The on the Farm Part 2 (1/2)
”I will, and gladly,” said Bessie. ”But I haven't so very much time. Can you walk with me as I go home?”
So, with Tom Norris to look after her, Bessie began her trip back to the Mercer house, and, on the way, she told him the story of her flight from Hedgeville, and the adventures that had happened since its beginning.
”I suppose I was foolish to go after Jake Hoover that way,” she concluded, ”but I thought I might be able to help. I didn't like to see him following Mr. Jamieson that way, when he was trying to be so nice to us.”
”Maybe you were foolish,” said Tom. ”But don't let it worry you too much. You meant well, and I guess there's lots of us are foolish without having as good an excuse as that.”
”Oh, there's Mr. Jamieson now!” cried Bessie, suddenly spying the young lawyer on the other side of the street. ”I think I'd better tell him what's happened, don't you, Mr. Norris?”
”I do indeed. Stay here, I'll run over. The young fellow with the brown suit, is it?”
Bessie nodded, and Tom Norris ran across the street and was back in a moment with Jamieson, who was mightily surprised to see Bessie, whom he had left only a short time before at the Mercer house. He frowned very thoughtfully as he heard her story.
”I'm not going to scold you for taking such a risk,” he said. ”I really didn't think, either, that it was you they would try to harm. I thought your friend Zara was the only one who was in danger.”
”I suppose they'd try to get hold of Miss Bessie here, though,” said the conductor, ”because they'd think she'd be a good witness, perhaps, if there was any business in court. I don't know much about the law, except I think it's a good thing to keep clear of.”
”You bet it is,” said Jamieson, with a laugh.
”That's fine talk, from a lawyer!” smiled Tom Norris. ”Ain't it your business to get people into lawsuits?”
”Not a bit of it!” said Jamieson. ”A good lawyer keeps his clients out of court. He saves money for them that way, and they run less risk of being beaten. The biggest cases I have never get into court at all. It's only the shyster lawyers, like Isaac Brack, who are always going to court, whether there's any real reason for it or not.”
”Brack!” said Tom. ”Why, say, I know him! And, what's more, this man Weeks does, too. Brack's his lawyer. I heard that a long time ago. Brack gets about half the cases against the railroad, too. Whenever there's a little accident, Brack hunts up the people who might have been hurt, and tries to get damages for them. Only, if he wins a case for them, he keeps most of the money--and if they lose he charges them enough so that he comes out ahead, anyhow.”
”That's the fellow,” Jamieson said. ”We'll get him disbarred sooner or later, too. He's a bad egg. I'm glad to know I've got to fight him in this case. If this young Hoover was following me, I'll bet Brack had something to do with it.”
”He was certainly following you,” said Bessie. ”Whenever you turned around he got behind a tree or something, so that you wouldn't see him.”
”He needn't have been so careful. He might have walked right next to me all the way into town, and I'd never have suspected him. As it happened, I wasn't going anywhere this morning--anywhere in particular, I mean. It wouldn't have made any difference if Brack had known just what I was doing. But I'm mighty glad to know that he is trying to spy on me, Bessie. In the next few days I'm apt to do some things I wouldn't want him to know about at all, and now that I'm warned I'll be able to keep my eyes and my ears open, and I guess Brack and his spies will have some trouble in getting on to anything I choose to keep hidden from them.”
”That's the stuff!” approved Tom. ”I told Miss Bessie here she'd done all right. She meant well, even if she did run a foolish risk. And there's no harm done.”
”Well, we'd better hurry home,” said Jamieson. ”I don't want them to be worried about you, Bessie, so I'll take you home in a taxicab.”
The cab took them swiftly toward the Mercer house. When they were still two or three blocks away Jamieson started and pointed out a man on the sidewalk to Bessie.
”There's Brack now!” he exclaimed. ”See, Bessie? That little man, with the eyegla.s.ses. He's up to some mischief. I wonder what he's doing out this way?”
When they arrived, Eleanor Mercer, her eyes showing that she was worried, was waiting for them on the porch.
”Oh, I'm so glad you're here!” she exclaimed.
”I'm so sorry if you were worried about me, Miss Eleanor,” said Bessie, remorsefully.
