“Now, Bob!” She fairly dragged him from the supper table, ignoring his suggestion that they help Grandma Watterby wash the dishes. “I can’t wait another minute, not even to help Grandma. I have something to tell you, and you simply must listen. I’ve found your aunts!”
Bob stared at her stupidly.
“I found the three hills!” Betty hurried on excitedly. “Clover carried me ever so far, and I saw the three hills in the distance. I had to ride miles before I reached them, but it isn’t more than seven or eight by the road. And, Bob, both your aunts are very sick, and they have no one to take care of them or get them anything to eat. There aren’t any neighbors around here, you know; all the women are too old or too busy like Mrs. Watterby, and the men are crazy about oil. You and I have to go there to-night.”
“Betty, are you sure you are not crazy?” demanded Bob uneasily. “How do you know they are my aunts? How can we go there and stay? They must need a doctor.”
Betty was impatient of explanations, but she saw that Bob was genuinely bewildered, so she hastily sketched the proceedings of the afternoon for him.
“And Doctor Morrison must be there now,” she wound up triumphantly. “They look so much like you, Bob. He’ll see it, too.”
“I never saw any one like you, Betty!” Bob gazed at her in undisguised admiration. “No wonder you look tired. Why, I should think you’d be ready to drop. Hadn’t you better go to bed and get a good night’s sleep and let me go out to the farm? You can come to-morrow morning.”
“I’m rested now,” insisted Betty. “That hot supper made me feel all right again. Doctor Morrison will probably have some directions for me, and I promised the old ladies I’d be back and you promised Uncle Dick not to leave me. Let’s go and tell Grandma and leave word with her for Uncle Dick. Then you saddle up, and I’ll get my bag.”
Bob forbore to argue further, more because he thought that it was best to get Betty away from the Watterby place on the main road to Flame City than because he approved of her taking another long ride after an exhausting day. The most disquieting rumors had come down from the fields that afternoon, and Bob knew that every kind of story, authentic and unfounded, would be promptly retailed over the Watterby gate. If Mr. Gordon’s life were in danger, and Bob feared it was, it would be agony for Betty to be unable to go to him and be forced to listen to hectic accounts of the fire.
“Well, well,” said Grandma Watterby, when Betty told her that she had found the Saunders place. “So you rode to the three hills, did you? Ain’t they pretty? Many and many’s the time I’ve seen ’em. And Bob’s aunties—Hope and Charity—they living there?”