“My arm!” she cried, and ran back to the other girls and Miss Cullam, laughing at him.
Edith’s presence on this train was puzzling.
“That was a man’s handwriting on the envelope Helen and I picked up addressed to Edith,” Ruth told herself. “Some man has been writing to her from that Mohave County town. Who? And what for?”
“Not that it is really any of my business,” she concluded.
She did not take Helen into her confidence in the matter. Let the other girls see Edith Phelps if they chanced to; she determined to stir up no “hurrah” over the sophomore.
Besides, it was not at all sure that Edith was going to Arizona. Her presence upon this train did not prove that her journey West had any connection with the letter Edith had received from Yucca.
“Why so serious, honey?” asked Helen a little later, pinching her chum’s arm.
“This is a serious world, my dear,” quoth Ruth, “and we are growing older every minute.”
“What novel ideas you do have,” gibed her chum, big-eyed. But she shook her a little, too. “There you go, Ruthie Fielding! Always having some secret from your owniest own chum.”
“How do you know I have a secret?” smiled Ruth.