CHAPTER XII
ALONGSHORE
Mr. Peterby Paul appeared after a short time striding down the woodedhillside balancing a five-gallon gasoline can in either hand.
"I reckon you can get to Ridgeton on this here," he said jovially. "GuessI'd better set up a sign down here so's other of you autermobile folks kintake heart if ye git stuck."
"You are just as welcome as the flowers in spring, tra-la!" cried Helen,fairly dancing with delight.
"You are an angel visitor, Mr. Paul," said the plump girl.
"I been called a lot o' things besides an angel," the bearded woodsmansaid, his eyes twinkling. "My wife, 'fore she died, had an almighty tarttongue."
"And _now_?" queried Helen wickedly.
"Wal, wherever the poor critter's gone, I reckon she's l'arned to bridleher tongue," said Mr. Peterby Paul cheerfully. "Howsomever, as the fellersaid, that's another day's job. Mr. Frenchy, let's pour this gasolineinto them tanks."
Ruth insisted upon paying for the gasoline, and paying well. Then PeterbyPaul gave them careful directions as to the situation of Abby Drake'shouse, at which it seemed the lost woman must belong.
"Abby always has her house full of city folks in the summer," the woodsmansaid. "She is pretty near a Whosis herself, Abby Drake is."
With which rather unfavorable intimation regarding the despised "cityfolks," Mr. Peterby Paul saw them start on over the now badly rutted road.
Helen drove the smaller car with Ruth sitting beside her. Henri Marchandtook the wheel of the touring car, and the run to Boston was resumed.
"But we must not over-run Tom," said Ruth to her chum. "No knowing whatby-path he might have tried in search of the elusive gasoline."
"I'll keep the horn blowing," Helen said, suiting action to her speech andsounding a musical blast through the wooded country that lay all about."He ought to know his own auto-horn."
The tone of the horn was peculiar. Ruth could always distinguish it fromany other as Tom speeded along the Cheslow road toward the Red Mill. Butthen, she was perhaps subconsciously listening for its mellow note.
She tacitly agreed with Helen, however, that it might be a good thing totoot the horn frequently. And the signal brought to the roadside ananxious group of women at a sprawling farmhouse not a mile beyond the spotwhere the two cars had been stalled.
"That is the Drake place. It must be!" Ruth exclaimed, putting out a handto warn Colonel Marchand that they were about to halt.
A fleshy woman with a very ruddy face under her sunbonnet came eagerly outinto the road, leading the group of evidently much worried women.
"Have you folks seen anything of----"
"_Abby!_" shrieked the woman Ruth had found, and she struggled to get outof the car.
"Well, I declare, Mary Marsden!" gasped the sunbonneted woman, who wasplainly Abby Drake. "If you ain't a sight!"
"I--I'm so scared!" quavered the unforunate victim of her own nerves, asRuth ran back to help her out of the touring car. "God is going to punishme, Abby."
"I certainly hope He will," declared her friend, in rather a hard-heartedway. "I told you, you ought to be punished for wearing that dress up thereinto the berry pasture, and---- Land's sakes alive! Look at herdress!"
Afterward, when Ruth had been thanked by Mrs. Drake and the other women,and the cars were rolling along the highway again, the girl of the RedMill said to Helen Cameron:
"I guess Tom is more than half right. Altogether, the most serious topicof conversation for all kinds and conditions of female humans is thematter of dress--in one way or another."
"How dare you slur your own sex so?" demanded Helen.
"Well, look at this case," her chum observed. "This Mary Marsden had beenlost in the storm and killed for all they knew, yet Abby Drake's firstthought was for the woman's dress."
"Well, it was a pity about the dress," Helen remarked, proving that sheagreed with Abby Drake and the bulk of womankind--as her twin brother oftand again acclaimed.
Ruth laughed. "And now if we could see poor dear Tommy----"
The car rounded a sharp turn in the highway. The Drake house was perhaps amile behind. Ahead was a long stretch of rain-drenched road, and Heleninstantly cried:
"There he is!"
The figure of Tom Cameron with the empty gasoline can in his hand couldscarcely be mistaken, although he was at least a mile in advance. Helenbegan to punch the horn madly.
"He'll know that," Ruth cried. "Yes, he looks back! Won't he beastonished?"
Tom certainly was amazed. He proceeded to sit down on the can and wait forthe cars to overtake him.
"What are you traveling on?" he shouted, when Helen stopped with theengine running just in front of him. "Fairy gasoline?"
"Why, Tommy, you're not so smart!" laughed his sister. "It takes Ruth tofind gas stations. We were stalled right in front of one, and you did notknow it. Hop in here and take my place and I'll run back to the other car.Ruth will tell you all about it."
