CHAPTER X
THE KNIGHT OF THE WAYSIDE
The lady stared at the bedraggled party in amazed silence for a moment.Then Mrs. Ford stepped impulsively forward.
"I don't wonder you look surprised," she said in her sweetly modulatedvoice, "for this is rather an unheard of calling hour. But you see wewere caught in this awful downpour and had to seek your house forrefuge."
"Oh, I'm sorry!" exclaimed the lady, opening the door wider andmotioning them into the cheerfully lighted living room. "I didn't mean,"she added with a smile, as they most willingly accepted her invitation,"that I was sorry you came, but that you were forced to come by suchconditions. Won't you take off your things? But you are wet!" sheexclaimed, as the girls started to remove their dripping wraps.
"And we got it all," said Mrs. Ford with a wry smile, "just runningabout twenty feet from our cars to your porch."
"Your cars!" the hostess repeated. "Then you motored down. If I hadknown that I shouldn't have been so surprised at seeing you. Pedestriansare rather rare on a night like this."
"Yes, and motorists, too, if they have any sense," said Mollie dryly, atwhich they all laughed and their hostess looked still more interested.
"Please sit down and dry out a little," said the lady, indicating agrate fire which had evidently only recently been lighted on account ofthe chill in the air. "I'm glad I had the fire made. I must have known,"she added with a gracious smile, "that you were coming to-night."
Then she excused herself, and the girls held out eager hands to thefire.
"This is bliss," sighed Amy.
"Well, this is some contrast to about five minutes ago," chuckled Grace."I thought we were in for a night in the mud at least."
"I'll never say we aren't lucky again," agreed Betty, leaning an arm onthe mantel and getting her wet skirt as close to the fire as she could."We were just wondering," she added, addressing Mrs. Ford, "whether, ifMollie's car got stuck, you would rather have Grace and me struggle onto Bensington and get some help or stay and keep you company. Although,"she added ruefully, "if we couldn't pull through that mud, I don't knowwhat we could find in Bensington to do it."
"Probably the only gasoline vehicles they have in the place arejitneys," agreed Mollie, with a chuckle.
"I wonder," Amy broke in, apropos of nothing, "who our charming hostessis. She seems so lovely. It seems odd to meet a person like her and ahouse like this out in the wilderness."
"Yes, one does rather expect a farmer's wife and a rambling oldfarmhouse so far out in the country," agreed Mrs. Ford.
"Well, maybe her husband is a scientific farmer," suggested Mollie,adding wickedly as she turned a merry eye on Grace: "The kind Roy oncesaid he'd like to be. Remember, Grace?"
"Yes, I remember," Grace answered in a tone that indicated the memorywas not a pleasant one. "And I told him he had better drop that idea ina hurry if he expected me--I mean--any girl--" she floundered, whilethey laughed mockingly at her, "to have anything to do with him," shefinished rather weakly, while the girls giggled exasperatingly.
"Well, I don't know," remarked Betty, in an altruistic effort to pouroil upon the troubled waters, "that I would particularly mind marrying ascientific farmer if they all have houses like this and acres of groundwith orchards and cows and chickens--"
"And potato bugs," finished Grace, while the girls laughed merrily.
"Well," remarked Mollie, with a desperate gleam in her eye, "I'd marryjust about anybody who would give me a square meal."
"Goodness," remarked Betty, twinkling, "it's mighty lucky for Frank thatthere aren't any young men of marriageable age on the horizon just now."
The next moment she regretted her innocent little speech, for she couldsee that the mention of the boys had brought more vividly to Grace andMrs. Ford and Amy the thought of Will--dear, bright, merry Will--lyingwounded in some far-away hospital, how badly wounded they could notknow, and dared not think.
The silence that fell upon them was broken by the sound of theirhostess' voice, evidently issuing a command to some one in the kitchen.Then the lady herself swept into the room.
"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting so long," she apologized, "but Ihave had to help the maid get dinner on the table. She is a new one,and, oh, so utterly helpless. Then, too, I was hoping my son would comehome, but since everything is ready and I know you must be starving, wewon't delay dinner any longer. If you will come, please--"
"But this is imposing upon good nature," protested Mrs. Ford, as thelady held back the portiers and disclosed an inviting table set forseven, elaborate with shining crystal and silver. "To drop down upon youfrom a clear--or rather, a cloudy sky--"
They laughed, and their hostess dismissed the protest with a little waveof her hand.
"It is a pleasure," she said, adding, as they took their places: "I amonly thankful that a lucky chance enabled me to entertain you wellto-night. I was expecting guests from the nearest farm, but since ournext door neighbors are five miles down the road, they hesitated to makethe trip because of the threatening weather. I guess it is just as wellfor them they did not come," and she paused to listen to the rain whichwas still pouring down in torrents.
Mrs. Ford made an appropriate answer, and the two ladies entered into alittle confidential chat that left the girls pretty much to their owndevices. And they were trying their best not to disgrace themselves andto pay decorous attention to what their hostess was saying, while theirhearty young appetites were crying their protests aloud.
