Part 1 (2/2)
She was so excited over her plan for the night that she was very quiet all the rest of the afternoon, and Ann said rather suspiciously,--
”You're up to some new mischief, Ruby Harper, I'll venture, or you would never be so quiet all at once. I know you. Now do be a good girl, and don't keep worrying your poor ma so about you.”
”Never you mind what I am going to do,” answered Ruby, pertly, and just then Ann saw that her cookies were missing.
”Well, where on earth are all my cookies?” she exclaimed. ”Now, Ruby Harper, you tell me this very minute what you have been doing with them. I know just as well as anything that you never ate such a lot as that, and I don't see what you could have been doing with them. You go and get them and fetch them back to me right away.”
Ruby made a face at her and darted away. She was not going to bring the cookies back nor tell where they were. What would she do when she was s.h.i.+pwrecked if she did not have a store of provisions in her hut, as she called her little house.
She knew it would not do to tell Nora about her plan, and she was so full of it that she felt as if she could not keep it to herself any longer, so she ran over to Ruthy's house.
She found Ruthy playing with her paper dolls on the wide back porch, and for a few minutes she pretended that she had come over to see her paper nieces and nephews, for the children always called themselves aunts to each other's dolls.
”Oh, I have got a plan to tell you about, Ruthy,” she said presently.
”I don't want any one to hear me telling you about it, so let's go down under the apple-tree, with the dolls.”
Ruthy gathered up her children, and in a few moments the two little girls were sitting side by side on the low bench, which Ruthy's father had put there just for their comfort.
”It's the grandest plan,” began Ruby.
”Am I in it, too?” asked Ruthy, half wistfully and half fearfully. She always liked to be in Ruby's plans, and felt a little left out when her little friend wanted to do without her, and yet sometimes Ruby's plans were so very extraordinary that she did not enjoy helping to carry them out at all.
”Well, you could be in it, only you see you can't very well,” Ruby answered in a rather mixed up fas.h.i.+on.
”Why can't I?” Ruthy asked.
”Well, I'll tell you all about it, and then you will see that you couldn't very well,” Ruby answered. ”But first of all you must promise me honest true, black and blue, that you will never, never breathe a word of it to any one.”
”Not even to mamma?” asked Ruthy, who always felt better when she told her mother all about everything.
”No, not to anyone in all the wide world,” Ruthy answered. ”I won't tell you a single word unless you promise, and you will be awfully sorry if I don't tell you, for this is the most splendid plan I ever made up in all my life. It is just like a book.”
Ruthy's curiosity overcame her scruples about knowing something which she could not tell her mother.
”All right, I won't tell a single person,” she said, earnestly. ”Tell me what it is.”
”Promise across your heart,” Ruby insisted, for just then the little girls had a fas.h.i.+on of thinking that promising across their hearts made a promise more binding than any other form of words.
”I promise, honest true, black and blue, 'crost my heart,” Ruthy said very earnestly, and then the two heads were put close together while Ruby whispered her wonderful secret.
No one could have heard them, not even the birds in their nests up in the tree, if she had spoken aloud, but a secret always seemed so delightfully mysterious when it was whispered, that she rarely told one aloud.
”I am going to be cast away on a desert island,” she said, and Ruthy's blue eyes opened to their widest extent.
”Why, how can you, when there is n't any desert island anywhere near here for miles and miles?” she exclaimed.
”Oh, you are so stupid,” Ruby exclaimed impatiently. ”Of course I mean to pretend I am cast away. I am going to pretend that down by the barn is a desert island, and that little house I have built with boards is my hut, and I am going to sleep out there all by myself to-night, and I have some provisions and everything all ready.”
<script>