“Bob,” drawled Mr. Peabody, as that youth declined dessert and prepared to rise from the table, “before you go, I want to see the wood box filled, some fresh litter in the pig pens and some fodder in all the cow mangers. If I’m to do the milking, I don’t want to have to pitch all the fodder, too.”
Bob scowled angrily.
“I haven’t time,” he muttered. “That’ll take me till two or half-past. You said I could have the afternoon.”
“And I also told you to fill the wood box yesterday,” retorted Mr. Peabody. “You’ll do as I say, or stay home altogether. Take your choice.”
“He’s the meanest man who ever lived!” scolded Betty, following Bob out to the woodshed. “I’ll fill up that old box, Bob, and you go do the other chores. I’d like to throw this stick at his head.”
Bob laughed, for he had a naturally sweet temper and seldom brooded over his wrongs.
“He did tell me to fill the box yesterday and I forgot,” he confessed. “Take your time, Betty, and don’t get all hot. And don’t scratch your hands—they looked as pretty as Mrs. Bender’s; I noticed ’em at the table.”
Betty stared after him as he went whistling to the barn, her apron sagging with the wood she had piled into it. She glanced scrutinizingly at her strong, shapely tanned little hands. Did Bob think they were pretty? Betty herself admired very white hands with slim pointed fingers like Norma Guerin’s.
She worked to such good purpose that she had the wood box filled and was brushing her hair when she heard Bob go thumping past her door on his way to his room. She was dressed and downstairs when he came down, and he caught hold of her impulsively and whirled her around the porch.
“Betty, you’re a wonder!” he cried in admiration. “How did you ever guess the size? And when did you buy it? You could have knocked me down with a feather when I saw it spread out there on the bed.”
“I’m glad it fits you so well,” answered Betty demurely, surveying the neat blue and white shirt she had bought for him. “I took one of your old ones over to Glenside. Oh, it didn’t cost much!” she hastened to assure him, interpreting the look he gave her. “I’m saving the money Uncle Dick sent, honestly I am.”
Bob insisted that she sit down on the porch and let him drive round for her, and now it was Betty’s turn to be surprised. The sorrel was harnessed to a smart rubber-tired runabout.
“Bob Henderson! where did you get it? Whose is it? Does Mr. Peabody know? Let’s go through Glenside and show ’em we look right sometimes,” suggested the astonished Betty.
Bob, beaming with pride, helped her in and Mrs. Peabody waved them a friendly good-bye. She betrayed no surprise at the sight of the runabout and was evidently in the secret.
“She knows about it,” explained Bob, as they drove off. “I borrowed it from the Kepplers. Tried to get a horse, too, but they’re going driving Sunday and need the team. This is their single harness. Nifty buckles, aren’t they?”
Betty praised the runabout to his heart’s content, and they actually did drive through Glenside, though it was a longer way around, and had the satisfaction of meeting the Guerins.
Recorder Bender and his wife were delighted to see them again, and they had a happy time all planned for them. Saturday night there was a moving picture show in Laurel Grove, and the Benders took their guests. Betty had not been to motion pictures since leaving Pineville and it was Bob’s second experience with the films.
Sunday morning they all went to church, and the long, delightful summer Sunday afternoon they spent on the cool, shady porch, exchanging confidences and making plans for the future.
“I’m saving the money I get for the carvings,” said Bob, “and when I get enough I’ll dig up the little black tin box and off I’ll go. I’ve got to get some education and amount to something, and if I stay with the Peabody’s till I’m eighteen, my chance will be gone.”
“Promise us one thing, Bob,” urged Mrs. Bender earnestly. “That you won’t go without consulting us, or at least leaving some word for us. And that, wherever you go, you’ll write.”
“I promise,” said Bob gratefully. “I haven’t so many friends that I can afford to lose one. You and Mr. Bender have been awfully good to me.”
“We like you!” returned the recorder, with one of his rare whimsical flashes. “I want to exact the same promise from Betty—to write to us wherever she may go.”
