“I declare!” cried Helen. “He’s one of the genii or a bottle imp. He appears just when you want him, performs his work, and silently disappears.”
“That man will be rich before we get to Old Point Comfort,” sighed Ruth, who was of a frugal disposition.
They closed the blind again, and a little later the lamp on the deck outside was extinguished. The girls had said their prayers, and now Helen, with much hilarity, “shinnied up” to the berth above, kicking her night slippers off as she plunged into it.
“Good-bye—if I don’t see you again,” she said plaintively. “You may have to call the fire department with their ladders, to get me down.”
Ruth snapped off the light, and then registered her getting into bed by a bump on her head against the lower edge of the upper berth.
“Oh, my, Helen! You have the best of it after all. Oh, how that hurt!”
“M-m-m-m!” from Helen. So quickly was she asleep!
But Ruth could not go immediately to Dreamland. There had been too much of an exciting nature happening.
She lay and thought of Curly Smith, and of the disguised boy, and of the obnoxious school teacher who had accused her and Helen of robbing her. The odor of Tom’s roses finally became so oppressive that she got up to open the blind again for more air. She again struck her head. It was impossible to remember that berth edge every time she got up and down.
As she stepped lightly upon the floor in her bare feet she heard a stealthy footstep outside. It brought Ruth to an immediate halt, her hand stretched out toward the blind. Through the interstices of the blind she could see that the white moonlight flooded the deck. Stealthily she drew back the blind and peered out.