Chapter XXV: Falsely Accused

The Motor Girls caught the gypsy girl as she was about to fall and seated her in a chair.

"You poor, poor thing!" exclaimed Cora.

"Out in this pouring rain!" ejaculated Belle.

"And drenched to the skin!" added Bess.

The newcomer presented a pitiable appearance. Her gaudy apparel was torn and bedraggled, her wet hair clung about her face, and she was gasping with exhaustion.

"I had to come!" she panted. "I was afraid!"

Cora had formed her plans with quick decision.

"We must keep this to ourselves for to-night, girls," she said in a low voice. "She'd be miserable and embarrassed if the boys should come down. We'll tell them all about it to-morrow. The first thing to do is to get her up in our rooms and give her some dry clothes. Then we'll get her something to eat and drink and put her to bed. She can tell us her story later."

"Oh, you are so good!" exclaimed the gypsy girl, covering her face with her hands.

As quietly as they could, they helped her up the stairs and rummaged in their closets for towels and clothes. Then they all set to work, and in a little while the newcomer was dry and warmly dressed in civilized garments.

She was of about the same size as Cora and Belle, and they had no trouble in fitting her out. Bess would have been equally willing to contribute some of her belongings, but her "plumpness" forbade.

It was astonishing to see the difference wrought in Nina by the assumption of the garments of ordinary life. She looked in them, as Belle remarked, "to the manner born," and when they had dressed her hair in the way they wore their own, there was little trace of the gypsy left, except her bronzed complexion.

She gave a little cry of feminine delight as they made her look at herself in the mirror.

"Oh, it's so long since I wore clothes like these!" she murmured.

"And now," said Cora, as she gazed with pleasure on the transformation that had been wrought, "we'll all go down to the kitchen and see what we can get in the way of something to eat."

They stole downstairs and the girls ransacked the larder. They found plenty of cold meat and bread and preserves. Belle got out a chafing dish and scrambled some eggs, and Cora brewed a pot of fragrant coffee. Bess set the table and they all gathered about it and ate heartily.

The girls thrilled with the romance of it all. The drenching storm, the midnight hour, the gypsy visitor, the feeling that they were involved in a mystery made them tingle. Then, too, the knowledge that all this was taking place while the other occupants of the house were unconscious of it gave a touch of the surreptitious and the clandestine that was not without its charm.

The gypsy girl of course was somewhat self-conscious, as she could not help being under the peculiar circumstances, but the girls noticed that her table manners were good, and they were more and more confirmed in their conviction that she was not what her dress and surroundings had made her appear.

She spoke mostly in monosyllables and only when addressed, and every once in a while they could see the look of anxiety and fear come into her eyes that they had noted the day before.

"Well," said Cora at last, when they had finished sipping their coffee, "I guess we'd better get up to bed. You need a good night's rest," she continued, addressing their guest, "and we'll fix you up a bed in our rooms. In the morning you will be in better shape to tell us all you care to."

"But you ought to know all about me before you do that," replied Nina. "It isn't fair to you. Perhaps after you have heard why I came you may regret taking me in."

"We'll never be sorry for that," declared Cora emphatically; "and I feel sure you've never done anything you ought to be ashamed of."

Nina's face glowed with gratitude at the generous speech.

"Oh, I never have!" she cried. "But I've been accused of doing it, and that sometimes in the eyes of the world amounts to nearly the same thing."

She had dropped all pretence to gypsy speech now, and spoke like any other American girl of good breeding and education.

"I think I'll tell you now," she cried impulsively. "That is, if you're not too tired to hear it?"

"Not a bit," answered Cora, who was inwardly delighted.

"I'm just dying to hear it, to tell the truth," said Bess frankly.

"So am I," echoed her sister.

"You are right," began Nina, "in thinking that I am not a gypsy. I am an American girl and I was born in this State. And my name isn't Nina either. But it will have to do for the present, because until this matter is cleared up, I don't want to tell my real name.

"My mother and father died when I was quite young, and I went to live with an uncle. He was an unusual man, and though no doubt he was fond of me in a way, our natures were too different for us to get along well together. I was hot tempered and hasty and we often quarreled. It was after an exceedingly bitter quarrel that I made up my mind that I would run away from home and earn my own living.

"I got a position in a department store, with just enough pay to keep body and soul together. Again and again I was tempted to go back and make things up with my uncle. But that silly pride of mine kept me from doing it. Oh, how I wish I had!

"There had been a number of thefts in the store, and the manager was furious. He told all the employees that the next one who was caught would be sent to jail. Up to that time he had usually been content with discharging them.

"One day I was called to his office and accused of having picked up a lady's purse that had been laid on a counter. A man who was employed in the store said that he had seen me take it.

"I was frightened nearly to death, for I had never even seen the purse. But it was found lying under my counter, as though I had hidden it there. I cried and begged and protested, but it did no good."

"You poor child!" exclaimed Cora, deeply affected.

"The manager must have been a brute!" cried Bess indignantly.

"I suppose he thought I was really guilty," said Nina, "and he was exasperated by the many other thefts. I thought I should go mad. He took up the telephone to call for a policeman, and in that minute when his back was turned I slipped out of the door down the stairs and into the street.

"Some way I got into the outskirts of the town, where I found a camp of gypsies. I don't remember much after that. I suppose I must have collapsed. But they took me in and nursed me, and when I came to consciousness again some days afterward, I found that the caravan had moved on and was in a strange town a good way off from Roxbury."

"Roxbury!" exclaimed Cora.

"That's where I had been employed," went on Nina. "When I found myself lying in a gypsy van, with an old woman taking care of me, I did a lot of hard thinking. With the gypsies I was safe. Nobody would think of looking for me there. But anywhere else I was likely to be arrested at any minute. And I would rather have died than gone to jail.

"So I stayed on with them and learned to tell fortunes. I didn't know what else to do, and gradually I got used to it. But I've never been really happy there. And I've watched everybody who came to the camp, for fear he might be an officer."

Cora reached over and took the girl's hand comfortingly in her own.

Quick tears evoked by the sympathetic action sprang to Nina's eyes, but she brushed them away and went on:

"I never met anybody I really knew until yesterday. Then I saw a man whom I had known in Roxbury. That's the reason you found me hiding in the woods. I was relieved when I went back to find that he had gone.

"But to-day he came upon me unawares, and he knew me through all my gypsy disguise. He threatened to expose me, to hand me over to the police. I was wild with fright. You had been kind to me and I thought of you. I waited to-night till the camp was asleep, and then I slipped out. And here I am."