MISS PERFUME INTERFERES.
The little fellow retreated into the bushes as far as he could get and crouched, there in manifest terror. Katherine and Hazel spoke gently, sympathetically to him, but with no result, at first, except to frighten him still more, if possible.
“Don’t be afraid, little boy,” Hazel said, reaching out her hands toward him. “We won’t hurt you.”
But he only shrank back farther, putting up his hands before his face and crying, “Don’t, don’t!”
“What can be the matter with him?” said Hazel. “He doesn’t seem to be demented. He’s really afraid of something.”
Katherine looked all around carefully through the trees and into the neighboring bushes.
“I can’t imagine what it can be,” she replied. “There’s nothing in sight that could do him any harm. But, do you know, Hazel, I have an idea that may be worth considering. Suppose this should prove to be the little boy for whom we are looking.”
“That could hardly be,” Hazel answered dubiously. “Look at his threadbare clothes, and how unkempt and neglected he appears to be. He surely doesn’t look like a boy for whose care $250 is paid every month.”
“Don’t forget what it was that sent us here,” Katherine reminded. “Isn’t it just possible that this little boy’s fright is proof of the very condition we came here to expose?”
“Yes, it’s possible,” Hazel replied thoughtfully. “At least, we ought not neglect to find out what this means.”
Then turning again to the crouching figure in the bushes, she said:
“What is your name, little boy? Is it Glen?”
At the utterance of this name, the youth shook as with ague.
“Look out, Hazel; he’ll have a spasm,” Katherine cautioned. “He thinks we are not his friends and are going to do something he doesn’t want us to do. Let me talk to him:
“Listen, little boy,” she continued, addressing the pitiful crouching figure. “We’re not going to hurt you. We’ll do just what you want us to do. We’ll take you where you want to go. Will that be all right?”
A relaxing of the tense attitude of the boy indicated that he was somewhat reassured by these words. His fists went suddenly to his eyes and he began to sob hysterically. Hazel moved toward him with more sympathetic reassurance, when there was an interruption of proceedings from a new source.
A girl about 18 years old stepped up in front of the two Camp Fire Girls and reached forward as if to seize the juvenile refugee with both hands. She was rather ultra-stylishly clad for a negligee, summer-resort community, wearing a pleated taffeta skirt and Georgette crepe waist and a white sailor hat of expensive straw with a bright blue ribbon around the crown. Hazel afterwards remarked that “her face was as cold as an iceberg and the odor of perfume about her was enough to asphyxiate a field of phlox and shooting-stars.”
The boy ceased sobbing as he beheld this new arrival and his face became white with fear, while he shrank back again into the bushes as far as he could get. The girl of much perfume and stylish attire seemed to be unmoved by the new panic that seized him, but took hold of him and dragged him roughly out of his hiding place.
“Oh, do be careful,” pleaded Hazel. “Don’t you see he’s scared nearly to death? You may throw him into a spasm.”
“Is that any of your business?” the captor of the frightened youth snapped, looking defiantly at the one who addressed her. “He’s my brother, and I guess I can take him back home without any interference from a perfect stranger. He’s run away.”
“I beg your pardon,” Hazel said gently; “but it didn’t seem to me to be an ordinary case of fright. I didn’t mean to intrude, but he’s such a dear little boy I couldn’t help being sympathetic.”
“He’s a naughty bad runaway and ought to be whipped,” the girl with the cold face returned as she started along a path through the timber, dragging the little fellow after her.
“Isn’t that a shame!” Hazel muttered, digging her fingernails into the palms of her hands. “My, but I just like to——”
She stopped for want of words to express her feelings not too riotously, and Katherine came to her relief by swinging the subject along a different track.
“Do you really believe that boy is Glen Irving?” she inquired.
“No, I suppose not,” Hazel answered dejectedly. “You heard that girl say he was her brother, didn’t you? Well, Glen has no sister. But, do you know, I really am disappointed to find that he isn’t the boy we are looking for, for my heart went right out to him when I first saw his crouching form and white face. Moreover, I can hardly bear the thought of leaving him in the hands of that frosted bottle of cheap Cologne.”
Katherine laughed at the figure.
“You’ve painted her picture right,” she said warmly. “Come on, let’s follow her. We have as much right to go that way as she has, and we must go someway anyway.”
“All right; lead the way,” Hazel said with smiling emphasis on the “way” to direct attention to Katherine’s phonetic repetition.
The latter started along the path that had been taken by the girl and her frightened prisoner, and Hazel followed. The two in advance were by this time out of sight beyond a thicket of bushes and small trees, but Katherine and Hazel did not hasten their steps, as they preferred to trust to the path to guide their steps rather than the view of the persons they sought to follow. In fact, they preferred to trust to the element of chance rather than run a risk of arousing the suspicion of the cold-faced girl with the perfume.
Only once did they catch sight of the boy and his captor in the course of their hesitating pursuit, and this view was so satisfactory that they stopped short in order to avoid possible detection if the girl should look back. A turn in the path brought them to the hip of the elevation where the ground began to slope down to the lake and near the downward bend of this beach-hill was a rustic cottage, with an equally rustic garage to the rear and on one side a cleared space for a tennis court. At the door of the cottage was the girl with the pleated skirt and white sailor hat, still leading the now submissive but quivering youth.
“Fine!” Katharine exclaimed under her breath. “Things have turned out just right. If that should prove to be the Graham home we couldn’t wish for better luck. Come on; let’s back through the timber and approach this place from another direction. They mustn’t suspect that we followed that girl and the little boy.”