“Zara’s gone to pieces completely, Dolly. She was terribly frightened–more than I was, I think, and yet I don’t see how that can be, because I was as frightened as I think anyone could have been.”
“I never saw them get hold of you at all, Bessie. How did it happen?”
“Well, that’s pretty hard to say, Dolly. You know, after we found out that that yacht was here just to watch us, I was nervous, and so were you.”
“I think we had reason to be nervous, don’t you?”
“I should say so! Well, anyhow, as soon as I saw that the tents were on fire, I was sure that the men on the yacht had had something to do with it. But, of course, there wasn’t anything to do but try as hard as I could to help put out the fire, and it was so exciting that I didn’t think about any other danger until I saw a man from the boat that had come ashore pick Zara up and start to carry her out to it.”
“They pretended to be helping us with the fire, and they really did help, Bessie. I guess we wouldn’t have saved any of the tents at all if it hadn’t been for them.”
“Oh, I saw what they were doing! When I saw the man pick Zara up, though, I knew right away what their plan was. And I was just going to scream when another man got hold of me, and he kept me from shouting, and carried me off to the yacht in the boat. Zara had fainted, and they kept us down below in a cabin and said they were going to take us along the coast until we came to the coast of the state Zara and I were in when we met you girls first.”
“We guessed that, Bessie. That was one of the things we were all worrying about when we came here–that they might try to carry you two off that way. I don’t see how it can be that you’re all right as long as you’re in this state, and in danger as soon as you go back to the one you came from.”
“Well, you see, Zara and I really did run away, I suppose. Zara’s father is in prison, so they said she had to have a guardian, and I left the Hoovers. So that old Farmer Weeks–you know about him, don’t you?–is our guardian in that state, and he’s got an order from the judge near Hedgeville putting us in his care until we are twenty-one.”
“But that order’s no good in this state?”