“Of course I will!” promised Betty. “I don’t seem to have much luck running away; but when I do go, I’ll surely write and let you know where I am. And I’ll probably be writing to you very soon from Washington!”
BETTY GORDON IN WASHINGTON, by Alice B. Emerson and Josephine Lawrence
or, Strange Adventures in a Great City
CHAPTER I
THE GORED COW
For lack of a better listener, Betty Gordon addressed the saucy little chipmunk that sat on the top rail of the old worn fence and stared at her with bright, unwinking eyes.
“It is the loveliest vase you ever saw,” said Betty, busily sorting the tangled mass of grasses and flowers in her lap. “Heavy old colonial glass, you know, plain, but with beautiful lines.”
The chipmunk continued to regard her gravely.
“I found it this morning when I was helping Mrs. Peabody clean the kitchen closet shelves,” the girl went on, her slim fingers selecting and discarding slender stems with fascinating quickness. “It was on the very last shelf, and was covered with dust. I washed it, and we’re going to have it on the supper table tonight with this bouquet in it. There! don’t you think that’s pretty?”
She held out the flowers deftly arranged and surveyed them proudly. The chipmunk cocked his brown head and seemed to be withholding his opinion.
Betty put the bouquet carefully down on the grass beside her and stretched the length of her trim, graceful self on the turf, burying her face luxuriously in the warm dry “second crop” of hay that had been raked into a thin pile under the pin oak and left there forgotten. Presently she rolled over and lay flat on her back, studying the lazy clouds that drifted across the very blue sky.
“I’d like to be up in an airplane,” she murmured drowsily, her eyelids drooping. “I’d sail right into a cloud and see—What was that?”
She sat up with a jerk that sent the hitherto motionless chipmunk scurrying indignantly up the nearest tree, there to sit and shake his head angrily at her.
“Sounds like Bob!” said Betty to herself. “My goodness, that was Mr. Peabody—they must be having an awful quarrel!”
The voices and shouts came from the next field, separated from her by a brook, almost dry now, and a border of crooked young willow trees grown together in an effective windbreak.
“Anybody who’ll gore a cow like that isn’t fit to own a single dumb creature!” A clear young voice shaking with passion was carried by the wind to the listening girl.
“When I need a blithering, no-’count upstart to teach me my business, I’ll call on you and not before,” a deeper, harsh voice snarled. “When you’re farming for yourself you can feed the neighbors’ critters on your corn all you’ve a mind to!”
“Oh, dear!” Betty scrambled to her feet, forgetting the bouquet so carefully culled, and darted in the direction of the willow hedge. “I do hope Mr. Peabody hasn’t been cruel to an animal. Bob is always so furious when he catches him at that!”
She crossed the puttering little brook by the simple expedient of jumping from one bank to the other and scrambled through the willow trees, emerging, flushed and anxious-eyed, to confront a boy about fourteen years old in a torn straw hat and faded overalls and a tall, lean middle-aged man with a pitchfork in his hands.
“Well?” the latter grunted, as Betty glanced fearfully at him. “What did you come for? I suppose you think two rows of corn down flat is something to snicker at?”
They stood on the edge of a flourishing field of corn, and, following the direction of Mr. Peabody’s accusing finger, Betty Gordon saw that two f
ine rows had been partially eaten and trampled.
“Oh, that’s too bad!” she said impulsively, “What did it—a stray cow?”
“Keppler’s black and white heifer,” answered Mr. Peabody grimly. “Bob here is finding fault with me because I didn’t let it eat its head off.”
“No such thing!” Bob Henderson was stung into speech. “Because the poor creature didn’t get out fast enough to suit you—and you bewildered her with your shouting till she didn’t know which way to turn—you jabbed her with the pitchfork. I saw the blood! And I say nobody but an out and out coward would do a thing like that to a dumb animal.”
“Oh!” breathed Betty again, softly. “How could you!”
