“Yes,” added Ruth, feeling that they two were the ones to blame. “We wanted to show them what fun it is to be pioneers, that’s all.”
“In Cranford,” came back the stern reply, “we are ladies and gentlemen. You have all forgotten your manners. Dear, dear, what will people say?”
And then they all drifted away, driving their captured children before them. All but Peter. Smiling, he took a hand of each of the girls and shook it.
“You’ve given the old ladies lots to talk about,” he said, “and that is what they need. And now will you come home with me and....”
But Peter wavered before their eyes even as he spoke. Dizzily they closed them. When they opened them again, they were home indeed, but it was their own familiar ranch home, not Peter’s.
“I wish he could have come with us,” mourned Ruth. “I did love Peter, didn’t you, Rose?”
CHAPTER VII
A Letter from Lorna
Late in the afternoon the wind had begun blowing, and by dark it was shrieking and howling and shaking the ranch house as though it were a living thing, and were trying to snatch them all up and carry them off to an unknown place. Ruth had been reading a legend called “The Flying Dutchman,” and she whispered to Rose, as they waited for Marmie to take them up to bed, the story of the demon ship with its ghostly crew, that flew on the wings of a wild wind, bringing the tempest with it, to leave some unlucky vessel to fight in vain against the strength of wind and wave.
“Out on the ocean it would go scudding by, all murky black and elfy white,” Ruth said. “The poor sailors on the good ship would see it, and know they were doomed. A dreadful man stood at the helm, leering, and the wind shrieked and howled ... like that ...” and she stopped, a little pale, as the house trembled at a new and stronger rush of the gale.
“Could the Flying Dutchman and his magic ship fly over the land to us here?” she asked Marmie, when they went to bed. But Marmie laughed, and told the two girls that even magic ships must stay on the water.