He went away abruptly, and Ruth had time to think it over. She did not fancy the situation at all.
CHAPTER XII—THE MAN IN THE MOTOR BOAT
She felt that she had taken hold of something bigger than she could handle just at this time. Ruth really wanted to remain quiet—on deck or in her stateroom—and nurse her injured shoulder and fix her mind on the troubles that seemed of late to have assailed her.
There was trouble awaiting her at home at the Red Mill. Aunt Alvirah must be very ill, or Uncle Jabez Potter would never have written as he had. The miserly old miller was in a greatly perturbed state of mind. He and Aunt Alvirah would need Ruth’s help and comfort. She looked forward to a very inactive and dull life at the Red Mill for a while.
After her activities in France, and in other places before she sailed as a Red Cross worker, home would indeed be dull. She loved Aunt Alvirah—even the old miller himself; but Ruth Fielding was not a stay-at-home body by nature and training.
She might have mental exercise in writing scenarios for the Alectrion Film Corporation. She had had good success in that work—and there was money in it. But it did not attract her now. Her work at the Clair hospital seemed to have unfitted her for her old interests and duties. In fact, she was not satisfied to be out of touch with active affairs while a state of war continued abroad.
The trouble at home, and the anxiety she felt for Tom’s safety, served to put her in a most unhappy frame of mind. She surely would have given her mind to unpleasant reveries had not this matter which began with Irma Lentz come up.
This racked her mind instead of more serious troubles. Perhaps it was as well. Ruth disliked having been considered unwarrantably interfering, as Captain Hastings undoubtedly considered she had been.
She answered the second luncheon call and passed Irma Lentz coming out of the saloon-cabin. The woman with the eyeglasses looked her up and down, haughtily tossed her head, and passed on. Ruth was aware that several other first cabin passengers looked at her oddly. It was plain that some tale of Ruth’s “mare’s nest” had been circulated.
And this must be through Captain Hastings. Nobody else, she was sure, could have been tactless enough to tell Miss Lentz what Ruth had said. Had the short-haired “artist” taken others of the passengers into her confidence, or was that, too, the work of the steamship’s commander?