The ship's siren sent a stuttering blast into the air that seemed to shake the skysc.r.a.pers opposite the dock. The young folks trooped back to the pier. Tom did his best to escort Ruth; but to his amazement and anger Chess Copley pushed in front of him and Ruth took the sergeant's arm.

Helen came along and grabbed her brother with a fierce little pinch. Her eyes sparkled while his smouldered.

"I guess we are relegated to the second row, Tommy-boy," she whispered.

"I do not see what has got into Ruth."

"It's not Ruth. The gall of that 'La.s.ses!" muttered the slangy Tom.

"So you think he is at fault?" rejoined his sister. "Oh, Tommy-boy! you do not know 'us girls'--no indeed you do not."

It was a gay enough party on the dock that watched the big ship back out and being turned in the stream by the fussy tugs. The bride and groom shouted until they were hoa.r.s.e, and waved their hands and handkerchiefs as long as they could be seen from the dock.

If Helen and Tom Cameron were either, or both, offended by Ruth, they did not show it to the general company. As for the girl of the Red Mill, she enjoyed herself immensely; and she particularly liked Chess Copley's company.

It was not that she felt any less kindly toward Tom; but Tom had disappointed her. He seemed to have changed greatly during this past winter while she had been so busy with her moving pictures.

Instead of settling down with his father in the offices of the great drygoods house from which Mr. Cameron's fortune had come, Tom, abetted by Helen, had become almost a social b.u.t.terfly in New York.

But Chess Copley, although no sober-sides, had thrown himself heart and soul into the real estate business and had already made a tidy sum during the six months that had ensued since his discharge from the army.

It was true, Chess was looking forward to taking a vacation at the Thousand Islands with his family. He told Ruth so with enthusiasm, and hoped to see her again at that resort. But Chess, Ruth felt, had earned his vacation, while Tom remained a mere idler.

Chess accompanied the Cheslow young people to the Grand Central Terminal when they left the dock and there bade Ruth good-bye.

"I shall see you in a fortnight at the Thousand Islands," he a.s.sured her, and shook hands again. "I shall look forward to it, believe me!"

Tom hung about, gloomy enough, even after they boarded the train. But the girls were gay and chattering when they entered their compartment. Ann Hicks was going home with Helen for a brief visit, although she would be unable to go elsewhere with them during the early part of the summer, owing to previous engagements.

"I am determined to go to the St. Lawrence with you, Ruth," declared Helen. "And I know Tommy-boy is aching to go."

"I thought," said Ruth rather gravely, "that he might really take to business this summer. Doesn't your father need him?"

"Plenty of time for work, Tommy thinks," rejoined Tom's sister gaily.

But Ruth did not smile.

CHAPTER IV

BILBY

The old, shingled Red Mill, which Jabez Potter had revamped each spring with mineral paint, was as brilliant a landmark on the bank of the Lumano River as ever it had been. In fact, it seemed as though Ben, the hired man, had got the red of the shingles and the trim a little redder and the blinds a little greener this last spring than ever they had been before.

Overshadowed by great elms, with the yard gra.s.s growing thick and lush right up to the bark of the trees, the surroundings of the mill and farmhouse connected with it (at least, all of those surroundings that could be seen from the Cheslow road), were attractive indeed.

Although the old house seemed quite as it always had been from without, many changes had been made inside since first Ruth Fielding had stepped out of Dr. Davison's chaise to approach her great-uncle's habitation.

At that time Ruth had been less than a mote in the eye of Uncle Jabez.

She was merely an annoyance to the miller at that time. Since then, however, she had many and many a time proved a blessing to him. Nor did Jabez Potter refuse to acknowledge this--on occasion.

When Ruth began to do over the interior of the old house, however, Uncle Jabez protested. The house and mill had been built a hundred and fifty years before--if not longer ago. It was sacrilege to touch a crooked rafter or a hammered nail of the entire structure.

But Ruth insisted that she be allowed to make her own rooms under the roof more comfortable and modern. Ruth had seen old New England farmhouses rebuilt in the most attractive way one could imagine without disturbing their ancient exterior appearance. She gathered ideas from books and magazines, and then went about replanning the entire inside of the mill farmhouse. But she began the actual rejuvenation of the aspect of the structure in her own rooms, and had had all the work done since her return from the war zone the year before.

