Helen Cameron and Jennie Stone shrieked in unison when Miss Susan Timmins’ niece cast herself out of the haymow upon the plank door and swung as far as the door would go upon its creaking hinges.  Ruth seized Tom’s wrist in a nervous grip, but did not utter a word.  Aunt Kate turned away and covered her eyes with her hands that she might not see the reckless child fall ­if she did fall.

“Name of a name!” murmured Henri Marchand. “Au secours! Come, Tom, mon ami ­to the rescue!”

He turned and ran lightly along the hall and down the stairs.  But Tom went through the window, almost as precipitately as had Bella Pike herself, and so over the roof of the kitchen ell and down the trumpet-vine trellis.

Tom was in the yard and running to the barn before Marchand got out of the kitchen.  Several other people, early as the hour was, appeared running toward the rear premises of Drovers’ Tavern.

“See that crazy young one!” some woman shrieked.  “I know she’ll kill herself yet.”

“Stop that!” commanded Tom, looking up and shaking a threatening hand at Miss Timmins.

For in her rage the woman was trying to strike her niece with the stick, as Bella clung to the door.

“Mind your own business, young man!” snapped the virago.  “And go back and put the rest of your clothes on.  You ain’t decent.”

Tom was scarcely embarrassed by this verbal attack.  The case was too serious for that.  Miss Timmins struck at the girl again, and only missed the screaming Bella by an inch or so.

Helen and Jennie screamed in unison, and Ruth herself had difficulty in keeping her lips closed.  The cruel rage of the hotel housekeeper made her quite unfit to manage such a child as Bella, and Ruth determined to interfere in Bella’s behalf at the proper time.

“I wish she would pitch out of that door herself!” cried Helen recklessly.

Tom had run into the barn and was climbing the ladders as rapidly as possible to the highest loft.  Scolding and striking at her victim, Miss Susan Timmins continued to act like the mad woman she was.  And Bella, made desperate at last by fear, reached for the curling edges of the shingles on the eaves above her head.

“Don’t do that, child!” shrieked Jennie Stone.

But Bella scrambled up off the swinging door and pulled herself by her thin arms on to the roof of the barn.  There she was completely out of her aunt’s reach.

“Oh, the plucky little sprite!” cried Helen, in delight.

“But ­but she can’t get down again,” murmured Aunt Kate.  “There is no scuttle in that roof.”

“Tom will find a way,” declared Ruth Fielding with confidence.

“And my Henri,” put in Jennie.  “That horrid old creature!”

“She should be punished for this,” agreed Ruth.  “I wonder where the child’s father is.”

“Didn’t you find out last night?” Helen asked.

“Only that he is ’resting’.”

“Some poor, miserable loafer, is he?” demanded Aunt Kate, with acrimony.

“No.  It seems that he is an actor,” Ruth explained.  “He is out of work.”

“But he can’t think anything of his daughter to see her treated like this,” concluded Aunt Kate.

“She is very proud of him.  His professional name is Montague Fitzmaurice.”

“Some name!” murmured Jennie.

“Their family name is Pike,” said Ruth, still seriously.  “I do not think the man can know how this aunt treats little Bella.  There’s Tom!”

The young captain appeared behind the enraged housekeeper at the open door of the loft.  One glance told him what Bella had done.  He placed a firm hand on Miss Timmins’ shoulder.

“If you had made that girl fall you would go to jail,” Tom said sternly.  “You may go, yet.  I will try to put you there.  And in any case you shall not have the management of the child any longer.  Go back to the house!”

For once the housekeeper was awed.  Especially when Henri Marchand, too, appeared in the loft.

“Madame will return to the house.  We shall see what can be done for the child. Gare!”

Perhaps the woman was a little frightened at last by what she had done ­or what she might have done.  At least, she descended the ladders to the ground floor without argument.

The two young men planned swiftly how to rescue the sobbing child.  But when Tom first spoke to Bella, proposing to help her down, she looked over the edge of the roof at him and shook her head.

“No!  I ain’t coming down,” she announced emphatically.  “Aunt Suse will near about skin me alive.”

“She shall not touch you,” Tom promised.

