CHAPTER VI
"THE NEVERGETOVERS"
After crossing the Cheslow Hills and the Lumano by the Long Bridge abouttwenty miles below the Red Mill, the touring party debouched upon one ofthe very best State roads. They left much of the dust from which they hadfirst suffered behind them, and Tom could now lead the way with the bigcar without smothering the occupants of the honeymoon car in the rear.
The highway wound along a pretty ridge for some miles, with farms dottingthe landscape and lush meadows or fruit-growing farms dipping to the edgeof the distant river.
"Ah," sighed Henri Marchand. "Like _la belle_ France before the war. Suchpeace and quietude we knew, too. Fortunate you are, my friends, that _leBoche_ has not trampled these fields into bloody mire."
This comment he made when they halted the cars at a certain overlook toview the landscape. But they could not stop often. Their first objectiveinn was still a long way ahead.
They did not, however, reach the inn, which was a resort well known tomotorists. Five miles away Tom noticed that the car was acting strangely.
"What is it, Tom?" demanded Ruth quickly.
"Steering gear, I am afraid. Something is loose."
It did not take him long to make an examination, and in the meantime thesecond car came alongside.
"It might hold out until we get to the hotel ahead; but I think we hadbetter stop before that time if we can," was Tom's comment. "I do not wantthe thing to break and send us flying over a stone wall or up a tree."
"But you can fix it, Tom?" questioned Ruth.
"Sure! But it will take half an hour or more."
After that they ran along slowly and presently came in sight of a placecalled the Drovers' Tavern.
"Not a very inviting place, but I guess it will do," was Ruth'sannouncement after they had looked the inn over.
The girls and Aunt Kate alighted at the steps while the young men wheeledthe cars around to the sheds.
The housekeeper, who immediately announced herself as Susan Timmins, wasfussily determined to see that all was as it should be in the ladies'chambers.
"I can't trust this gal I got to do the upstairs work," she declared,saying it through her nose and with emphasis. "Just as sure as kin be,if ye go for to help a poor relation you air always sorry for it."
She led the way up the main flight of stairs as she talked.
"This here gal will give me the nevergitovers, I know! She's my ownsister's child that married a good-for-nothing and is jest like herfather."
"Bella! You Bella! Turn on the light in these rooms. Is the pitchersfilled? And the beds turned down? If I find a speck of dust on thisfurniture I'll nigh 'bout have the nevergitovers! That gal will drive meto my grave, she will. Bella!"
Bella appeared--a rather good looking child of fourteen or so, slim as alath and with hungry eyes. She was dark--almost Gypsy-like. She stared atRuth, Helen and Jennie with all the amazement of the usual yokel. But itwas their dress, not themselves, Ruth saw, engaged Bella's interest.
"When you ladies want any help, you call for Bella," announced Miss SusanTimmins. "And if she don't come running, you let me know, and I'll giveher her nevergitovers, now I tell ye!"
"No wonder this hotel is called 'Drovers' Tavern,'" said Jennie Stone."That woman certainly is a driver--a slave driver."
Ruth, meanwhile, was trying to make a friend of Bella.
"What is your name, my dear?" she asked the lathlike girl.
"You heard it," was the ungracious reply.
"Oh! Yes. 'Bella.' But your other name?"
"Arabella Montague Fitzmaurice Pike. My father is Montague Fitzmaurice."
She said it proudly, with a lift of her tousled head and a straighteningof her thin shoulders.
"Oh!" fairly gasped Ruth Fielding. "It--it sounds quite impressive, I mustsay. I guess you think a good deal of your father?"
"Aunt Suse don't," said the girl ungraciously. "My mother's dead. And pais resting this season. So I hafter stay here with Aunt Suse. I hate it!"
"Your father is--er--what is his business?" Ruth asked.
"He's one of the profession."
"A doctor?"
"Lands, no! He's a heavy."
"A _what_?"
"A heavy lead--and a good one. But these moving pictures knock out allthe really good people. There are no chances now for him to playShakespearean roles----"
"Your father is an actor!" cried Ruth.
"Of course. Montague Fitzmaurice. Surely you have heard the name?" saidthe lathlike girl, tossing her head.
"Why--why----of course!" declared Ruth warmly. It was true. She had heardthe name. Bella had just pronounced it!
"Then you know what kind of an actor my pa is," said the proud child. "Hedid not have a very good season last winter. He rehearsed with fourcompanies and was only out three weeks altogether. And one of the managersdid not pay at all."
"That is too bad."
"Yes. It's tough," admitted Bella. "But I liked it."
"You liked it when he was so unsuccessful?" repeated Ruth.
"Pa wasn't unsuccessful. He never is. He can play any part," declared thegirl proudly. "But the plays were punk. He says there are no good playswritten nowadays. That is why so many companies fail."
"But you said you liked it?"
"In New York," explained Bella. "While he was rehearsing pa could getcredit at Mother Grubson's boarding house on West Forty-fourth Street. Ihelped her around the house. She said I was worth my keep. But Aunt Susesays I don't earn my salt here."
"I am sure you do your best, Bella," Ruth observed.
"No, I don't. Nor you wouldn't if you worked for Aunt Suse. She says I'llgive her her nevergitovers--an' I hope I do!" with which final observationshe ran to unlace Aunt Kate's shoes.
"Poor little thing," said Ruth to Helen. "She is worse off than an orphan.Her Aunt Susan is worse than Uncle Jabez ever was to me. And she has noAunt Alvirah to help her to bear it. We ought to do something for her."
"There! You've begun. Every waif and stray on our journey must be aided, Isuppose," pouted Helen, half exasperated.
But Tom was glad to see that Ruth had found a new interest. Bella waitedon the supper table, was snapped at by Miss Timmins, and driven frompillar to post by that crotchety individual.
"Jimminy Christmas!" remarked Tom, "that Timmins woman must be areincarnation of one of the ancient Egyptians who was overseer in thebrickyard where Moses learned his trade. If they were all like her, nowonder the Israelites went on a strike and marched out of Egypt."
They were all very careful, however, not to let Miss Susan Timmins heartheir comments. She had the true dictatorial spirit of the old-fashionedNew England school teacher. The guests of Drovers' Tavern were treated byher much as she might have treated a class in the little red schoolhouseup the road had she presided there.
She drove the guests to their chambers by the method of turning off theelectric light in the general sitting room at a quarter past ten. Eachroom was furnished with a bayberry candle, and she announced that theelectricity all over the house would be switched off at eleven o'clock.
"That is late enough for any decent body to be up," she announced in herdecisive manner. "That's when I go to bed myself. I couldn't do so inpeace if I knew folks was burning them electric lights to all hours.'Tain't safe in a thunder storm.
"Why, when we first got 'em, Jed Parraday from Wachuset come to town to dohis buyin' and stayed all night with us. He'd never seed a 'lectric bulbbefore, and he didn't know how to blow it out. And he couldn't sleep in aroom with a light.
"So, what does the tarnal old fool do but unhook the cord so't the bulbcould be carried as far as the winder. And he hung it outside, shut thewinder down on it, drawed the shade and went to bed in the dark.
"Elnathan Spear, the constable, seen the light a-shining outside thewinder in the middle of the night and he thought 'twas burglars. He_dreams_ of burglars, Elnathan does. But he ain't never caught none yet.
"On t
hat occasion, howsomever, he was sure he'd got a whole gang of 'em,and he waked up the whole hotel trying to find out what was going on. Icharged Parraday ha'f a dollar for burning extry 'lectricity, and he gotso mad he ain't stopped at the hotel since.
"He'd give one the nevergitovers, that man would!" she concluded.