"Perhaps we had better let Colonel Marchand and Jennie have this honeymooncar," Ruth said doubtfully.
"Humph!" her chum observed, "I begin to believe it will be just as much ahoneymoon car with you and Tom in it as with that other couple. 'Blessyou, my children!'"
She ran back to the big car with this saucy statement. Tom grinned,slipped behind the wheel, and started the roadster slowly.
"It must be," he observed in his inimitable drawl, "that Sis has noticedthat I'm fond of you, Ruthie."
"Quite remarkable," she rejoined cheerfully. "But the war isn't over yet,Tommy-boy. And if our lives are spared we've got to finish our educationsand all that. Why, Tommy, you are scarcely out of short pants, and I'veonly begun to put my hair up."
"Jimminy!" he grumbled, "you do take all the starch out of a fellow. Nowtell me how you got gas. What happened?"
Everybody has been to Boston, or expects to go there some time, so it isquite immaterial what happened to the party while at the Hub. They onlyremained two days, anyway, then they started off alongshore through thepleasant old towns that dot the coast as far as Cape Ann.
They saw the ancient fishing ports of Marblehead, Salem, Gloucester andRockport, and then came back into the interior and did not see salt wateragain until they reached Newburyport at the mouth of the Merrimac.
The weather remained delightfully cool and sunshiny after that heavytempest they had suffered in the hills, and they reached Portsmouth andremained at a hotel for three days when it rained again. The young folkschafed at this delay, but Aunt Kate declared that a hotel room was restfulafter jouncing over all sorts of roads for so long.
"They never will build a car easy enough for auntie," Jennie Stonedeclared. "I tell pa he must buy some sort of airship for us----"
"Never!" cried Aunt Kate in quick denial. "Whenever I go up in the air itwill be because wings have sprouted on my shoulder blades. And I shouldnot call an aeroplane easy riding, in any case."
"At least," grumbled Tom, "you can spin along without any trouble withcountry constables, and _that's_ a blessing."
For on several occasions they had had arguments with members of the policeforce, in one case helping to support a justice and a constable by payinga fine.
They did not travel on Sunday, however, when the constables reap most oftheir harvest, so they really had little to complain of in that direction.Nor did they travel fast in any case.
After the rainy days at Portsmouth, the automobile party ran on with onlyminor incidents and no adventures until they reached Portland. There Ruthtelegraphed to Mr. Hammond that they were coming, as in her letter,written before they left Cheslow, she had promised him she would.
Herringport, the nearest town to the moving picture camp at Beach PlumPoint, was at the head of a beautiful harbor, dotted with islands, andwith water as blue as that of the Bay of Naples. When the two cars rolledinto this old seaport the party was welcomed in person by Mr. Hammond,the president and producing manager of the Alectrion Film Corporation.
> "I have engaged rooms for you at the hotel here, if you want them," hetold Ruth, after being introduced to Aunt Kate and Colonel Marchand, theonly members of the party whom he had not previously met.
"But I can give you all comfortable bunks with some degree of luxury atthe camp. At least, we think it luxurious after our gold mining experiencein the West. You will get better cooking at the Point, too."
"But a camp!" sighed Aunt Kate. "We have roughed it so much coming downhere, Mr. Hammond."
"There won't be any black ants at this camp," said her niece cheerfully.
"Only sand fleas," suggested the wicked Tom.
"You can't scare me with fleas," said Jennie. "They only hop; they don'twriggle and creep."
"My star in the 'Seaside Idyl,' Miss Loder, demanded hotel accommodationsat first. But she soon changed her mind," Mr. Hammond said. "She is nowglad to be on the lot with the rest of the company."
"It sounds like a circus," Aunt Kate murmured doubtfully.
"It is more than that, my dear Madam," replied the manager, laughing."But these young people----"
"If Aunt Kate won't mind," said Ruth, "let us try it, while she remains atthe Herringport Inn."
"I'll run her back and forth every day for the 'eats'," Tom promptlyproposed.
"My duty as a chaperon----" began the good woman, when her niece broke inwith:
"In numbers there is perfect safety, Auntie. There are a whole lot ofgirls down there at the Point."
"And we have chaperons of our own, I assure you," interposed Mr. Hammond,treating Aunt Kate's objection seriously. "Miss Loder has a cousin whoalways travels with her. Our own Mother Paisley, who plays characterparts, has daughters of her own and is a lovely lady. You need not fear,Madam, that the conventions will be broken."
"We won't even crack 'em, Aunt Kate," declared Helen rouguishly. "I willwatch Jen like a cat would a mouse."
"Humph!" observed the plump girl, scornfully. "_This_ mouse, in that case,is likely to swallow the cat!"