“She’ll give me my nevergitovers, just as she says.  You can’t stay here and watch her.”

“But we’ll find a way to keep her from beating you when we are gone,” Tom promised.  “Don’t you fear her at all.”

“I don’t care where you put me, Aunt Suse will find me out.  She’ll send Elnathan Spear after me.”

“I don’t know who Spear is ­”

“He’s the constable,” sobbed Bella.

“Well, he sha’n’t spear you,” declared Tom.  “Come on, kid.  Don’t be scared, and we’ll get you down all right.”

He found the clothes-stick Miss Timmins had abandoned and used it for a brace.  With a rope tied to the handle of the plank door and drawn taut, it was held half open.  Tom then climbed out upon and straddled the door and raised his arms to receive the girl when she lowered herself over the eaves.

She was light enough ­little more than skin and bone, Tom declared ­and the latter lowered her without much effort into Henri’s arms.

When the three girls and Aunt Kate at the tavern window saw this safely accomplished they hurried back to their rooms to dress.

“Something must be done for that poor child,” Ruth Fielding said with decision.

“Are you going to adopt her?” Helen asked.

“And send her to Briarwood?” put in Jennie.

“That might be the very best thing that could happen to her,” Ruth rejoined soberly.  “She has lived at times in a theatrical boarding house and has likewise traveled with her father when he was with a more or less prosperous company.

“These experiences have made her, after a fashion, grown-up in her ways and words.  But in most things she is just as ignorant as she can be.  Her future is not the most important thing just now.  It is her present.”

Helen heard the last word from the other room where she was dressing, and she cried: 

“That’s it, Ruthie.  Give her a present and tell her to run away from her aunt.  She’s a spiteful old thing!”

“You do not mean that!” exclaimed her chum.  “You are only lazy and hate responsibility of any kind.  We must do something practical for Bella Pike.”

“How easily she says ’we’,” Helen scoffed.

“I mean it.  I could not sleep to-night if I knew this child was in her aunt’s control.”

A knock on the door interrupted the discussion.  Ruth, who was quite dressed now, responded.  A lout of a boy, who evidently worked about the stables, stood grinning at the door.

“Miz Timmins says you folks kin all get out.  She won’t have you served no breakfast.  She don’t want none of you here.”

“My goodness!” wailed Jennie.  “Dispossessed ­and without breakfast!”

“Where is the proprietor of this hotel, boy?” Ruth asked.

“You mean Mr. Drovers?  He ain’t here.  Gone to Boston.  But that wouldn’t make no dif’rence.  Suse Timmins is boss.”

“Oh, me!  Oh, my!” groaned Jennie, to whom the prospect was tragic.  Jennie’s appetite was never-failing.

The boy slouched away just as Tom and Henri Marchand appeared with Bella between them.

“You poor, dear child!” cried Ruth, running along the hall to meet them.

Bella struggled to escape from the boys.  But Tom and Colonel Marchand held her by either hand.

“Easy, young one!” advised Captain Cameron.

“I never meant to do no harm, Miss!” cried Bella.  “I ­I just wanted to see how I’d look in them clothes.  I never do have anything decent to wear.”

“Why, my dear, don’t mind about that,” said Ruth, taking the lathlike girl in her arms.  “If you had asked us we would have let you try on the things, I am sure.”

“Aunt Suse would near ’bout give me my nevergitovers ­and she will yet!”

“No she won’t,” Ruth reassured her.  “Don’t be afraid of your aunt any longer.”

“That is what I tell her,” Tom said warmly.

“Say!  You won’t put me in no home, will you?” asked Bella, with sudden anxiety.

“A ’home’?” repeated Ruth, puzzled.

“She means a charitable institution, poor dear,” said Aunt Kate.

“That’s it, Missus,” Bella said.  “I knew a girl that was out of one of them homes.  She worked for Mrs. Grubson.  She said all the girls wore brown denim uniforms and had their hair slicked back and wasn’t allowed even to whisper at table or after they got to bed at night.”

“Nothing like that shall happen to you,” Ruth declared.

“Where is your father, Bella?” Tom asked.

