It was still not nine o’clock when the “Comet,” polished and oiled and looking as neat in his dark blue and buff uniform as a soldier on parade, stood ready for departure. The hamper of luncheon was strapped on behind, and underneath the middle seats in a pan of ice were bottles of root beer and ginger ale. Presently he started down the steep road with his load. The rustic camp, perched on the ledge in the side of the mountain, with its guard of pine trees crowding almost to its doors, never looked more alluring.
“I declare I hate to leave the place,” said Miss Campbell, peeping through the glass window in the back curtain of the car.
“It’s in good hands,” laughed the doctor, as the voice of Alberdina floated to them, singing in fulsome tones:
“Ach, mein lieber Augustine, Augustine, Augustine!”
But the motor car with its load of campers had not been long gone when Alberdina withdrew her arms, elbow deep in soapsuds, from the wash tub, and looked around her.
“Ach, mein lieber Gott,” she said turning her large cow-like eyes on the pile of linen, “I dis worg nod much lige. It is too many. I mag to coog dos clothes and rest. Dis life it all hard worg ees.”
She lifted an armful of linen garments from the tub and stuffed them into the clothes boiler which she filled with water and set on the coal oil stove. Then drawing up a steamer chair, she settled herself comfortably and closed her eyes, not noticing that in the boilerful of white things she had plunged a red silk handkerchief of Percy’s. Nearly an hour had passed when Alberdina awoke from her healthy, conscienceless slumber with a start. Turning her head lazily, she noticed that the clothes were boiling and the water was running over the sides of the boiler.
“Mein Gott!” she said in German. “That little mistress will make of me the Hamburger. I must do some work.”
But to her horror and astonishment, when Alberdina made an effort to rise from the low, easy chair, she could not move. She had been bound to the chair with a stout rope, the clothes line in fact. Each fat red hand was secured to an arm of the chair, her feet tied together and her body strapped to the seat and back.
Alberdina groaned and her stupid eyes became humid with terror.