Just as Frank, the driver, slowed down, preparatory to turning for the big shed, under which the modern carry-all would be laid up until daylight next morning, Tessie decided she would ask this rustic to assist her. Believing that most men, especially those not too old, were apt to be kind-hearted or maybe "softhearted," she climbed from her hiding place, and timidly tapped Frank on his astonished shoulder.
"Gosh!" he exclaimed, "where'd you come from?"
"I lost my way!" she answered not altogether untruthfully. "Can you help me? Where do you live?"
"Say," Frank challenged, "you look pretty near big enough to talk to traffic cops. How'd you get in this boat, anyhow?"
His voice was not friendly. That anyone should have climbed into the "Ark" without signalling him was evidently opposed to his sense of humor. Tessie did not reply as glibly as she had intended to. Instead she threw herself on his mercy, as actors might say in melodrama.
"Honest I did get lost. I'm on my way to the Woolston mills, and I missed so many trains, and caught so many jitneys I lost count. Then, when I saw you come along I was so glad I almost—well, I just flopped. I was dog-tired. First I hailed you, but you were dozing I guess, then I was scared to death you would jolt by and leave me, so I had to climb on."
"Oh," replied Frank, not altogether convinced, but evidently on the way to conviction. "I did fall off a little, I'm out since four A.M. Now, young lady, what's your idea of fixin' for the night? My old lady, meaning a first-rate little mother, is awful strict about girls ridin' in this bus not accompanied by their parents, and I don't see my way clear to tote you home at this unearthly hour. I see by—the make-up" (with an inclusive glance over the now thoroughly frightened Tessie) "that you are a mill girl, and I know they are takin' on new hands at Woolston's, so that sounds natural, but findin' you like this in the Ark—even mother might think that a little bit stretched."
"Well, tell me the name of some one out this way, and I can say I'm goin' there, and you can fix it by objectin' to takin' me. Say, you didn't know when I got on how far I wanted to go."
"Some cute little fixer, you are," Frank admitted, and this was the story Tessie clung to when Frank Apgar brought the girl into his mother's house a few minutes later.
Thus began her adventure weeks ago. Each day and every night adding new and more serious complications to the seemingly innocent quest for a broader life than could be lived in the mill end of Flosston, Tessie was compelled to add falsehood to fabrication, to bear out her original story, and save herself from being "picked up" and forcibly returned to her parents.