At last came the new maid whom their hostess had described as 'soutterly helpless,' looking to the famished girls an angelic being,bearing about her an aroma of tomato soup and fried chicken, moretempting than ambrosia.
Without any perceptible hesitation, the girls immediately began to eatand continued the agreeable occupation without interruption to the endof the meal, save for an answer to a question or two asked by theirhostess.
The helpless maid was just bringing in an enormous layer cake to theaccompaniment of admiring glances from the girls when the sound of alatch key in the door made the lady of the house look up with a start.
"It must be my son!" she said, rising hastily, "if you will excuse me amoment--"
Then came the sound of a hearty greeting in a masculine voice, followedby a slithery sound of wet clothing. Evidently the newcomer wasdivesting himself of some uncomfortably damp apparel. They could hearhis mother speaking in a low voice--probably she was preparing him tomeet the unexpected guests.
"By Jove! did you say two cars?" they heard him exclaim, and it suddenlyseemed to them there was something familiar about his voice. "Now Iwonder--all right, Mother. Just give me a minute to get some dryclothes on and I'll be right with you. Gosh, but I'm starved!"
The girls smiled sympathetically, for was it only half an hour ago theyhad been in that identically uncomfortable state.
"I bet he's nice," said Mollie to Betty, in a whisper just before theirhostess once more entered the room. "Anybody with an appetite like that,has to be."
"Oh, you shouldn't have waited for me," said the lady, noting that theice cream that had followed hard on the heels of the chocolate cake hadbegun to melt. "I don't know what to do with that boy," she added,smiling with a mixture of irritation and fond indulgence. "When he getsout on his motorcycle, miles mean nothing to him and time means less. Heis always late to dinner."
"I shouldn't think he would have found the riding very pleasantto-night," said Betty smiling. "In fact, it is a wonder he could ride atall--the roads are almost impassable."
"Quite impassable, you mean," put in Mollie.
"Oh, he has conquered that difficulty," their hostess explained, hereyes once more lighting with pride in her son. "He has a sort of paththrough the woods, which, while it perhaps lacks the comforts of a stateroad, at least is not inches deep in mud. He did get caught that wayonce and was several hours coming a few miles."
"She said he rode a motorcycle," remarked Grace to Mollie with apparentirrelevan
ce as the lady turned to speak to Mrs. Ford.
"Well, what about it?" inquired Mollie, as she proceeded with wonderfulconcentration to spear one last small but delicious piece of chocolateon the end of her fork.
"Doesn't that convey anything to your benighted mind?" Grace wasdrawling sarcastically when Betty leaned toward her eagerly.
"I thought his voice sounded familiar," she said. "Of course we know whohe is now."
"Good evening, everybody," said the familiar voice, and they turned tofind its owner strolling toward them across the room.
"Mr. Joe Barnes!" cried Mollie impulsively, then checked herself andslowly grew red.
"That's who," sang out Joe Barnes slangily, and in the laughter andgreetings that followed Mollie forgot her embarrassment.
Only Joe Barnes' mother looked completely surprised and taken aback.
"You know each other, then," she rather stated than asked as there was alull in the conversation. "I had no idea--"
"Of course you hadn't," agreed her son, as he took the vacant seatbeside her and turned upon her a pair of very handsome laughing eyes. "Ididn't either until a few minutes ago, and we haven't been acquaintedmore than a few hours."
"Your son did us the favor of helping us out of a difficulty thisafternoon," Mrs. Ford explained, taking pity on the lady's bewilderment."To be explicit, he performed the very disagreeable operation of puttinga new tire on the front wheel of our car."
"Oh, so that's it," laughed Mrs. Barnes.
"Mother, what do you say to cutting out ceremony and getting down tobrass tacks?" put in Joe Barnes, eyeing hungrily the plate of steamingsoup the maid had set before him.
"We don't serve them," said his mother demurely. "But I shouldn't wonderif what we have would prove more digestible."
So Joe Barnes entertained them with fun and jokes while he devoured thedifferent courses with a thoroughness that awoke the admiration of thegirls.
But no matter how conscientiously Joe did justice to the good things setbefore him, there was not a moment when he was not conscious ofBetty--Betty on the other side of the table, dimpling and sending himback sally for sally with ready wit. What lucky chance had promptednature to send a thunderstorm that afternoon? The jolly old lady wascertainly on his side!
Then when Joe had decided that nothing remained to devour, the partyadjourned to the living room, where the former put some records on thephonograph.
The Barnes had a collection of very wonderful records, and for more thanan hour the girls sat entranced as, one by one, Joe produced for theirenjoyment, the greatest artists of the musical world.
Finally some one suggested that Betty play some of the songs they hadloved in those service-filled days at the Hostess House. As the girlishvoices rang out in one patriotic song after another, Joe Barnes, who wasseated on the edge of a table with one foot swinging idly, fidgeteduneasily, while over his face came a sober, almost sullen expression.
"Gee, I wish they wouldn't!" he murmured to himself.
The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point; Or a Wreck and a Rescue Page 11
