The girls chatted while Ruth went just out of hearing and communed with herself.

"Time's up, Ruth," called Dorothy.

"All right," answered Ruth, walking into the circle and sitting down, while she met the expectant eyes with a roguish twinkle in her own. Then she recited:

"There was a young girl from the West, Who very much needed a rest.

When asked, 'Can you sing?'

She replied, 'Not a thing:'

And felt very sadly depressed."

Ruth suited her expression to her last words in so comical a fashion that the girls shouted with laughter.

"However did you do it, Ruth?" asked Betty. "I couldn't make a rhyme to save me."

"Oh, father and I got into the habit of making up those five-liners, and I often do it just for fun."

"We're proud to have such a poetess in the Social Six," said Charlotte, making her a sweeping bow with her hand on her heart.

"Miss Burton, we don't insist that our honorary member shall perform, but we'd like it if you would," said Betty.

Miss Burton smiled good-naturedly. "I would tell you a story, only I am afraid our Western member would be too stiff to move if she sat through it. How would you like to postpone my part of the program until after school some day, and then come and have a cup of chocolate with me?"

"Oh, lovely!" cried Dorothy, always ready for anything that Miss Burton proposed.

As she spoke a sound as of some one sliding came from behind the big rock, and then a low but unmistakable chuckle.

"It's some of those horrid boys," said Dorothy tragically.

The girls tore off caps and sashes, but before they could wholly divest themselves of their gypsy appearance two heads peered around the rock and a pleading voice said, "Please, may we come in?"

"Indeed you may not," cried Dorothy, quite white with anger. "I think you're the meanest boy I ever saw, Frank Marshall, and you're not one bit better, Bert. Between you, you always spoil all my good times. I think it's the most despicable thing to spy on people, and----"

There was such a sudden stillness about her that Dorothy became conscious of Miss Burton's troubled expression and Ruth's surprised face.

"Well, I don't care; it was a mean trick," she muttered as she turned her back on the boys and walked away.

"Honestly, girls, we didn't mean to make you mad," said Frank as his sister finished. "We came up for a walk and didn't know any one was here till we saw the smoke from your fire. We came over to find out about that, and heard the young lady from the West recite her poem. We should have gone off without letting you know if Bert hadn't slipped on the rock."

"Of course," added Bert with an extremely virtuous air, "if we had guessed that this was the famous club we should have put our fingers in our ears and have run away."

"You sinner," said Betty, who couldn't help laughing, "you know you have tried ever since we have had the club to make me tell you about it."

"I propose," said Miss Burton, "that we put the boys on their honor not to tell what they have seen and heard."

"Second the motion," said Charlotte with great promptness. "We have them there, for boys never tell when they're on honor."

"Good for you, Charlotte," said Frank gratefully. "We'll promise, won't we, Bert?"

"Of course," agreed Bert. "And, girls," he continued, "we've got some potatoes roasting in the ashes near here that'll be just the thing to brace you up for the walk home. Come along and help us eat 'em."

"I should say we would," accepted Charlotte. "Did you ever know us to refuse anything to eat?"

The little feast and the walk home became the jolliest things possible.

Tired as she was, no one was merrier than Ruth. for in her inmost heart she was sure that she should find news of her father waiting for her.

CHAPTER VI

BAD NEWS AND GOOD

As she entered the house, Ruth's first glance was at the hall table, but there was no important-looking yellow envelope to suggest that her cablegram had arrived. Then her eye fell on the evening paper; perhaps that might tell that the "Utopia" was safely in port.

She started to turn to the shipping news, but her gaze was caught by a headline on the first page, and she stood rigid, holding the paper in her shaking hands and trying to make sense of what she was reading.

"The 'Utopia' storm-swept A pa.s.senger injured."

That was what she seemed to read, and below it an inch of fine type announced that during the severe storm which had hampered all ocean travel for the last few days the "Utopia" had been swept by heavy waves, and one of the pa.s.sengers injured.

One of the pa.s.sengers injured! That, of course, meant father!

Ruth read it time after time until the printed words swam before her eyes, and she groped blindly for a chair so that she need not fall. There she sat feeling that limbs and tongue were in chains, and that she could neither move nor speak.

Katie, pa.s.sing through the hall, was startled by the sight of the rigid little figure in the big hall chair, and frightened out of her wits when her sympathetic questions failed to bring forth any response. She flew out into the kitchen to Ellen, who came hurrying in with a face full of anxiety, and, kneeling before Ruth, took both the cold hands in her own warm clasp.

"What is it, Miss Ruth, darlin'? Tell me," she said coaxingly. At the friendly, human touch, Ruth's face relaxed. "Oh, Ellen," she cried, clinging to her closely, "some one on papa's steamer has been injured in the storm, and I know it must be papa."

Ellen looked dazed, and Ruth gave her the paper, pointing out the paragraph as she did so.

"Sure, Miss Ruth, I can't read it quickly when my mind is so unaisy.

Just read it to me, honey."

So Ruth read it over for the twentieth time and was surprised to find Ellen still looking cheerful as she finished.

"They don't give any names," said Ellen thoughtfully, "and wasn't it you yourself was telling me that there was over a hundred cabin pa.s.sengers on that boat, to say nothing of the steerage?"

"Why, yes," answered Ruth, "but--"

"Well, then," interrupted Ellen, "there's at laste ninety-nine chances out of a hundred that your blessed father never had a hair of his head touched, and that's sayin' a good deal, darlin'."

"It is indeed, Miss Ruth," added Katie, who had been hovering around anxious to do something to help.

Ruth began to look a bit comforted, and Ellen went on, "I do belave from me soul, Miss Ruth, dear, that before you go to bed tonight you'll have word from your father. At any rate, you can't bring it any faster, nor help it one bit by worryin' about it. So now, darlin', go upstairs and bathe your face and smooth your pretty curls, and we'll put such a nice dinner on the table for you that you can't help eatin'."

"It's a shame the poor little thing has got to eat her dinner all alone," said Ellen, as she and Katie went back to the kitchen.

"I've a great mind--" But what she had a mind to do wasn't told, for she vanished from the kitchen and Katie heard her climbing the back stairs.

She went straight to Arthur's room, knocked, and hardly waiting for an answer walked in. Arthur, who was absorbed in a book, looked up surprised at her sudden entrance.