“So, you are off on your travels again,” said the lame girl. “I wish I was a butterfly of fashion, too.”
“‘Butterfly,’!” scoffed Helen. “Ruth, at least, is no butterfly. She might be called a busy bee with more truth.”
“Ah-ha, Miss Helen!” returned Mercy, shaking her finger, “you are the improvident grasshopper—no less.”
Helen giggled. “Tom says that that old proverb, ‘Go to the ant, thou sluggard;’ should read: ‘Go to the ant and slug her.’ He does not love work any more than I do.”
Again Ruth’s expression of countenance was one of disapproval, but she made no comment on Tom. The train thundered toward the station, slowing down as though resenting being stopped in its swift career for even a few moments.
Mr. Curtis, the station master, made a point himself of seeing that the baggage of the party was put into the baggage car. The conductor and porter helped the girls aboard, and they found their sections.
Ruth was determined that Wonota should not get out of her sight again, and the Indian girl was to occupy a berth in the stateroom. Totantora was to have had the berth; but when he saw it made up and noted the cramped and narrow quarters offered him, he shook his head decidedly. He spent the night in the porter’s little room at the end of the car, and the porter, when he found out Totantora was an Indian chief, did not dare object for fear of being scalped!
The party reached Hammond the following afternoon. Here they alighted instead of at Redwood, the more popular station of those wishing to reach the Thousand Islands by way of the electric road to Alexandria Bay. Ruth and her party were going direct to Chippewa Bay, for it was upon some of the more northern of the fourteen hundred or more isles that constitute the “Thousand Islands” that Mr. Hammond had arranged for the film company’s activities at this time.
A big touring car was waiting for the party, for one of the telegrams Ruth had caused to be sent the evening before was to Mr. Hammond, and they were glad to leave the Pullman and get into the open air. Totantora, even, desired to walk to Chippewa Bay, for he was tired of the white man’s means of locomotion. Ruth and Wonota would not hear to this.
“I guess we have eluded Bilby,” said the girl of the Red Mill; “but I shall not feel that Wonota is safe, Totantora, unless you are near her at all times. You must keep watch of your daughter. She is a valuable possession.”