“Then,” said Ruth, earnestly, “just a few days before the end of school some of her girls played a trick on the poor thing and frightened her—oh, horribly! She fell at her desk unconscious, and the girls who had played the trick ran out of the room and left her there—of course, not knowing that she had fainted. She broke her glasses, and when she came to she could not find her way about, and almost went mad. It was a very serious matter, indeed. They found her wandering about the room quite out of her mind. Mrs. Holloway had already invited her down here and sent her a ticket from Norfolk to Pee Dee, where she was to take boat again. The doctors said the trip would be the best thing for her, and they packed her off,” concluded Ruth.
“Well—she’s to be pitied, I suppose,” said Helen, grudgingly. “But I can’t fall in love with her.”
“Who could? She has had a hard time, just the same, When she lost her ticket she had barely money enough to bring her on to Pee Dee where Mrs. Holloway met her. The poor thing was worried to death. You see, all her money had been spent on the aunt, and her funeral expenses.”
“Well! she’s unfortunate. But she had no business to accuse us of stealing her ticket—if it was stolen at all.”
“Of course somebody picked it up. But the ticket may have done nobody any good. She says she left it in the railroad folder on that seat in the steamer’s saloon—you remember.”
“I remember vividly,” agreed Helen, “our first encounter with Miss Miggs.” Then she began to laugh. “And wasn’t she funny?”
“‘Not so’s you’d notice it!’ to quote your own classic language,” said Ruth, sharply. “There was nothing funny about it.”
“That is when we first saw Curly on the boat.”
“Yes. He was there. But he didn’t hear anything of the row, I guess. He says he had no idea we were on that boat—and we saw him three times.”
“And heard him jump overboard,” finished Helen. “The foolish boy.”