The stranger was busy, just the same. A shabby handbag had been opened and several pamphlets and folders brought forth. The near-sighted eyes were made to squint nervously into first one of these folders and then another, and finally there were several laid out upon the seat about the Unknown.
Suddenly the Unknown looked up and caught the two chums staring frankly in the direction of “his, her, or its” seat. Red flamed into the sallow cheeks, and gathering up the folders hastily, the person crammed them into the bag and then started up to make her way aft. But Ruth had already seen the impoliteness of their actions.
“Do let us go away, Helen,” she said. “We have no right to stare so.”
She drew Helen down the saloon on the starboard side; it seems that the Unknown stalked down the saloon on the other. The chums and the strange individual rounded the built-up stairwell of the saloon at the same moment and came face to face again.
“Well, I want to know!” exclaimed the Unknown suddenly, in a viperish voice. “What do you girls mean? Are you following me around this boat? And what for, I’d like to know?”
“There!” murmured Ruth, with a sigh. “The worm has turned. We’re in for it, Helen—and we deserve it!”
CHAPTER III—THE BOY IN THE MOONLIGHT
A mistake could scarcely be made in the sex of the comical looking individual at whom the chums had been led to stare so boldly, when once they heard the voice. That shrill, sharp tone could never have come from a male throat. Now, too, the Unknown drew a pair of spectacles from her bag, adjusted them, and glared at Ruth and Helen.
“I want to know,” repeated the woman sternly, “what you mean by following me around this boat?”
The chums were tongue-tied in their embarrassment for the moment, but Helen managed to blurt out: “We—we didn’t know——”