Chapter XIII: The Green and Orange Petticoat

Ruth and Agnes Kenway were in tears. Once before--when the Corner House girls were at Pleasant Cove--the two smaller sisters had been lost, and on that occasion circumstances seemed to blame Agnes.

Now neither of the older girls was to blame for the absence of Tess and Dot. Mrs. Heard said so. But both Ruth and Agnes felt condemned.

After searching the pasture and the patch of woodland beyond it, clear to the back road, Neale, disappointed, was inclined to scold Tom Jonah for not picking up the trail of the lost children.

Tom Jonah, however, was not a hunting dog; his nose was not as keen as some breeds possess--especially now that he was old. But he showed almost as much anxiety as his human friends on this occasion.

"Don't scold him, Neale," begged Agnes, sobbing. "He'd find Tess and Dot if he could--poor old fellow. See! he knows what I am saying."

The dog whined and lay down, panting. Indeed, it did seem as though there was nothing more to do here. The children, whether they had wandered away or had been carried off, certainly were not in the vicinity.

"Two hours have been wasted," said Mrs. Heard; "although we did not know we were wasting them, of course. We had to do what we could toward finding the children near by. But now we must waste no more hours. We must get help."

"Oh! what help?" cried Agnes.

"We must run to the next town--Frog Hollow," said Neale, in an undertone"--and get the constable or sheriff or _somebody_. We must start a crowd with lanterns to beat the woods. Maybe somebody has seen the children. They may be safe already in somebody's house."

"Or in the police station," put in Sammy Pinkney. "I got lost once and that's where they found me. Of course, I was a kid then. The cops was real good to me. One of 'em bought me ten cents worth of butter-scotch--you know, that awful, sticky, pully candy, Neale. And when my father come I couldn't holler to him 'cause my teeth was all stuck up."

"I bet that cop gave you the candy on purpose to shut your mouth," growled Neale. "You were talking them to death, it is probable."

"Oh, dear, me!" cried Agnes, "don't let us just talk; let's do something."

"Mrs. Heard is quite right, I can see," Ruth observed, recovered now in a measure from her first panic. "We must ask the authorities to help us. I should have been more careful."

"Why, Ruth," said the chaperone, "don't blame yourself. How could you have foreseen this?"

"I should not have allowed them out of my sight without Tom Jonah with them," the oldest Corner House girl declared. "Nor will I again on this trip, you may be sure."

"Come on, now," growled Neale, who felt very much disturbed about the loss of the little girls but who, boy like, did not wish to show his feelings. "Come on, now; we've talked enough. Let's do something. Get in here, Tom Jonah--you useless old thing! You're not half a dog or you'd have been able to follow 'em."

The big Newfoundland, with drooping flag and sheepish look, scrambled into the front of the car. So did Sammy. The automobile started and they sped away toward Frog Hollow, or Arbutusville, each revolution of the wheels taking them farther and farther from the lost children, sleeping under the great tree at the edge of the distant wood lot.

The automobile party were to spend a very anxious night--much more so than Tess and Dot Kenway, who had sobbed themselves to sleep among the huge tree-roots. Their sylvan couch was soft; the night was warm; and not a thing disturbed them after their eyes were shut.

A fretful bird, crying in the dusk of early dawn, aroused Dot for a moment; but she found Tess beside her, so went off to sleep again without realizing that she was not in her own bed at home.

Dawn soon smeared her pink finger-prints along the gray horizon. Other birds sleepily awoke. The morning breeze rustled the leaves, which took up their eternal gossip again just where it had ceased when the night wind died.

One morning call after another resounded through the forest patch. The light grew stronger and the tiny, furry things crept away to bed. The owl had long since ceased his querulous call. A feathered martinet that had at intervals, all the night long, declared for the castigation of "poor Will," pitched for a last time upon a dead limb at the edge of the wood and shouted forty-three times in succession: "Whip-poor-will!" without awakening Tess and Dot Kenway.

They slept on as day broke and the World yawned and threw off the coverlet of night to hop out of bed. The first red ray of the sun finally slanted over the tree-tops and struck right into the face and eyes of the smallest Corner House girl.

