Ruth had scarcely reached the door when it was opened from within. A comfortable figure of a woman, with spectacles and gray hair, faced the oldest Corner House girl.
“Well, well!” said “Mother,” in just the hearty tone of voice a mother should possess. “An automobile party? Well, well! how many of you air there, my dear?”
“But, my goodness me!” gasped Ruth. “You’re not going to take us in ‘sight unseen,’ in this way, are you?”
The woman laughed. “Why not?” she asked. “If you are going to do anything for anybody, it ain’t perlite to hem and haw about it, I’m sure. Leastways, that’s the way I was brought up, my dear. And there’s little children with you, too! Of course you shall stay.”
Ruth and the others were speechless. Such hospitality—and evidently this was not a house of public entertainment—was quite unexpected.
“That you, Buckley?” she called to her husband. “You see to putting up the car. How many did you say there was? I want to know how much ham to slice,” and she chuckled unctuously again.
“There’s seven of ’em, Mother,” called the blacksmith’s mellow voice from the dark, “and a dog. B’sides, mebbe you’d better take notice that two of ’em’s boys, and like enough they’ve got their appetites with ’em,” and he broke into another mellow guffaw.
“Well,” Agnes later whispered to Ruth, “this is certainly the unexpected end of a perfect day! Goodness! what should we have done if these good people hadn’t taken us in? The blacksmith says they are rebuilding the bridge over Mason’s Creek and we couldn’t have got across.”
“Oh!”
“And that would have made us go around so far that the run to Tailtown would have been nearer sixty miles than forty-five.”