"Some quick thinkin' she done!" exclaimed another of the employees. "Man alive, you wouldn't have no head on your shoulders right now if she hadn't knowed what to do at once and done it instanter. No siree!"
"My! my! my!" said the old gentleman again. "That girl then saved my life! Possibly saved me from a worse fate—to live on through the years maimed and mutilated."
Just then the train for which the old gentleman was waiting came in sight and soon drew up at the Milton station.
"Then I really owe that girl an apology," he went on. "Who is she? Does she live here!" he asked one of the bystanders.
"Sure she lives here."
"Well, I can't stop to-day. I've got to hurry. But I shall look her up the next time I come this way. Oh, yes indeed, I shall look her up! For a girl she certainly showed good sense."
"I don't know whether she did or not," scoffed the man to whom he spoke, but under his breath. "You don't look as though you were such a lot of use in the world, if you ask me. I bet you're a Tartar!"
Ruth Kenway, however, did not expect to be thanked. The old gentleman with the green umbrella passed out of her mind for the time being before she reached home. And there she found the assembled young folks in the throes of a discussion regarding Tess and Sammy's proposed aerial tramway.
"Do call it 'tramway,'" begged Agnes. "It sounds so awfully English, don't you know!"
"It sounds so awfully foolish, don't you know," said Neale O'Neil, who had come over the fence from Mr. Con Murphy's yard and sat on the stoop regaling himself upon a summer apple he had picked on his way. "Have a summer sweetnin', Ag?"