Part 20 (2/2)
”Now you have it,” said Ruth, but soberly. ”And worrying about it will not help us a particle. Might as well be cheerful.”
”You are as full of old saws as a carpenter's abandoned tool-chest,” said Helen smartly. ”Oh! What is this I hear? The smuggler's boat again?”
They did hear a motor, but no boat appeared from the other side of the Kingdom of Pipes. The sound drew nearer. The motor-boat was coming down the river, through a pa.s.sage between the island where the girls were and the American side.
”Come on! I don't care who it is,” cried Helen, starting to run through the bushes. ”We'll hail them and ask them for rescue.”
But when she came in sight of the craft, to Ruth's surprise Helen did not at once shout. Ruth only saw the bow of the boat coming down stream herself; but suddenly she marked the small name-board with its gilt lettering:
LAURIETTE
”Here's Chess, I do believe!” she cried.
”Humph!” grumbled Helen.
”Now, Helen Cameron!” gasped Ruth, ”are you going to be foolish enough to refuse to be taken off this island by Chessleigh Copley?”
”Didn't say I was.”
”And don't be unkind to him!” pleaded Ruth.
”You seem so terribly fond of him that I guess he won't mind how I treat him.”
”You know better,” Ruth told her admonis.h.i.+ngly. ”Chess thinks a great deal of you, while you treat him too unkindly for utterance.”
”He'd better not think of me too much,” said Helen scornfully. ”His head won't stand it. Tom says 'La.s.ses never was strong in the deeper strata of college learning.”
Ruth was not to be drawn into any controversy. She called to the young man when, dressed in flannels and standing at his wheel and engine, he came into view.
”Hurrah! Here's good luck!” shouted Chess, swerving the bow of the _Lauriette_ in toward the island instantly.
”Hurrah! Glad you think it's good luck,” said Helen sulkily. ”I guess you never were marooned.”
”That's navy blue you've got on--not maroon,” said Chess soberly. ”Do you suppose I am color-blind?”
”Smarty!”
”Now, children, this is too serious a matter to quarrel over,” admonished Ruth, but smiling because her chum showed, after all, interest enough in the young man to be ”sc.r.a.ppy.” ”What do you suppose we have seen, Chess?”
”I'd like to know first of all how you came here without a boat?”
”My goodness, yes!” gasped Helen. ”I'd almost forgotten about Wonota and Totantora.”
Ruth shook her head. ”I am not likely to forget that,” she said.
She explained to the young man as they got into the launch and he pushed out from the sh.o.r.e about the difficulty that had arisen over the Indians.
He was naturally deeply interested in Ruth's trouble and in the fate of the Indians. But on top of that Helen eagerly told about the speedy launch, the yellow lady, and their suspicions regarding what was going on at the island that they had nicknamed the Kingdom of Pipes.
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