“Don’t drop any of that on my dress, child—it’ll spot. I’m all right now. My mercy! how that hurt.”
“A felon, Miss Pettis? How very dreadful,” cried Ruth, setting down the glass of water.
“And I ain’t been able to use my needle for a week, and the dishwashin’—well, it jest about kills me to put my hands in water. You can see—the sight this kitchen is.”
“Now, isn’t it lucky that I came this morning—and came so early, too?” cried Ruth. “I was going to take breakfast with you. Now I’ll get the breakfast myself and fix up the house—— Oh, yes, I shall! I’ll send word down to the hotel to my friends—they’ll take breakfast there—and we can have a nice visit, Miss True,” and Ruth very carefully hugged the thin shoulders of the seamstress, so as not to even jar the felon on her right fore-finger.
CHAPTER IX—THE SUNRISE COACH
Ruth was determined to have her way, and really, after one has suffered with a felon for a week, one is in no shape to combat the determination of as strong a character as that of the girl of the Red Mill!
At least, so Miss True Pettis found. She bowed to Ruth’s mandate, and sat meekly in the rocking chair while that young lady bustled about, made the toast, poached eggs, made a pot of the kind of tea the spinster liked, and just as she liked it—— Oh, Ruth had not forgotten all her little ways, although she had been gone so long from the seamstress’s tiny cottage here in Darrowtown.
All the time, she was as cheerful as a bluebird—and just as chatty as one, too! She ran out and caught a neighbor’s boy, and sent him scurrying down to the sidetracked sleeping car with a note to Helen. The rest of the crowd expected at Sunrise Farm would arrive on an early morning train on the other road, and both parties were to meet for breakfast at the Darrowtown Inn.
The vehicle to transport them to the farm, however, was not expected until ten o’clock.
Therefore, Ruth insisted, she had plenty of time to fix up the house for Miss Pettis. This she proceeded to do.