The on the March Part 3 (2/2)
He laughed as he descended, and stood before them, a huge, black-bearded man, but as gentle as a child. And soon everyone could see what he meant, for the wagons were loaded with timber, and one contained all the tools that would be needed.
”There'll be twenty of us here to-morrow,” he said, ”and I guess we'll show you how to build a house! Won't be as grand as the hotel at Cranford, mebbe, but you can live in it, and we'll come out when we get the time and put on the finis.h.i.+ng touches. To-night we'll clear away all this rubbish, and with sun-up in the morning we'll be at work.”
Eleanor's eyes shone as she turned to Mrs. Pratt.
”Now you see what I meant when I told you there were plenty of good friends for you not far from here!” she cried. ”As soon as I told Jud what trouble you were in he thought of this, and in half an hour he'd got promises from all the men to put in a day's work fixing up a new house for you.”
Mrs. Pratt seemed too dazed to speak.
”But they can't finish a whole house in one day!” declared Margery.
”They can't paint it, and put up wall paper and do everything, Margery,” said Eleanor. ”That's true enough. But they can do a whole lot. You're used to thinking of city buildings, and that's different. In the country one or two men usually build a house, and build it well, and when there are twenty or thirty, why, the work just flies, especially when they're doing the work for friends.h.i.+p, instead of because they're hired to do it. Oh, just you wait!”
”Have you ever seen this before!”
”I certainly have! And you're going to see sights to-morrow that will open your eyes, I can promise you. You know what it's like, Bessie, don't you? You've seen house raisings before?”
”I certainly have,” said Bessie. ”And it's fine. Everyone helps and does the best he can, and it seems no time at all before it's all done.”
”Well, we'll do our share,” said Eleanor. ”The men will be hungry, and I've promised that we'll feed them.”
CHAPTER VI.
THE GOOD SAMARITANS.
”Well, I certainly have got a better opinion of country people than I ever used to have, Bessie,” said Dolly Ransom. ”After the way those people in Hedgeville treated you and Zara, I'd made up my mind that they were a nasty lot, and I was glad I'd always lived in the city.”
”Well, aren't you still glad of it, Dolly? I really do think you're better off in the city. There wouldn't be enough excitement about living in the country for you, I'm afraid.”
”Of course there wouldn't! But I think maybe I was sort of unfair to all country people because the crowd at Hedgeville was so mean to you. And I like the country well enough, for a little while. I couldn't bear living there all the time, though. I think that would drive me wild.”
”The trouble was that Zara and I didn't exactly belong, Dolly. They thought her father was doing something wrong because he was a foreigner and they couldn't understand his ways.”
”I suppose he didn't like them much, either, Bessie.”
”He didn't. He thought they were stupid. And, of course, in a way, they were. But not as stupid as he thought they were. He was used to entirely different things, and--oh, well, I suppose in some places what he did wouldn't have been talked about, even.
”But in the country everyone knows the business of everyone else, and when there is a mystery no one is happy until it's solved. That's why Zara and her father got themselves so disliked. There was a mystery about them, and the people in Hedgeville just made up their minds that something was wrong.”
”I feel awfully sorry for Zara, Bessie. It must be dreadful for her to know that her father is in prison, and that they are saying that he was making bad money. You don't think he did, do you?”
”I certainly do not! There's something very strange about that whole business, and Miss Eleanor's cousin, the lawyer, Mr. Jamieson, thinks so too. You know that Mr. Holmes is mighty interested in Zara and her father.”
”He tried to help to get Zara back to that Farmer Weeks who would have been her guardian if she hadn't come to join the Camp Fire, didn't he?”
”Yes. You see, in the state where Hedgeville is, Farmer Weeks is her legal guardian, and he could make her work for him until she was twenty-one. He's an old miser, and as mean as he can be. But once she is out of that state, he can't touch her, and Mr. Jamieson has had Miss Eleanor appointed her guardian, and mine too, for that state. The state where Miss Eleanor and all of us live, I mean.”
