Ruth Fielding Down East Part 4

"You be right, Sonny," interjected Aunt Alvirah, who sometimes forgot that Tom, as well as the girls, was grown up. She rose from her chair with her usual, "Oh, my back! and oh, my bones! You young folks should be dancing and frolicking----"

"But the war, Auntie!" murmured Ruth.

"You'll neither make peace nor mar it by worriting. No, no, my pretty! And 'tis a bad thing when young folks grow old before their time."

"You're always saying that, Aunt Alvirah," Ruth complained. "But how can one be jolly if one does not feel jolly?"

"My goodness!" cried Tom, "you were notoriously the jolliest girl in that French hospital. Didn't the _poilus_ call you the jolly American? And listen to Grandmother Grunt now!"

"I suppose it is so," sighed Ruth. "But I must have used up all my fund of cheerfulness for those poor _blesses_. It does seem as though the font of my jollity had quite dried up."

"I wish Heavy Stone were here," said Helen suddenly. "_She'd_ make us laugh."

"She and her French colonel are spooning down there at Lighthouse Point,"

scoffed Ruth--and not at all as Ruth Fielding was wont to speak.

"Say!" Tom interjected, "I bet Heavy is funny even when she is in love."

"_That's_ a reputation!" murmured Ruth.

"They are not at Lighthouse Point. The Stones did not go there this summer, I understand," Helen observed.

"I am sorry for Jennie and Colonel Marchand if they are at the Stones'

city house at this time of the year," the girl of the Red Mill said.

"Bully!" cried Tom, with sudden animation. "That's just what we will do!"

"What will we do, crazy?" demanded his twin.

"We'll get Jennie Stone and Henri Marchand--he's a good sport, too, as I very well know--and we'll all go for a motor trip. Jimminy Christmas! that will be just the thing, Sis. We'll go all over New England, if you like.

We'll go Down East and introduce Colonel Marchand to some of our hard-headed and tight-fisted Yankees that have done their share towards injecting America into the war. We will----"

"Oh!" cried Ruth, breaking in with some small enthusiasm, "let's go to Beach Plum Point."

"Where is that?" asked Helen.

"It is down in Maine. Beyond Portland. And Mr. Hammond and his company are there making my 'Seaside Idyl.'"

"Oh, bully!" cried Helen, repeating one of her brother's favorite phrases, and now quite as excited over the idea as he. "I do so love to act in movies. Is there a part in that 'Idyl' story for me?"

"I cannot promise that," Ruth said. "It would be up to the director. I wasn't taking much interest in this particular picture. I wrote the scenario, you know, before I went to France. I have been giving all my thought to----

"Oh, dear! If we could only find my lost story!"

"Come on!" interrupted Tom. "Let's not talk about that. Will you write to Jennie Stone?"

"I will. At once," his sister declared.

"Do. I'll take it to the post office and send it special delivery. Tell her to wire her answer, and let it be 'yes.' We'll take both cars. Father won't mind."

"Oh, _but_!" cried Helen. "How about a chaperon?"

"Oh, shucks! I wish you'd marry some nice fellow, Sis, so that we'd always have a chaperon on tap and handy."

She made a little face at him. "I am going to be old-maid aunt to your many children, Tommy-boy. I am sure you will have a full quiver. We will have to look for a chaperon."

"Aunt Kate!" exclaimed Ruth. "Heavy's Aunt Kate. She is just what Helen declares she wants to be--an old-maid aunt."

"And a lovely lady," cried Helen.

"Sure. Ask her. Beg her," agreed Tom. "Tell her it is the crying need. We have positively got to have some fun."

"Well, I suppose we may as well," Ruth sighed, in agreement.

"Yes. We have always pampered the boy," declared Helen, her eyes twinkling. "I know just what I'll wear, Ruthie."

"Oh, we've clothes enough," admitted the girl of the Red Mill rather listlessly.

"Shucks!" said Tom again. "Never mind the fas.h.i.+ons. Get that letter written, Sis."

So it was agreed. Helen wrote, the letter was sent. With Jennie Stone's usual impulsiveness she accepted for herself and "_mon Henri_" and Aunt Kate, promising to be at Cheslow within three days, and all within the limits of a ten-word telegram!

CHAPTER V

OFF AT LAST

"The ancients," stated Jennie Stone solemnly, "burned incense upon any and all occasions--red letter days, labor days, celebrating Columbus Day and the morning after, I presume. But we moderns burn gasoline. And, phew! I believe I should prefer the stale smoke of incense in the unventilated pyramids of Egypt to this odor of gas. O-o-o-o, Tommy, do let us get started!"

"You've started already--in your usual way," he laughed.

This was at Cheslow Station on the arrival of the afternoon up train that had brought Miss Stone, her Aunt Kate, and the smiling Colonel Henri Marchand to join the automobile touring party which Jennie soon dubbed "the later Pilgrims."

"And that big machine looks much as the _Mayflower_ must have looked steering across Cape Cod Bay on that special occasion we read of in sacred and profane history, hung about with four-poster beds and whatnots. In our neighborhood," the plump girl added, "there is enough decrepit furniture declared to have been brought over on the _Mayflower_ to have made a cargo for the _Leviathan_."

"Oh, _ma chere_! you do but stretch the point, eh?" demanded the handsome Henri Marchand, amazed.

"I a.s.sure you----"

"Don't, Heavy," advised Helen. "You will only go farther and do worse. In my mind there has always been a suspicion that the _Mayflower_ was sent over here by some s.h.i.+pped knocked-down furniture factory. Miles Standish and Priscilla Mullins and John Alden must have hung on by their eyebrows."

"Their eyebrows--_ma foi_!" gasped Marchand.

"Say, old man," said Tom, laughing, "if you listen to these crazy college girls you will have a fine idea of our historical monuments, and so forth.

Take everything with a grain of salt--do."