"Don't ye worry, my pretty. Jabez Potter's bark is wuss than his bite."

"But the bark hurts, just the same."

"He ought to be whipped!" hissed Mercy, in her most unmerciful tone.

"I'd like to whip him, till all the dust flew out of his Dusty Miller clothes--so I would!"

"Sh!" commanded Ruth, recovering her self-command again and fighting back the tears. "Just as Aunt Alvirah observes, he doesn't mean half of what he says."

"It hurts just the same--you said it yourself," declared the lame girl, with a snap.

"I want to be independent, anyway," said Ruth, with some excitement. "I want an education so I can _do_ something. I'd like to cultivate my voice--the teacher says it has possibilities. Mr. Cameron is going to let Helen go as far as she likes with the violin, and she doesn't _have_ to think about making her way in the world."

"Gals ain't content now to sit down after gittin' some schoolin'--I kin see thet," sighed Aunt Alvirah. "It warn't so in my day. I never see the beat of 'em for wantin' ter go out inter the worl' an' make a livin'--jes' like men."

CHAPTER IV

THE AUTO TOUR

"Hi, Ruth!"

"Hey, Ruth!"

"Straw, Ruth!--why don't you say?" cried the owner of the name, running to the porch and smiling out upon the Cameron twins, who had stopped their automobile at the Red Mill gate on a morning soon following that day on which Uncle Jabez and Ruth had undergone their involuntary ducking in the Lumano.

"Aren't you ready, Ruthie?" cried Helen from the back seat of the car.

"Do hurry up, Ruth--the horses don't want to stand," laughed Tom, who was slim and black haired and black eyed, like his twin. Indeed, the two were so much alike that, dressed in each other's clothing, it is doubtful if they could have been suspected in such disguise.

"But my bag isn't packed yet," cried Ruth. "I didn't know you'd be here so soon."

"Take your toothbrush and powder puff--that's all you girls really need," declared the irrepressible Tom.

"I like that! And on a two days' trip into the hills," said his sister, beating him soundly with an energetic fist.

"Give him one or two good ones for me, Helen," said Ruth, and ran in to finish her preparations for the journey she was to take with her friends.

"Pshaw!" grumbled the impatient Tom, "going to Uncle Ike's isn't like going to a fancy hotel. And we'll stop over to-night with Fred Larkin's folks--the girls there would lend you and Ruth all you need."

"Hold on!" exclaimed his sister. "Just what have you in _your_ bag? I know it's heavy. You have all you want----"

"Sure. Pair of socks, two collars, fishing tackle, some books I borrowed of Fred last year, my bicycle wrench--you never know when you are going to need it,--a string of wampum I promised to take to Nealy Larkin--she's a Campfire girl, you know--and an Indian tomahawk for Fred----"

"But, clothes! clothes!" gasped Helen. "Where are your shirts?"

"Oh, I'll borrow a shirt, if I need one," declared Master Tom, grinning.

"Uncle Ike's Benjy is about my size, you know. What's the use of carting around so much stuff?"

"I notice you have your bag full of trash," sniffed Helen. "It can plainly be seen that Mrs. Murchiston was called away so suddenly that she could not oversee our packing."

"Come on, Ruth!" shouted Tom again, turning toward the farmhouse.

"Now, don't get her in a flurry," admonished Helen. "She hasn't had but two hours' notice to get ready for this two days' trip. It's a wonder Uncle Jabez would let her go with us at all."

"Oh, Uncle Jabe isn't such a bad old fellow after all," said Tom.

"He's been just as cross and cranky as he can be, ever since he lost his boat in the river the other evening--you know that. And they say he would have been drowned, too, if it hadn't been for Ruthie. What a brave girl she is, Tom!"

"Bravest in seven states!" acknowledged Master Tom, promptly. He had always thought there was n.o.body just like Ruth, and his sister smiled upon him approvingly.

"I guess she is!" she agreed. "There isn't a girl at Briarwood Hall that will be her match in anything--now that Madge Steele has gotten through.

Ruth is going to be head of the senior cla.s.s before we graduate--you see."

"She'll have to hustle some to beat little Mercy Curtis," grinned Tom.

"_There's_ a sharp suffragette for you!"

Helen laughed. "That's right. But, unfortunately for Mercy, Mrs.

Tellingham considers other work beside our books in grading us. Oh, Tommy! we're going to have a dandy time this coming year at school."

"You have my best wishes," returned her brother, with a slightly clouded face. "Bobbins and Busy Izzy and I expect to be drilled like everything, when we get back to Seven Oaks. Professor Darly is a terror."

Ruth came out with her bag then, and in the doorway behind her appeared the little, stooped figure of Aunt Alvirah. The Camerons waved their hands and shouted greetings to her.

"Take good keer of my pretty, Master Tom," shrilled the old lady, hobbling out into the yard. "Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!"

"We'll handle her as if she were made of gla.s.s," declared Tom, laughing.

"Hop in, Ruthie!"

"Good-bye, Aunt Alvirah!" cried the girl of the Red Mill, clasping the little old lady around the neck and kissing her. Then she waved her hand to Uncle Jabez, who appeared in the mill doorway, and he nodded grimly, as the car started.

Ben appeared at a window and bashfully nodded to the departing pleasure party. The car quickly pa.s.sed the end of the Cheslow road and sped up the riverside. These lowlands beyond the Red Mill had once been covered by a great flood, and the three friends would never forget their race with the freshet from Culm Falls, at the time the Minturn Dam burst.

"But we're bound far, far above the dam this time," said Tom. "Fred Larkin lives farther than that--beyond the gorge between the hills, and at the foot of the first pond. We'll get there long before dark unless something happens to this old mill I'm driving."

"There! Tommy's harping on his pet trouble," laughed Helen. "Father won't let us use the new car to go scooting about the country alone in, and Tommy thinks he is abused."

"Well! that 'six' is just eating its head off in the garage," grumbled the boy.

"Just as though it were a horse!" chuckled Ruth.

"You wait! I bet something happens on this trip, because of this old heap of sc.r.a.p iron that pa calls a car."

"Goodness me!" exclaimed Helen, with some exasperation. "Don't you dare have a breakdown in the hills, Tom! I should be frightened. It's so wild up there beyond Loon Lake."

"You needn't blame me," returned her twin. "I shall do my best."