Dr. Cranfew came often at first to see Mercy; but he declared at last that he only came socially—there was no need of medical attendance. The cripple could not go to recitations without her crutches, but sometimes in the room she walked with only Ruth's strong arm for support. She was getting rosy, too, and began to take exercise in the gymnasium.
"I'll develop my biceps, if my back is crooked and my legs queer," she declared. "Then, when any of those Miss Nancy Seniors make fun of me behind my back, I can punch 'em!" for there were times when Mercy's old, cross-grained moods came upon her, and she was not so easily borne with.
Perhaps this fact was one of the things that drove the wedge deeper between Ruth and Helen. Ruth would never neglect the crippled girl. She seldom left her in the room alone. Mercy had early joined the Sweetbriars, and Ruth and she went to the frequent meetings of that society together, while Helen retained her membership in the Up and Doing Club and spent a deal of her time in the quartette room next door.
Few of the girls went home for Thanksgiving, and as Mercy was not to return to Cheslow then, the journey being considered too arduous for her, Ruth decided not to go either. There was quite a feast made by the school on Thanksgiving, and frost having set in a week before, skating on Triton Lake was in prospect. There was a small pond attached to the Briarwood property and Ruth tried Helen's skates there. She had been on the ice before, but not much; however, she found that the art came easily to her—as easily as tennis, in which, by this time, she was very proficient.
For the day following Thanksgiving there was a trip to Triton Lake planned, for that great sheet of water was ice-bound, too, and a small steamer had been caught 'way out in the middle of the lake, and was frozen in. The project to drive to the lake and skate out to the steamer (the ice was thick enough to hold up a team of horses, and plenty of provisions had been carried out to the crew) and to have a hot lunch on the boat originated in the fertile brain of Mary Cox; but as it was not a picnic patronized only by the Upedes, Mrs. Tellingham made no objection to it. Besides, it was vacation week, and the Preceptress was much more lenient.
Of course, Helen was going; but Ruth had her doubts. Mercy could not go, and the girl of the Red Mill hated to leave her poor little crippled friend alone. But Mercy was as sharp of perception as she was of tongue. When Helen blurted out the story of the skating frolic, Ruth said "she would see" about going; she said she wasn't sure that she would care to go.
"I'm such a new skater, you know," she laughed. "Maybe I'd break down skating out to the steamboat, and wouldn't get there, and while all you folks were eating that nice hot lunch I'd be freezing to death—poor little me!—'way out there on the ice."
But Mercy, with her head on one side and her sharp blue eyes looking from Helen to Ruth, shot out:
"Now, don't you think you're smart, Ruth Fielding? Why, I can see right through you—just as though you were a rag of torn mosquito netting! You won't go because I'll be left alone."
"No," said Ruth, but flushing.