”I wasn't, though,” said Eleanor. ”It's Zara! She's upstairs, crying her eyes out and she won't answer me when I try to get her to tell me what's wrong. You'd better see her, Bessie.”
CHAPTER IV.
A NEW DANGER.
Alarmed at this news of Zara, Bessie hurried upstairs at once to the room the two girls shared. She found her chum on the bed, crying as if her heart would break.
”Why, Zara, what's the matter? Why are you crying?” she asked.
But try as she might, Bessie could get no answer at all from Zara for a long time.
”Have I done anything to make you feel bad? Has anything gone wrong here?” urged Bessie. ”If you'll only tell us what's the matter, dear, we'll straighten it out. Can't you trust me?”
”N--nothing's happened--you haven't done anything,” Zara managed to say at last.
”Surely nothing Miss Eleanor has said has hurt you, Zara? I'm certain she'd feel terrible if she thought you were crying because of anything she had done!”
Zara shook her head vehemently at that, but her sobs only seemed to come harder than before.
Bessie was thoroughly puzzled. She knew that Zara, brought up in a foreign country, did not always understand American ways. Sometimes, when Bessie had first known her, little jesting remarks, which couldn't have been taken amiss by any American girl, had reduced her to tears. And Bessie thought it entirely possible that someone, either Miss Eleanor, or her mother, or one of the Mercer servants, might have offended Zara without in the least meaning to do so.
But Zara seemed determined to keep the cause of her woe to herself. Not all of Bessie's pleading could make her answer the simplest questions. Finally, seeming to feel a little better, she managed to speak more coherently.
”Leave me alone for a little while, please, Bessie,” she begged. ”I'll be all right then--really I will!”
So Bessie, reluctantly enough, had to go downstairs, since she understood thoroughly that to keep on pressing Zara for an explanation while she was in such a nervous state would do more harm than good.
”Could you find out what was wrong?” asked Eleanor anxiously when Bessie came down. Charlie Jamieson was still with her on the porch, smoking a cigar and frowning as if he were thinking of something very unpleasant. He was, as a matter of fact. He was changing all his ideas of the case in which Eleanor's encounter with the two girls had involved him, since, with Brack for an opponent, he knew only too well that he was in for a hard fight, and if, as he supposed, the opposition was entirely without a reasonable case, a fight in which dirty and unfair methods were sure to be employed.
Bessie shook her head.
”She wouldn't tell me anything--just begged me to leave her alone and said she'd be all right presently,” she answered. ”I've seen her this way before and, really, there's nothing to do but wait until she feels better.”
”You've seen her this way before, you say?” said Jamieson, quickly. ”What was the matter then? What made her act so? If we know why she did it before, perhaps it will give us a clue to why she is behaving in such a queer fas.h.i.+on now.”
Bessie hesitated.
”She's awfully sensitive,” she said. ”Sometimes, when people have just joked with her a little bit, without meaning to say anything nasty at all, she's thought they were angry at her, or laughing at her for being a foreigner, and she's gone off just like this. I thought at first--”
”Yes?” said Eleanor, encouragingly, when Bessie stopped. ”Don't be afraid to tell us what you think, Bessie. We just want to get to the bottom of this strange fit of hers, you know.”
”Well, it seems awfully mean to say it,” said poor Bessie, ”when you've been so lovely to us, but I thought maybe someone had joked about her in some way. You know she sometimes p.r.o.nounces words in a funny fas.h.i.+on, as if she'd only read them, and had never heard anyone speak them. In Hedgeville lots of people used to laugh at her for that. I think that's why she stopped going to school. And I thought, perhaps, that was what was the matter--”
”It might have happened, of course,” said Eleanor, ”and without anyone meaning to hurt her feelings. I'd be very careful myself, but some of the other people around the house wouldn't know, of course. But, no, that won't explain it, Bessie. Not this time.”
”Are you sure, Eleanor!” asked Jamieson.
”Positively,” she answered. ”Because, after you went off, she was out here with me for quite a long time. Then I was called inside, and I'm quite sure no one from the house saw her at all after that until I found her crying. She'd been outside on the porch all the time--”