“Now I’ve heard about enough of that!” retorted Mr. Peabody angrily. “If you’d both attend to your own business and leave me to mind mine, we’d save a lot of time. You, Bob, go let down the bars and turn that critter into the road. Maybe Keppler will wake up and repair his fences after all his stock runs off. You’d better help him, Betty. He might step on a grub-worm if you don’t go along to watch him!”
Bob strode off, kicking stones as he went, and Betty followed silently. She helped him lower the bars and drive the cow into the road, then put the bars in place again.
“Where are you going?” she ventured in surprise, as Bob moodily trudged after the animal wending an erratic way down the road.
“Going to take her home,” snapped Bob, “Peabody would like to see Keppler have to get her out of the pound, but I’ll save him that trouble. You can go on back and read your book.”
“Just because you’re mad at Mr. Peabody is no reason why you should be cross to me,” said Betty with spirit. “I wasn’t reading a book, and I’m coming with you. So there!”
Bob laughed and told her to “come on.” He was seldom out of sorts long. Indeed, of the two, Betty had the quicker temper and cherished a grudge more enduringly.
“Just the same, Betty,” Bob announced, as he skillfully persuaded the cow to forego the delights of a section of particularly sweet grass and proceed on her course, “I’m about through. I can’t stand it much longer; and lately I’ve been afraid that in a rage I might strike Mr. Peabody with something and either kill him or hurt him badly. Of course, I wouldn’t do it if I stopped to think, but when he gets me furious as he did today, I don’t stop to think.”
“Well, for mercy’s sake, Bob Henderson,” ejaculated Betty in an instant alarm, “don’t kill him, whatever you do. Then you’d be put in prison for life!”
“All right,” agreed Bob equably, “I won’t kill him—just nick him in a few places—how will that do?”
“But I’m really serious,” insisted Betty. “Don’t let the cow turn up that lane. Think how awful you would feel if you were sent to prison, Bob.”
Bob took refuge in a masculine stronghold.
“If that isn’t just like a girl!” he said scornfully. “Who said I was going to prison? I merely say I don’t want to lose my temper and do something rash, and you have me convicted and sentenced for life. Gee, Betty, have a little mercy!”
Betty’s lips trembled.
“I can’t bear to think of you going away and leaving me here,” she faltered. “I’m not going to stay either, Bob, not one minute after I hear from Uncle Dick. I’m sure if the Benders knew how things were going, they would think we had a right to leave. I had the loveliest letter from Mrs. Bender this morning—but it had been opened.”
Bob switched an unoffending flower head savagely.
“You come out of that!” he shouted to the perverse cow that seemed determined to turn to the left when she was plainly asked to turn to the right. “Wait a minute, Betty; here’s Fred Keppler.”
The half-grown boy who accosted them with “What are you doing with our cow?” grinned fatuously at Betty, showing several gaps in a row of fine teeth.
“Keep your cow at home where she belongs,” directed Bob magnificently. “She’s been making her dinner off our corn.”
“Oh, gee,” sighed the boy nervously. “I’ll bet old Peabody was in a tearing fury. Look, Bob, something’s tore her hide! She must have been down in the blackberry bushes along the brook.”
“Well, see that it doesn’t happen again,” commanded Bob, gracefully withdrawing by walking backward. “Corn that’s as high as ours is worth something, you know.”
“You never told him about the pitchfork,” said Betty accusingly, as soon as Fred Keppler and the cow were out of earshot. “You let him think it was blackberry bushes that scratched her like that.”
“Well, his father will know the difference,” grinned Bob cheerfully. “Why should I start an argument with Fred? Saving the cow from the pound ought to be enough, anyway. Mr. Keppler has had to buy more than one animal out before this; he will not pay attention to his fences.”
Betty sat down on a broad boulder and leaned up against an old hickory tree.
“Stone in my shoe,” she said briefly. “You’ll have to wait just a minute, Bob.”