"Oh, my! I don't like that sun," complained Dot. "Mo--move over, Tess Kenway."

Tess' eyes popped open and she was immediately wide awake, while Dot was still snuggling down and trying to go to sleep again.

"Well, Dot Kenway!" exclaimed the older girl, "do you know what we've done?"

"No-o," mumbled Dot.

"Why! we've slept all through the night."

"Aw--ri'," Dot said, with very little interest.

"And do you know where we are?" pursued the lively Tess.

"I--I----Oh! is it time to get up?" yawned Dot.

Then she opened her eyes, too, and saw what Tess saw--the curve of the shaded road stretching away into the wood. The two little girls had been well sheltered under the thick umbrella of the tree; but in the open the grass blades sparkled with dew.

Birds hopped about, hunting their breakfasts--big, fat robins in their red vests; a chattering jay that flirted his topknot knowingly as he peered at the two Corner House girls; a clape, running spirals around a neighboring tree trunk like a little striped mouse, and looking at the children with interest. Across a broken wall a red squirrel ran--that pirate of his tribe. A rabbit started suddenly from his form in the grass, and, with a resounding thump or two, shot off across the field as though hearing a sudden call to breakfast at his house. The stirring of the little girls stirred everything else here to sudden activity.

"Why, dear me, Tess Kenway," gasped Dot, "we--we didn't get home, did we?"

"I guess we didn't," cried Tess, getting up quickly.

"Oh! nor we didn't find the automobile," added Dot, the memory of what had happened returning quickly. "Why, Tess! we're lost."

"Well, I guess we are," admitted her sister. "I thought Ruth and Agnes and the others were lost; but I guess it's us, after all, who don't know where we are."

"Wha--what'll we do?" asked Dot, yawning again, and scarcely alert enough yet to appreciate the serious side of the situation.

"Well! we needn't be afraid of anything now that it's daylight. Come along, Dot--let's find a brook," said the practical Tess. "I want to wash my face."

"We haven't any towels," objected Dot, trotting along the road beside her sister. "Nor any soap, Tess."

"Why! what do you suppose the squirrels and the rabbits and all the other woodsy things do for towels and soap?" demanded Tess, briskly. "I guess water's _clean_; it'll wash you."

"And our teeth-brushes, Tess?"

Tess overcame even that seemingly insurmountable difficulty. After they had found the brook--a quiet brown pool beside the road--and had bathed their faces and hands, Tess broke a twig and chewed the end to a brush-like swab, and so brushed her teeth thoroughly. Dot followed her example, and laughed.

"We are two wild girls," she declared. "We haven't any home--nor anything. That is, for a little while," she added, rather doubtful as to how this new game would "pan out."

"Why, when our clothes wear out we'll have to make new ones. And for Alice, too."

"How?" asked Tess, in turn curious. "What out of?"

"Oh, we'll weave new dresses out of grass and leaves, and trim them with flowers," declared the smallest girl, gaily.

"Well, so we could," agreed Tess, catching fire from her sister's enthusiasm.

"Of course. And shoes----"

"Oh, I know!" Tess cried. "We'd find rushes beside the pond and weave basket-work sandals to wear 'stead of shoes. And we might weave hats--like the Chinese do. And we'd build ourselves a house, and thatch it all over to keep the rain out--"

Dot had suddenly grown silent and allowed Tess to do all the talking. Tess looked at the smallest Corner House girl quickly. Dot's lips were puckered into a pout and her dark eyes were filling rapidly.

"What is the matter now, dear?" Tess asked, tenderly.

"Do--don't let's talk about it any more," choked Dot. "Besides, I'm hungry."

Tragedy stalked into the situation right then and there. They had no more imagination to waste upon the supposed life of a "wild girl." The principal question was: How were two little girls, fast becoming "wild," to eat?

They were walking along the road again when Tess suddenly spied something which brought a cry of delight from her lips.

"Look! Look, Dot!" she said. "What's on those bushes?"

The bushes in question overhung the bank above their heads.

"Oh, Dot! aren't those blueberries?" the older girl added.

"Of course they are, Tess Kenway," agreed her sister. "My, I could eat just bushels of 'em."

