Beth wanted to ask how she had obtained money at all at the orphan asylum; but she did not wish to appear too curious. Perhaps they allowed the girls there to earn money by outside work. Cynthia spoke as though she had been bred to domestic service.
Beth, who was not unobservant, had looked more than once at the strange girl’s hands. They were white and soft, well kept, and slenderly formed—not at all the hands of a girl who had dabbled in dish-water or used the mop and scrubbing brush. Her clean-cut features, too, and her low, cultivated voice, certainly belied the thought that she had spent her life in domestic service.
Beth began slowly to coil her hair for the night, having slipped out of her shirt waist. Cynthia blinked at her for a moment, yawned twice (showing very even, strong looking teeth, likewise perfectly kept) and then—deep, even breathing from the lower berth warned the other girl that Cynthia was asleep.
CHAPTER IX
RIVERCLIFF LANDING
Beth was roused from her reverie by the mournful tooting of the Water Wagtail’s whistle for the landing at Marbury. Here Cynthia Fogg expected her pursuers would come aboard to search the boat for her; but she was a sound sleeper and did not arouse at all while the steamer was at the dock, discharging and receiving freight.
Nor did Beth hear anything outside her stateroom door that indicated a search of the passengers’ quarters for the runaway girl. Beth was a little worried, now she stopped to think of the matter more seriously. What would the authorities do to her if it was learned that she had hidden Cynthia away?
She wondered about another thing, too. If Cynthia safely escaped her pursuers, what was to be done with her? Beth wondered whether or not she should take Molly Granger into the secret. She felt that she ought to advise with somebody, and Molly seemed the only person at hand.
Yet she realized that the laughing, joking, careless Molly might not be just the best sort of individual to advise with in any important emergency.
Somehow, Beth felt that Cynthia Fogg was one of those persons who are apt to trust implicitly in the suggestions or help of others rather than themselves exert mind or body in an emergency. Having given herself into Beth’s hands, the runaway had gone to sleep as peacefully as a baby, leaving her hostess to think out her future course—if she would.
The steamboat finally got under way again, and nobody disturbed the occupants of stateroom Number 53. Beth then undressed, said her prayers, put Larry’s present and her purse under her pillow, and climbed gingerly into bed, being careful not to awaken the slumbering Cynthia.