“Helped me do what?”
“Helped you tumble in.”
“Now, do you suppose I needed help to do so silly a thing as that?” cried Ruth.
“You needed help to do it the other day on the steamboat,” returned Mercy, slily. “And I saw The Fox following you around that way.”
“Why, what nonsense you talk, Mercy Curtis!”
But Ruth wondered if Mercy was to be so easily put off. The lame girl was so very sharp.
However, Ruth was determined to keep her secret. Not a word had she said to Mary Cox. Indeed, she had not looked at her since she climbed out of the open pool behind the boulder and, well-nigh breathless, reached the rock after that perilous plunge. Tom she had sworn to silence, Nita she had warned to be still, and now Mercy’s suspicions were to be routed.
“Poor, poor girl!” muttered Ruth, with more sorrow than anger. “If she is not sorry and afraid yet, how will she feel when she awakes in the night and remembers what might have been?”
Nevertheless, the girl from the Red Mill did not allow her secret to disturb her cheerfulness. She hid any feeling she might have had against The Fox. When they all met at dinner on the Miraflame, she merely laughed and joked about her accident, and passed around dainty bits of the baked tautog that Phineas had prepared especially for her.
That fisherman’s chowder was a marvel, and altogether he proved to be as good a cook as Heavy had declared. The boys had caught several bass, and they caught more after dinner. But those were saved to take home. The girls, however, had had enough fishing. Ruth’s experience frightened them away from the slippery rocks.