“It was this morning,” Pearl went on to say. “We didn’t see many of the women of the tribe when we came past that camp last week. But a number of them came down into the village this morning—selling baskets and telling fortunes from door to door. We saw them over by the hotel—didn’t we, girls?”
“Yes. I bought a basket from one of them,” admitted Carrie Poole.
“But when we came up here to the bungalow,” pursued Pearl, “one of the men working here asked me if I’d seen ‘my friend, the Gypsy queen’? So, I said ‘No,’ of course.
“Then he told me that that Zaliska had asked him where the girl was who was called Ruth Kenway. He told her that after the bungalow got afire, all the girls went to the hotel.”
“Then she’ll never find you there, Ruth,” interposed Agnes, with satisfaction.
Ruth was not sure that she did not wish the supposed Gypsy queen to find her. She knew that “Zaliska” was really the very pretty, dark-skinned girl whom she had been so much interested in on the train coming down from Milton.
And that strange girl was interested in Rosa Wildwood. Of that Ruth was as sure as she could be.
“Maybe she’ll follow you up to the camp,” said Lucy Poole. “I’d be afraid to live all alone in that tent if I were you girls.”
“Pooh!” exclaimed Agnes. “What’s going to hurt us!”
“The crabs might come up the beach at night and pinch your toes,” laughed Maud Everts.