She now had a bedroom, a sitting room, a dressing room and bathroom up under the roof, all in white (Helen said "like a hospital"), and when one opened Ruth's outer door and stepped into her suite it seemed as though one entered an entirely different house. And if it was a girl who entered--as Wonota, the Osage princess, did on a certain June day soon after Jennie Stone's marriage--she could not suppress a cry of delight.

Wonota had stayed before at the Red Mill for a time; but then the workmen had not completed Ruth's new nest. And although Wonota had been born in a wigwam on the plains and had spent her childhood in a log cabin with a turf roof, she could appreciate "pretty things" quite as keenly as any girl of Ruth's acquaintance.

That was why Ruth--as well as Mr. Hammond of the Alectrion Film Corporation--believed that the Indian girl would in time become a successful screen actress. Wonota, though her skin was copper-colored, liked to dress in up-to-date clothes (and did so) and enjoyed the refinements of civilization as much as any white girl of her age.

"It is so pretty here, Miss Ruth," she said to her mentor. "May I sleep in the other bed off your sitting room? It is sweet of you. How foolish of people wanting to see on the screen how poor Indians live in their ignorance. I would rather learn to play the part of a very rich New York lady, and have servants and motor-cars and go to the opera and wear a diamond necklace."

Ruth laughed at her, but good-naturedly.

"All girls are the same, I suppose, under the skin," she said. "But we each should try to do the things we can do best. Learn to play the parts the director a.s.signs you to the very best of your ability. Doing that will bring you, quicker than anything else, to the point where you can wear diamonds and ride in your own motor-car and go to the opera. What does your father, Chief Totantora, say to your new ideas, Wonota?"

"The chief, my father, says nothing when I talk like that to him. He is too much of an old-fashioned Indian, I fear. He is staying at a country hotel up the road; but he would not sleep in the room they gave him (and then he rolled up in his blanket on the floor) until they agreed to let him take out the sashes from all three windows. He says that white people have white faces because they sleep in stale air."

"Perhaps he is more than half right," rejoined Ruth, although she laughed too. "Some white folks even in this age are afraid of the outdoor air as a sleeping tonic, and prefer to drug themselves with shut-in air in their bedrooms."

"But one can have pretty things and nice things, and still remain in health," sighed Wonota.

Ruth agreed with this. The girl of the Red Mill tried, too, in every way to encourage the Indian maiden to learn and profit by the better things to be gained by a.s.sociation with the whites.

There were several days to wait before Mr. Hammond was ready to send Mr.

Hooley, the director, and the company selected for the making of Ruth's new picture to the Thousand Islands. Meanwhile Ruth herself had many preparations to make and she could not be all the time with her visitor.

As in that past time when she had visited the Red Mill, Wonota was usually content to sit with Aunt Alvirah and make beadwork while the old woman knitted.

"She's a contented creeter, my pretty," the old woman said to Ruth. "Red or white, I never see such a quiet puss. And she jumps and runs to wait on me like you do.

"Oh, my back! and oh, my bones!" exclaimed Aunt Alvirah, rising cautiously with the aid of a cane she now depended upon. "My rheumatism don't seem any better, and I have had it long enough, seems to me, for it to get better," she added.

"Poor dear!" said Ruth. "Don't the new medicine do any good?"

"Lawsy me, child! I've drenched myself with doctor's stuff till I'm ashamed to look a medicine bottle in the face. My worn out old carca.s.s can't be helped much by any drugs at all. I guess, as my poor old mother used to say, the only sure cure for rheumatics is graveyard mould."

"Oh, Aunt Alvirah!"

"I don't say it complainingly," declared the little old woman, smiling quite cheerfully. "But I tell Jabez Potter he might as well make up his mind to seeing my corner of his hearth empty one of these days. And he'll miss me, too, cantankerous as he is sometimes."

But Uncle Jabez was seldom "cantankerous" nowadays when Ruth was at home.

To the miller's mind his great-niece had proved herself to be of the true Potter blood, although her name was Fielding.

Ruth was a money-maker. He had to wink pretty hard over the fact that she was likewise a money spender! But one girl--and a young one at that--could scarcely be expected (and so the old miller admitted) to combine all the virtues which were worth while in human development.