Ruth Fielding Down East Part 12

"Jennie, dear!" murmured Ruth. "Don't!"

"_Ma chere!_" gasped Henri Marchand. "Is she ill?"

"Jennie, behave yourself!" cried her aunt.

"I saw a toad swallow a hornet once," Tom declared. "She acts just the same way."

"As the hornet?" demanded his sister, beginning to giggle.

"As the toad," answered Tom, gravely.

But Henri had got to his feet and now reached the wriggling girl. "Let me try to help!" he cried.

"If you even begin wiggling that way, Colonel Marchand," declared Helen, "you will be in danger of arrest. There is a law against _that_ dance."

"Ow! Ow! Ow!" burst out Jennie once more, actually in danger of choking.

"What _is_ it?" Ruth demanded, likewise reaching the writhing girl.

"Oh, he bit me!" finally exploded Jennie.

Ruth guessed what must be the trouble then, and she forced Jennie's hands out of the neck of her waist and ran her hand down the plump girl's back.

Between them they killed the ant, for Ruth finally recovered a part of the unfortunate creature.

"But just think," consoled Helen, "how much more awful it would have been if you had swallowed him, Heavy, instead of his wriggling down your spinal column."

"Oh, don't! I can feel him wriggling now," sighed Jennie.

"That can be nothing more than his ghost," said Tom soberly, "for Ruth retrieved at least half of the ant's bodily presence."

"You'll give us all the fidgets if you keep on wriggling, Jennie,"

declared Aunt Kate.

"Well, I don't want to sit on the gra.s.s in a woodsy place again while we are on this journey," sighed Jennie. "Ugh! I always did hate creepy things."

"Including spiders, snakes, beetles and babies, I suppose?" laughed Helen.

"Come on now. Let us clear up the wreck. Where do we camp to-night, Tommy?"

"No more camping, I pray!" squealed Jennie. "I am no Gypsy."

"The hotel at Hampton is recommended as the real thing. They have a horse show every year at Hampton, you know. It is in the midst of a summer colony of wealthy people. It is the real thing," Tom repeated.

They made a pleasant and long run that afternoon and arrived at the Hampton hotel in good season to dress for dinner. Jennie and her aunt met some people they knew, and naturally Jennie's fiance and her friends were warmly welcomed by the gay little colony.

Men at the pleasure resorts were very scarce that year, and here were two perfectly good dancers. So it was very late when the automobile party got away from the dance at the Casino.

They were late the next morning in starting on the road to Boston.

Besides, there was thunder early, and Helen, having heard it rumbling, quoted:

"'Thunder in the morning, Sailors take warning!'"

and rolled over for another nap.

Ruth, however, at last had to get up. She was no "lie-abed" in any case, and in her present nervous state she had to be up and doing.

"But it's going to ra-a-ain!" whined Jennie Stone when Ruth went into her room.

"You're neither sugar nor salt," said Ruth.

"Henri says I'm as sweet as sugar," yawned Jennie.

"He is not responsible for what he says about you," said her aunt briskly.

"When I think of what that really nice young man is taking on his shoulders when he marries you----"

"But, Auntie!" cried Jennie, "he's not going to try to carry me pickaback, you know."

"Just the same, it is wrong for us to encourage him to become responsible for you, Jennie," said her aunt. "He really should be warned."

"Oh!" gasped the plump girl. "Let anybody dare try to get between me and my Henri----"

"n.o.body can--no fear--when you are sitting with him in the front seat of that roadster of Tom's," said Ruth. "You fill every atom of s.p.a.ce, Heavy."

She went to the window and looked out again. Heavy rolled out of bed--a good deal like a barrel, her aunt said tartly.

"What is it doing outside?" yawned the plump girl.

"Well, it's not raining. And it is a long run to Boston. We should be on our way now. The road through the hills is winding. There will be no time to stop for a Gypsy picnic."

"Thank goodness for that!" grumbled Jennie, sitting on the floor, schoolgirl fas.h.i.+on, to draw on her stockings. "I'll eat enough at breakfast hereafter to keep me alive until we reach a hotel, if you folks insist on inviting wood ants and other savage creatures of the forest to our luncheon table."

When the party finally gathered for breakfast in the hotel dining room on this morning, it was disgracefully late. Tom had been over both cars and p.r.o.nounced them fit. He had ordered the tanks filled with gasoline and had tipped one of the garage men liberally to see that this was properly done.

Afterward Captain Tom declared he would never trust a garage workman again.

"The only way to get a thing done well is to do it yourself--and a tip never bought any special service yet," declared the angry Tom. "It is merely a form of highway robbery."

But this was afterward. The party started off from Hampton in high fettle and with a childlike trust in the honesty of a garage attendant.

There were banks of clouds shrouding the horizon both to the west and north--the two directions from which thunder showers usually rise in this part of New England in which they were traveling. And yet the shower held off.

It was some time past noon before the thunder began to mutter again. The automobile party was then in the hilly country. Heretofore farms had been plentiful, although hamlets were few and far between.

"If it rains," said Ruth cheerfully, "of course we can take refuge in some farmhouse."

"Ho, for adventure among the savage natives!" cried Helen.

"I hope we shall meet n.o.body quite as savage as Miss Susan Timmins," was Aunt Kate's comment.

They ran into a deep cut between two wooded hills and there was not a house in sight. Indeed, they had not pa.s.sed a farmstead on the road for the last five miles. Over the top of the wooded crest to the north curled a slate colored storm cloud, its upper edge trembling with livid lightnings. The veriest tyro of a weather prophet could see that a storm was about to break. But n.o.body had foretold the sudden stopping of the honeymoon car in the lead!