You see, no matter how much you take out, there's always more coming. See that little brook? Well, this spring feeds that, and it runs off and joins other brooks, but there's always water here just the same. Of course, in a drought, if there was no rain for a long time, it might dry up, but it doesn't look as if that ever happened here."
"Well, it is good water, and that's a lot better than nothing," said Dolly. "Come on! We started for the road. Let's go down and sit on the fence and watch the people go by."
So they made their way on through the field until they came to the road, and there they sat on the fence, enjoying some apples that Bessie had pronounced eatable, after several attempts by Dolly to consume some from half a dozen trees that would have caused her a good deal of pain later. Two or three automobiles passed as they sat there, and Dolly looked at their occupants enviously.
"If we had a car, Bessie," she said, "we could get to some place where they sell ice-cream soda in no time, and be back in plenty of time for lunch, too. I wish some friend of mine would come along in one of those motors!"
None did, but, vastly to Bessie's surprise, they had not been there long before a big green touring car that had shot by them a few minutes before so fast that they could not see its occupants at all, came back, doubling on its course, and stopped in the road just before them. And on the driver's seat, discarding his goggles so that Bessie could recognize him, was Mr. Holmes—the man who had taken her and Miss Mercer for a ride, and whom she felt she had so much reason to distrust!
"This is good fortune! I'm very glad indeed to see you," he said, cordially, to Bessie. "Miss King, is it not—Miss Bessie King, Miss Mercer's friend? Won't you introduce me to the other young lady!"