They scrambled up the bank and climbed the wall. Not only was there this clump of berry bushes which they had first sighted; but back of the wall was a great field, rocky and barren otherwise, but a fine berry pasture.

Farther out where the sun shone, the berries were larger and more had ripened. The little girls went on and on, picking the berries in handfuls and actually cramming them into their mouths. They were very hungry.

Their fingers and lips became stained; and if the truth were told some of the crushed berries left stains upon their mussed frocks as well as upon their faces. They reached the farther end of the field before they realized that they were so far from the road.

Tess was about to suggest that they go back. Somebody might come by on the lonely road they had been following. And then she saw the orange and green petticoat fluttering in the bushes.

"Oh, Dot! what's that, do you suppose?" Tess whispered, seizing her sister quickly by the hand.

"Oh-ee! A bear?" returned Dot, without even seeing the gay garment beyond the brush clump.

"Goodness! A bear _that_ color?" demanded Tess, with some exasperation.

Suddenly the wearer of the gay garment stood up. She was a very brown woman, with great hoops of gold in her ears, and she wore other gay garments besides the green and orange petticoat.

"Oh!" murmured Tess, again, "I--I believe she must be a Gypsy woman, Dot Kenway."

Had the two little Corner House girls not been so much excited at just this minute they must have heard the passing of an automobile on the road, now out of their sight. Or, if Neale O'Neil had chanced to blow the horn just then Tess and Dot would surely have been attracted by the sound.

To the older Corner House girls and to Mrs. Heard that night had certainly been one of extreme anxiety. Neale had found lodgings for them in the squalid little village which the post-office authorities recognized as "Arbutusville," but which was still "Frog Holler" in the minds of the older inhabitants.

Neale found, too, a number of kind-hearted persons who were easily interested in the fate of Tess and Dot Kenway. There was a constable, and with that official at their head a dozen men started abroad at nine o'clock, with lanterns and a pack of "'coon dogs," to beat up the woods all about the place where the automobilists had camped.

Neale went with them; but despite Agnes' determination to attend she was refused the privilege. And Sammy, of course, remained with the women--they needing the protection of some manly spirit--and fell asleep in two minutes.

Neale O'Neil dragged back about dawn. The search had been resultless--save that the dogs had started a raccoon--and the party had swept woods, fields, and swamps for miles as well as it could be done at night. They had shouted. They had roused every householder. Nobody had heard of the lost children or seen them.

But Neale had heard one thing that greatly troubled him; and yet which offered a possible clue to the little girls' disappearance.

On the way back to the village somebody in the crowd of searchers had told him that one of the aroused householders had mentioned the fact that there was a Gypsy encampment not many miles away.

The boy was instantly excited. He learned from his informant just where the camp was, and immediately put the idea before the constable.

"Why, that's too fur away, bub," said Constable Munro. "It's five mile beyond where you an' your folks stopped to eat--and on another road."

"The children might not have walked all that way," said Neale O'Neil. "They might have been carried there."

"Uh-huh? Against their will?"

"Well, why not?" returned Neale. "We hear all kind of stories about Gypsies. I've seen some bad ones myself."

"Aw, they're petty thieves, and bad horse traders sometimes. But to steal a couple of kids--I dunno 'bout that. Still--if you air bound to go there----"

"I am," Neale declared. "I'll have the machine ready as soon as I get a bite of breakfast."

He was sorry to have no good report to make to the girls and Mrs. Heard, and could only tell them, while he ate his hasty breakfast, where he was going and what he hoped to accomplish.

"I'm going with you," announced Agnes and Sammy in a breath.

"No," he said to the girl. "You can't go. The constable won't like it."

"Well, I don't see----"

"I am sure you would not like to go with a party of rough men," said Mrs. Heard, with such finality that Agnes became quiet.

But that did not stop Sammy's teasing. "Say, us men ought to go, anyway," he said. "Come on! Lemme go, Neale. I won't be in the way. Tom Jonah's going."

So in the car that had passed so near the two little lost girls as they picked berries, were Neale and Sammy, as well as Tom Jonah and the constable, Mr. Munro. Tess and Dot were too greatly interested just then, however, in that vivid petticoat and in the strange looking woman who wore it to think about anything else.