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The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point; or a Wreck and a Rescue, a novel by Laura Lee Hope |
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Chapter 10. The Knight Of The Wayside |
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_ CHAPTER X. THE KNIGHT OF THE WAYSIDE The lady stared at the bedraggled party in amazed silence for a moment. Then Mrs. Ford stepped impulsively forward. "I don't wonder you look surprised," she said in her sweetly modulated voice, "for this is rather an unheard of calling hour. But you see we were caught in this awful downpour and had to seek your house for refuge." "Oh, I'm sorry!" exclaimed the lady, opening the door wider and motioning them into the cheerfully lighted living room. "I didn't mean," she added with a smile, as they most willingly accepted her invitation, "that I was sorry you came, but that you were forced to come by such conditions. Won't you take off your things? But you are wet!" she exclaimed, as the girls started to remove their dripping wraps. "And we got it all," said Mrs. Ford with a wry smile, "just running about twenty feet from our cars to your porch." "Your cars!" the hostess repeated. "Then you motored down. If I had known that I shouldn't have been so surprised at seeing you. Pedestrians are rather rare on a night like this." "Yes, and motorists, too, if they have any sense," said Mollie dryly, at which they all laughed and their hostess looked still more interested. "Please sit down and dry out a little," said the lady, indicating a grate fire which had evidently only recently been lighted on account of the chill in the air. "I'm glad I had the fire made. I must have known," she added with a gracious smile, "that you were coming to-night." Then she excused herself, and the girls held out eager hands to the fire. "This is bliss," sighed Amy. "Well, this is some contrast to about five minutes ago," chuckled Grace. "I thought we were in for a night in the mud at least." "I'll never say we aren't lucky again," agreed Betty, leaning an arm on the mantel and getting her wet skirt as close to the fire as she could. "We were just wondering," she added, addressing Mrs. Ford, "whether, if Mollie's car got stuck, you would rather have Grace and me struggle on to Bensington and get some help or stay and keep you company. Although," she added ruefully, "if we couldn't pull through that mud, I don't know what we could find in Bensington to do it." "Probably the only gasoline vehicles they have in the place are jitneys," agreed Mollie, with a chuckle. "I wonder," Amy broke in, apropos of nothing, "who our charming hostess is. She seems so lovely. It seems odd to meet a person like her and a house like this out in the wilderness." "Yes, one does rather expect a farmer's wife and a rambling old farmhouse so far out in the country," agreed Mrs. Ford. "Well, maybe her husband is a scientific farmer," suggested Mollie, adding wickedly as she turned a merry eye on Grace: "The kind Roy once said he'd like to be. Remember, Grace?" "Yes, I remember," Grace answered in a tone that indicated the memory was not a pleasant one. "And I told him he had better drop that idea in a hurry if he expected me--I mean--any girl--" she floundered, while they laughed mockingly at her, "to have anything to do with him," she finished rather weakly, while the girls giggled exasperatingly. "Well, I don't know," remarked Betty, in an altruistic effort to pour oil upon the troubled waters, "that I would particularly mind marrying a scientific farmer if they all have houses like this and acres of ground with orchards and cows and chickens--" "And potato bugs," finished Grace, while the girls laughed merrily. "Well," remarked Mollie, with a desperate gleam in her eye, "I'd marry just about anybody who would give me a square meal." "Goodness," remarked Betty, twinkling, "it's mighty lucky for Frank that there aren't any young men of marriageable age on the horizon just now." The next moment she regretted her innocent little speech, for she could see that the mention of the boys had brought more vividly to Grace and Mrs. Ford and Amy the thought of Will--dear, bright, merry Will--lying wounded in some far-away hospital, how badly wounded they could not know, and dared not think. The silence that fell upon them was broken by the sound of their hostess' voice, evidently issuing a command to some one in the kitchen. Then the lady herself swept into the room. "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting so long," she apologized, "but I have had to help the maid get dinner on the table. She is a new one, and, oh, so utterly helpless. Then, too, I was hoping my son would come home, but since everything is ready and I know you must be starving, we won't delay dinner any longer. If you will come, please--" "But this is imposing upon good nature," protested Mrs. Ford, as the lady held back the portiers and disclosed an inviting table set for seven, elaborate with shining crystal and silver. "To drop down upon you from a clear--or rather, a cloudy sky--" They laughed, and their hostess dismissed the protest with a little wave of her hand. "It is a pleasure," she said, adding, as they took their places: "I am only thankful that a lucky chance enabled me to entertain you well to-night. I was expecting guests from the nearest farm, but since our next door neighbors are five miles down the road, they hesitated to make the trip because of the threatening weather. I guess it is just as well for them they did not come," and she paused to listen to the rain which was still pouring down in torrents. Mrs. Ford made an appropriate answer, and the two ladies entered into a little confidential chat that left the girls pretty much to their own devices. And they were trying