CHAPTER X
NEW FRIENDS
The very last to recover her composure was Jennie. Woman-like, she had courage enough to face the possibility of caring temporarily for a sick man, but the sudden manifestation of light and the unexplained racket and noise that followed were too much for the good-natured Jennie's nerves. She was now "going to pieces," and the girls found more to do for her than they did to care for Mary and the professor.
"Come on, Jennie," begged Cleo, "just get in the car and we will all hurry out of here as fast as we can. You and Professor Benson take the back seat, and we will all pile in as best we can. I could ride on the tool box if I had to."
"Oh, yes, do come away," Jennie managed to say between gasps of "oh dear me" and "gracious sakes alive." But she was following advice, and was soon being assisted to the back seat by Tom, the driver, who never for a moment lost the set hack-man's look, in spite of all the excitement. "Whatever will Mrs. Dunbar say to all this," further wailed Jennie.
"Don't you worry! Aunt Audrey will be glad we were able to help, and that you were with us," declared Cleo. "Mary says it will be all right to take her grandfather to the private sanitarium, the one we passed along the mountain. Tom knows all about it, and thinks it is almost like a hotel, specially for sick people. Then Mary is coming home with us," declared Cleo delightedly. "Isn't that too lovely?"
Everyone agreed it was, this being evinced by the display of alacrity with which the party were all hurried in the car. Mary had managed to put together somehow a grip filled with the most necessary things for her grandfather. This she directed Tom to take care of, while in her own hands she carried a deep, woven basket, heavy with some articles surely too weighty and compact to be clothing.
Finally "embarked," as Grace called it, they were just turning out into the roadway when Reda appeared alone. Seeing the car she stopped stock still in her tracks, so that Tom was obliged to jam on the brakes or run her down. He did not shift his gears and execute the change of speed without uttering the usual man's grumble, and no one could blame him for this.
"Reda!" called Mary, "we are going out with some friends. You lock up and take care of things. Go on now," she told Tom. "We don't want to hear what she thinks about it."
It was well they did not hear, for a more surprised and excited old woman than the self-same Reda it would not have been difficult to imagine. She gurgled, choked, gulped and stuttered in the foreign dialect, which only the professor and Mary could have understood.
Last seen she was going toward the Imlay studio, that was, and the house of terrors, as it had that evening proved to be for the young visitors at Bellaire.
But the evening was now delightfully changed, and just as her association with the girls had noticeably stimulated and enlivened Mary, so the meeting with the very much alive party had an encouraging effect on Professor Benson. He was now sufficiently recovered to sit up and talk with Mary, and seemed very much relieved to be saved from a bad night in the studio. He insisted he could walk unassisted when Tom drew up to Crow's Nest Retreat, and as he imparted a volume of mysterious instructions and warnings to Mary, besides offering the most profuse attestation of thanks to his rescuers, no one would have imagined him other than a man suffering from a slight nervous attack.
Mary went to the door of the sanitarium with him, and her friends discreetly allowed these two a few moments to themselves.
"Isn't it too wonderful!" breathed Grace as they passed from hearing.
"To think we are going to have Mary with us to-night," added Cleo with a gust of anticipation.
"Can she sleep with me?" asked Madaline. "My bed is the largest."
"Whatever Aunt Audrey says, of course," Cleo felt obliged to answer.
Tom and Mary were returning, and although it was fully dark now, as
Mary stepped again in the car the girls realized she had been crying.
"I have never been away from him before since Loved One asked him to care for me," she explained, "but I feel somehow different now. I do believe I was going to grow black and suspicious, like Reda, when you met me."
"No wonder," Jennie almost snapped. "I'm not what could be called a nervous woman, but this evening has been more than I would like to run into again. Not that I am not very glad to have been along, though I didn't help much, with my own fussing," she felt obliged to add, for Cleo had pinched her arm and Grace unbuttoned her sweater, in an attempt to give the cue not to hurt Mary's feelings.
"Will everything be all right at your cottage, Mary?" asked Cleo, kindly.
"It will have to be for to-night," she replied. "But granddaddy has such precious belongings I will have to attend to things early to-morrow morning. He is dreadfully worried about leaving things, of course, but Janos has gone, and those others——" Her hands went up in a gesture of consternation, and the girls withheld their questions as to who the others were, and what could have been the nature of the mysterious happening in the back room of Imlay Studio.
All this time Mary was guarding the hand-made basket with jealous care, keeping it on her lap, and steadying it with arms as the car rumbled down the mountain road.
They were now within sight of Cragsnook and Jennie shifted about in evident relief.
"Here comes Shep!" exclaimed Madaline, as the big, shaggy dog rushed out from the heather-edged driveway.