”Well, Mr. Holmes is trying to get hold of you, too, isn't he?”
”Yes, he is. You ought to know, Dolly, after the way he tried to get us both to go off with him in his automobile that day, and the way he set those gypsies on to kidnapping us. And that's the strangest thing of all.”
”Perhaps he wants to know something about Zara, and thinks you can tell him, or perhaps he's afraid you'll tell someone else something he doesn't want them to know.”
”Yes, it may be that. But that lawyer of his, Isaac Brack, who is so mean and crooked that no one in the city will have anything to do with him except the criminals, Mr. Jamieson says, told me once that unless I went with him I'd never find out the truth about my father and mother and what became of them.”
”Oh, Bessie, how exciting! You never told me that before. Have you told Mr. Jamieson?”
”Yes, and he just looked at me queerly, and said nothing more about it.”
”Bessie, do you know what I think?”
”No. I'm not a mind reader, Dolly!”
”Well, I believe Mr. Jamieson knows more than he has told you yet, or that he guesses something, anyway. And he won't tell you what it is because he's afraid he may be wrong, and doesn't want to raise your hopes unless he's sure that you won't be disappointed.”
”I think that would be just like him, Dolly. He's been awfully good to me. I suppose it's because he thinks it will please Miss Eleanor, and he knows that she likes us, and wants to do things for us.”
”Oh, I know he likes you, too, Bessie. He certainly ought to, after the way you brought him help back there in Hamilton, when we were there for the trial of those gypsies who kidnapped us. If it hadn't been for you, there's no telling what that thief might have done to him.”
”Oh, anyone would have done the same thing, Dolly. It was for my sake that he was in trouble, and when I had a chance to help him, it was certainly the least that I could do. Don't you think so?”
”Well, maybe that's so, but there aren't many girls who would have known how to do what you did or who would have had the pluck to do it, even if they did. I'm quite sure I wouldn't, and yet I'd have wanted to, just as much as anyone.”
”I wish I did know something about my father and mother, Dolly. You've no idea how much that worries me. Sometimes I feel as if I never would find out anything.”
”Oh, you mustn't get discouraged, Bessie. Try to be as cheerful as you are when it's someone else who is in trouble. You're the best little cheerer-up I know when I feel blue.”
”Oh, Dolly, I do try to be cheerful, but it's such a long time since they left me with the Hoovers!”
”Well, there must be some perfectly good reason for it all, Bessie, I feel perfectly sure of that. They would never have gone off that way unless they had to.”
”Oh, it isn't that that bothers me. It's feeling that unless something dreadful had happened to them, I'd have heard of them long ago. And then, Maw Hoover and Jake Hoover were always picking at me about them. When I did something Maw Hoover didn't like, she'd say she didn't wonder, that she couldn't expect me to be any good, being the child of parents who'd gone off and left me on her hands that way.”
”That's all right for her to talk that way, but she didn't have you on her hands. She made you work like a slave, and never paid you for it at all. You certainly earned whatever they spent for keeping you, Miss Eleanor says so, and I'll take her word any time against Maw Hoover or anyone else.”
”I've sometimes thought it was pretty mean for me to run off the way I did, Dolly. If it hadn't been for Zara, I don't believe I'd have done it.”
”It's a good thing for Zara that you did. Poor Zara! They'd taken her father to jail, and she was going to have to stay with Farmer Weeks. She'd never have been able to get along without you, you know.”
”Well, that's one thing that makes me feel that perhaps it was right for me to go, Dolly. That, and the way Miss Eleanor spoke of it. She seemed to think it was the right thing for me to do, and she knows better than I do, I'm sure.”
”Certainly she does. And look here, Bessie! It's all coming out right, sometime, I know. I'm just sure of that! You'll find out all about your father and mother, and you'll see that there was some good reason for their not turning up before.”
”Oh, Dolly dear, I'm sure of that now! And it's just that that makes me feel so bad, sometimes. If something dreadful hadn't happened to them, they would have come for me long ago. At least they would have kept on sending the money for my board.”
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