“Stop that!” commanded Tom, looking up and shaking a threatening hand at Miss Timmins.
For in her rage the woman was trying to strike her niece with the stick, as Bella clung to the door.
“Mind your own business, young man!” snapped the virago. “And go back and put the rest of your clothes on. You ain’t decent.”
Tom was scarcely embarrassed by this verbal attack. The case was too serious for that. Miss Timmins struck at the girl again, and only missed the screaming Bella by an inch or so.
Helen and Jennie screamed in unison, and Ruth herself had difficulty in keeping her lips closed. The cruel rage of the hotel housekeeper made her quite unfit to manage such a child as Bella, and Ruth determined to interfere in Bella’s behalf at the proper time.
“I wish she would pitch out of that door herself!” cried Helen recklessly.
Tom had run into the barn and was climbing the ladders as rapidly as possible to the highest loft. Scolding and striking at her victim, Miss Susan Timmins continued to act like the mad woman she was. And Bella, made desperate at last by fear, reached for the curling edges of the shingles on the eaves above her head.
“Don’t do that, child!” shrieked Jennie Stone.
But Bella scrambled up off the swinging door and pulled herself by her thin arms on to the roof of the barn. There she was completely out of her aunt’s reach.
“Oh, the plucky little sprite!” cried Helen, in delight.