“Don’t be scared, Mary, dear. It will all come right. I have made up my mind to one thing. That is, I will not leave that unlucky box at your mother’s house any longer. We shall have to find some new place to keep it.”
Presently the two girls dropped off to slumber, and of all the sleepers in the big house, only one person heard the clock in the hall strike the passing hours. She tossed and tumbled on her bed like a boat on a restless sea, and moaned to herself. Her lace-frilled night cap had slipped, and one red rubber horn pointed upward, like an accusing finger.
CHAPTER XVII.—MRS. RUGGLES.
Breakfast was late next morning, and there were some heavy eyes at the pretty table. Belle was pale and nervous, and Mary, too, wore an anxious look on her face. Even the plump and jovial Mrs. St. Clair was not quite herself. Her eyes had a puzzled, absent-minded expression, as if she were trying to remember something that had almost faded out of her memory. But she forced herself to smile and talk with her young guests, and only the Motor Maids really noticed her abstraction.
“What do you intend to do to-day, Percival, dearest?” she asked her son.
“Don’t you remember, mother, that Billie is to take some of us and the side-seated wagon the others over to Mrs. Ruggles? I wrote her to expect us by two this afternoon, and we’ll be hungry enough by then to eat everything in sight.”
“Who is Mrs. Ruggles?” asked Billie, who was not yet familiar with various picturesque and interesting characters living around West Haven.
“Wait until you see her,” replied Mrs. St. Clair. “She is a queer old woman, but she has a great many friends and you can’t help liking her, and her food—dear me, you never imagined such meals as she can get up.”
“Now, don’t go and give things away, mother,” remonstrated Percy. “The others have all met Mrs. Ruggles, but Billie hasn’t and neither has Miss Alta, and we might as well give them a little surprise.”
“It seems to me that West Haven is full of surprises,” observed Billie. “Papa and I used to wander about the world together like two vagabonds, but in all that time we never had so many adventures and excitements as I have had here.”