Bob sat down on the grass and began to hunt for four leaf clovers, an occupation of which he never tired.
“Do you think Mr. Peabody opened your letter?” he asked abruptly.
Betty paused in the operation of untying her shoe.
“Who else would?” she said thoughtfully. “It wasn’t even pasted together again, but slit across one end, showing that whoever did it didn’t care whether I noticed it or not. I’ll never mail another letter from that box. I’ll walk to Glenside three times a day first!”
“Well, the only thing to do is to clear out,” said Bob firmly. “You’ll have to wait till you hear from your uncle, or at least till the Benders get back. We promised, you know, that we wouldn’t run away without telling them, or if there wasn’t time, writing to them and saying where we go. That shows, I think, that they suspected things might get too hot to be endured.”
“I simply must get a letter from Uncle Dick or go crazy,” sighed Betty feverishly. She put on her shoe and stood up. “I wish he would come for me himself and see how horrid everything is.”
CHAPTER II
HOSPITALITY UNDER DIFFICULTIES
Betty Gordon had come to Bramble Farm, as Mr. Peabody’s home was known, early in the summer to stay until her uncle, Richard Gordon, should be able to establish a home for her, or at least know enough of his future plans to have Betty travel with him. He was interested in mines and oil wells, and his business took him all over the country.
Betty was an orphan, and this Uncle Dick was her only living relative. He came to her in Pineville after her mother’s death and when the friends with whom she had been staying decided to go to California. He remembered Mrs. Peabody, an old school friend, and suggested that Betty might enjoy a summer spent on a farm. These events are related in the first book of this series, called “Betty Gordon at Bramble Farm.”
That story tells how Betty came to the farm to find Joseph Peabody a domineering, pitiless miser, his wife Agatha, a drab woman crushed in spirit, and Bob Henderson, the “poorhouse rat,” a bright intelligent lad whom the Peabodys had taken from the local almshouse for his board and clothes. Betty Gordon found life at Bramble Farm very different from the picture she and her uncle had drawn in imagination, and only the fact that her uncle’s absence in the oil fields had prevented easy communication with him had held her through the summer.
Once, indeed, she had run away, but circumstances had brought her and Bob to the pleasant home of the town police recorder, and Mr. and Mrs. Bender had proved themselves true and steadfast friends to the boy and girl who stood sorely in need of friendship. It was the Benders who had exacted a promise from both Bob and Betty that they would not run away from Bramble Farm without letting them know.
Betty had been instrumental in causing the arrest of two men who had stolen chickens from the Peabody farm, and at the hearing before the recorder something of Mr. Peabody’s characteristics and of the conditions at Bramble Farm had been revealed.
As he and Betty tramped back after delivering the cow, Bob’s mind was busy with plans that would free him from Mr. Peabody and set him forward on the road that led to fortune. Bob included making a fortune in his life work, having a shrewd idea that money rightly used was a good gift.
“Where do you suppose your uncle is?” he asked Betty, coming out of a reverie wherein he bade Bramble Farm and all the dwellers there with a single exception a cold and haughty farewell.
“Why, I imagine he is in Washington,” returned Betty confidently. “His last letter was from there, though two days ago a postal came from Philadelphia. I think likely he went up to see his lawyer and get his mail. You know it was held there while he was out West. I hope he has all my letters now, and last night I wrote him another, asking him if I couldn’t leave here. I said I’d rather go to the strictest kind of a boarding school; and so I would. I’ll mail the letter this afternoon in Glenside.”
“It’s too long a walk for you to take on a hot afternoon,” grumbled Bob. “I’m going over to Trowbridge, and I’ll mail it there for you.”
Betty pulled the letter from her blouse pocket and handed it to him.
“Where’s Trowbridge?” she asked, as they came in sight of the boundary line of Bramble Farm and sighted Mr. Peabody in conversation with the mail carrier at the head of the lane. “Can I go with you?”
The Second Girl Detective Megapack: 23 Classic Mystery Novels for Girls Page 198