their best not to disgrace themselves and to pay decorous attention to what their hostess was saying, while their hearty young appetites were crying their protests aloud. At last came the new maid whom their hostess had described as 'so utterly helpless,' looking to the famished girls an angelic being, bearing about her an aroma of tomato soup and fried chicken, more tempting than ambrosia. Without any perceptible hesitation, the girls immediately began to eat and continued the agreeable occupation without interruption to the end of the meal, save for an answer to a question or two asked by their hostess. The helpless maid was just bringing in an enormous layer cake to the accompaniment of admiring glances from the girls when the sound of a latch key in the door made the lady of the house look up with a start. "It must be my son!" she said, rising hastily, "if you will excuse me a moment--" Then came the sound of a hearty greeting in a masculine voice, followed by a slithery sound of wet clothing. Evidently the newcomer was divesting himself of some uncomfortably damp apparel. They could hear his mother speaking in a low voice--probably she was preparing him to meet the unexpected guests. "By Jove! did you say two cars?" they heard him exclaim, and it suddenly seemed to them there was something familiar about his voice. "Now I wonder--all right, Mother. Just give me a minute to get some dry clothes on and I'll be right with you. Gosh, but I'm starved!" The girls smiled sympathetically, for was it only half an hour ago they had been in that identically uncomfortable state. "I bet he's nice," said Mollie to Betty, in a whisper just before their hostess once more entered the room. "Anybody with an appetite like that, has to be." "Oh, you shouldn't have waited for me," said the lady, noting that the ice cream that had followed hard on the heels of the chocolate cake had begun to melt. "I don't know what to do with that boy," she added, smiling with a mixture of irritation and fond indulgence. "When he gets out on his motorcycle, miles mean nothing to him and time means less. He is always late to dinner." "I shouldn't think he would have found the riding very pleasant to-night," said Betty smiling. "In fact, it is a wonder he could ride at all--the roads are almost impassable." "Quite impassable, you mean," put in Mollie. "Oh, he has conquered that difficulty," their hostess explained, her eyes once more lighting with pride in her son. "He has a sort of path through the woods, which, while it perhaps lacks the comforts of a state road, at least is not inches deep in mud. He did get caught that way once and was several hours coming a few miles." "She said he rode a motorcycle," remarked Grace to Mollie with apparent irrelevance as the lady turned to speak to Mrs. Ford. "Well, what about it?" inquired Mollie, as she proceeded with wonderful concentration to spear one last small but delicious piece of chocolate on the end of her fork. "Doesn't that convey anything to your benighted mind?" Grace was drawling sarcastically when Betty leaned toward her eagerly. "I thought his voice sounded familiar," she said. "Of course we know who he is now." "Good evening, everybody," said the familiar voice, and they turned to find its owner strolling toward them across the room. "Mr. Joe Barnes!" cried Mollie impulsively, then checked herself and slowly grew red. "That's who," sang out Joe Barnes slangily, and in the laughter and greetings that followed Mollie forgot her embarrassment. Only Joe Barnes' mother looked completely surprised and taken aback. "You know each other, then," she rather stated than asked as there was a lull in the conversation. "I had no idea--" "Of course you hadn't," agreed her son, as he took the vacant seat beside her and turned upon her a pair of very handsome laughing eyes. "I didn't either until a few minutes ago, and we haven't been acquainted more than a few hours." "Your son did us the favor of helping us out of a difficulty this afternoon," Mrs. Ford explained, taking pity on the lady's bewilderment. "To be explicit, he performed the very disagreeable operation of putting a new tire on the front wheel of our car." "Oh, so that's it," laughed Mrs. Barnes. "Mother, what do you say to cutting out ceremony and getting down to brass tacks?" put in Joe Barnes, eyeing hungrily the plate of steaming soup the maid had set before him. "We don't serve them," said his mother demurely. "But I shouldn't wonder if what we have would prove more digestible." So Joe Barnes entertained them with fun and jokes while he devoured the different courses with a thoroughness that awoke the admiration of the girls. But no matter how conscientiously Joe did justice to the good things set before him, there was not a moment when he was not conscious of Betty--Betty on the other side of the table, dimpling and sending him back sally for sally with ready wit. What lucky chance had prompted nature to send a thunderstorm that afternoon? The jolly old lady was certainly on his side! Then when Joe had decided that nothing remained to devour, the party adjourned to the living room, where the former put some records on the phonograph. The Barnes had a collection of very wonderful records, and for more than an hour the girls sat entranced as, one by one, Joe produced for their enjoyment, the greatest artists of the musical world. Finally some one suggested that Betty play some of the songs they had loved in those service-filled days at the Hostess House. As the girlish voices rang out in one patriotic song after another, Joe Barnes, who was seated on the edge of a table with one foot swinging idly, fidgeted uneasily, while over his face came a sober, almost sullen expression. "Gee, I wish they wouldn't!" he murmured to himself. _ |
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