The two would-be beggars sprang back behind the grape arbor which ran along the side of the hill and opened upon the path which led to the spring. They waited, and presently heard footsteps enter the grape arbor. They did not dare to look, but cowered behind a low evergreen bush which stood at the end of the arbor. The footsteps came nearer and nearer. “She is walking rather slowly,” whispered Elizabeth, “but I think we may appear now.” She stepped out from her hiding-place, Betsy following. With heads bent and faces well obscured they began to whine: “Please help two poor unfortunates.”
“Go away with you,” a peremptory voice said, not Ruth’s, by any means. “What are you doing here? Don’t you know you are trespassing upon private property?”
The two little girls gave one scared look and beheld the tall form of a perfectly strange elderly lady, whom neither had ever seen before. Betsy stepped back hastily; Elizabeth followed suit. She stumbled against Betsy. They both lost footing on the slippery side of the hill and went rolling over and over down the incline. The lady at the top of the hill looked after them, not able to restrain a laugh. It was so comical to see two such queer-looking creatures tumbling over one another and looking like some absurd moving picture. But in a moment the observer began to be alarmed lest the two were injured by their fall, and she called out to them: “Are you hurt?”
To her amazement a childish voice answered: “Oh no; we’re not a bit hurt; only shaken up a little,” and a childish face peeped up at her from a mass of copper-colored hair.
“Bless my soul!” exclaimed the lady. She stood still for a moment and then walked quickly toward the house.
Having reached the foot of the hill the two girls gathered themselves together and sat up. Elizabeth’s hat hung on the back of her head, her worsted shawl had been dragged off by the weeds, while Betsy’s shawl trailed along the ground behind her.
“Well,” exclaimed Betsy, “that was a surprise, sure enough.”
“And we gave it to ourselves,” returned Elizabeth; then the humor of the situation overcame them and they rocked with mirthful laughter.
When the first fit of merriment was over Elizabeth, rubbing her knees, asked, “Are you hurt at all, Betsy?”
“I don’t think so, for my shawl saved me,” replied Betsy, after feeling various parts of her body; “It rolled me up like a mummy at first, then it caught in some briars and unrolled just before we stopped.”