"And there is Aunt Audrey," added Cleo. "I'm so glad she's home."
At the sight of another stranger Madaline could feel Mary shrink back, and the faint sigh that escaped her lips was noticed by Grace as well.
"You will love Aunt Audrey," said Grace in Mary's ear. "She is only aunt to Cleo, but we all call her Aunt Audrey, and she's just lovely." This in the most reassuring tones.
"Oh, yes," Mary answered, conscious her tremor of timidity had been noticed. "She looks so—so like my own Loved One as I remember her. I was thinking I may make a lot of mistakes, but you will excuse them?"
The round of chuckles, and the merry twitters given her in lieu of formal opinions, restored her sinking spirits somewhat, but each of the three attentive, sympathetic girls keenly realized Mary's discomfiture.
"Well, well!" exclaimed Mrs. Dunbar as they drew in. "Whatever became of you all? If Mally Mack had not met me at the station, and told me you were going for a mountain drive, I should have been a little bit worried."
"We brought you company, Aunt Audrey," Cleo answered, before Jennie had a chance to offer any explanation. "This is Mary Benson, you know. The little girl we met when we first came to Bellaire."
"Oh, yes. How do you do, Mary?" Mrs. Dunbar greeted the now really frightened little girl. "It's so lovely to have you come and visit my little ones. You see, they thought three would be really a crowd, and that they would never grow lonely for home, but I have noticed the tell-tale signs lately. Now, a real visitor will be the very best thing to effect a cure," and she was urging Mary into the house, quite as if her presence were indispensable for the evening's happiness.
The big, soft, dark eyes set so deep in the olive skin, just tinted now with a trace of excitement's color, gazed up into Mrs. Dunbar's face with all the yearning and longing of a lonely, forsaken child.
"Thank you," Mary managed to articulate, but the effort was mingled with a little choking sob.
Jennie drew Mrs. Dunbar into the library while the girls proceeded to the living room.
"Such a time as we have had," she exclaimed, "and I can't say it was all my fault. You see those children were so determined to help that poor friendless child that I just had to go along, or let them go alone, and I was sure you would not want that, Mrs. Dunbar."
"Hush!" putting a finger on her lip and a smile with it. "It is perfectly all right. I have known the children were on the trail of the poor little dear, and I'm just glad they rescued her, to-night especially. I saw three men running for the train I got off, and Mally Mack told me one was a Turk the officers are after! Don't say anything about it, but I know one of these was the man who meets the Indian woman, she who cares for Mary."
"Indian?" repeated Jennie. "Is she that?"
"Likely that—or part negro. I am sure she is from some Central American territory. I have used her type in painting. But come on. Let us give the children a little spread. Phone for some cream, and we will soon have them all happy enough to forget their fright. I know they are just dying to tell me all about it."
No mistake about that. Even the presence of Mary did not appease the children's eagerness to take Mrs. Dunbar into their exciting secret, if a matter known to so large a number can be classified as a secret or even a mystery.
In the rooms above the oak lined hall the girls could now be heard welcoming Mary, with all the natural excitement of her peculiar situation. Grace wanted her to try on her pale green organdie, because it would go so beautifully with her topaz eyes. Madaline insisted her baby blue was much more attractive, as one of Mrs. Dunbar's pictures showed a girl with brown braids gowned in heavenly blue, while Cleo offered her choicest frock, the coral pink with all the dinglely-danglely pink rose-buds dropping around the tunic. But Mary shook her head, and declined all the kindly offered finery.
"You see," she exclaimed, her eyes fairly glaring in unrestricted admiration at the gorgeous display of clothes, "I have to wear white. Reda says if I do not I shall get the fever and die as Loved One did."
"Oh, how perfectly ridiculous!" exclaimed Cleo. Then, fearing Mary would take offense, she hastened to add: "I am sure Reda is simply superstitious. I have known a child who wore white until she was seven, because her mother favored that as a sort of prayer, a consecration, and of course that was all right when its meaning was sincere, but to wear white to ward off a fever looks uncanny, foolish. Can't you put on a color if you choose?" and the beautiful pink dress threw a covetous glow up into Mary's classic face.
"Oh, of course I could," she demurred, "but——"
"But we wouldn't ask you to," and Cleo gave the sign for returning the pretty gowns to their respective closets, by putting the pink voile on its white silk hanger. "White is lovely, and it becomes you beautifully. Don't you think so, girls?"
They did, of course, and when just then Jennie called them to the dining-room for the spread, so delightful on any summer evening, Mary seemed to forget the terrors of that hour, when Professor Benson so barely escaped the trap that had been set for him at the Imlay Studio.