“I don’t know.  Last I saw of him he came through here with a medicine show.  I didn’t tell Aunt Suse, but I ran away at night and went to Broxton to see him.  But he said business was poor.  He got paid so much a bottle commission on the sales of Chief Henry Red-dog’s Bitters.  He didn’t think the show would keep going much longer.”

“Oh!”

“You know, they didn’t know he was Montague Fitzmaurice, the great Shakespearean actor.  Pa often takes such jobs.  He ain’t lazy like Aunt Suse says.  Why, once he took a job as a ballyhoo at a show on the Bowery in Coney Island.  But his voice ain’t never been what it was since.”

“Do you expect him to return here for you?” Ruth asked, while the other listeners exchanged glances and with difficulty kept their faces straight.

“Oh, yes, Miss.  Just as soon as he is in funds.  Or he’ll send for me.  He always does.  He knows I hate it here.”

“Does he know how your aunt treats you?” Aunt Kate interrupted.

“N ­not exactly,” stammered Bella.  “I haven’t told him all.  I don’t want to bother him.  It ­it ain’t always so bad.”

“I tell you it’s got to stop!” Tom said, with warmth.

“Of course she shall not remain in this woman’s care any longer,” Aunt Kate agreed.

“But we must not take Bella away from this locality,” Ruth observed.  “When her father comes back for her she must be here ­somewhere.”

“Oh, lady!” exclaimed Bella.  “Send me to New York to Mrs. Grubson’s.  I bet she’d keep me till pa opens somewhere in a good show.”

But Ruth shook her head.  She had her doubts about the wisdom of the child’s being in such a place as Mrs. Grubson’s boarding house, no matter how kindly disposed that woman might be.

“Bella should stay near here,” Ruth said firmly, “as long as we cannot communicate with Mr. Pike at once.”

“Let’s write a notice for one of the theatrical papers,” suggested Helen eagerly.  “You know ­’Montague Fitzmaurice please answer.’  All the actors do it.”

“But pa don’t always have the money to buy the papers,” said Bella, taking the suggestion quite seriously.

“At least, if Bella is in this neighborhood he will know where to find her,” went on Ruth.  “Is there nobody you know here, child, whom you would like to stay with till your father returns?”

Bella’s face instantly brightened.  Her black eyes flashed.

“Oh, I’d like to stay at the minister’s,” she said.

“At the minister’s?” repeated Ruth.  “Why, if he would take you that would be fine.  Who is he?”

“The Reverend Driggs,” said Bella.

“Do you suppose the clergyman would take the child?” murmured Aunt Kate.

“Why do you want to go to live with the minister?” asked Tom with curiosity.

“’Cause he reads the Bible so beautifully,” declared Bella.  “Why! it sounds just like pa reading a play.  The Reverend Driggs is an educated man like pa.  But he’s got an awful raft of young ones.”

“A poor minister,” said Aunt Kate briskly.  “I am afraid that would not suit.”

“If the Driggs family is already a large one,” began Ruth doubtfully, when Bella declared: 

“Miz Driggs had two pairs of twins, and one ever so many times.  There’s a raft of ’em.”

Helen and Jennie burst out laughing at this statement and the others were amused.  But to Ruth Fielding this was a serious matter.  The placing of Bella Pike in a pleasant home until her father could be communicated with, or until he appeared on the scene ready and able to care for the child, was even more serious than the matter of going without breakfast, although Jennie Stone said “No!” to this.

“We’d better set up an auction block before the door of the hotel and auction her off to the highest bidder, hadn’t we?” suggested Helen, who had been rummaging in her bag.  “Here, Bella!  If you want a shirt-waist to take the place of that calico blouse you have on, here is one.  One of mine.  And I guarantee it will fit you better than Heavy’s did.  She wears an extra size.”

“I don’t either,” flashed the plump girl, as the boys retreated from the room.  “I may not be a perfect thirty-six ­”

“Is there any doubt of it?” cried Helen, the tease.

“Well!”

“Never mind,” Ruth said.  “Jennie is going to be thinner.”

“And it seems she will begin to diet this very morning,” Aunt Kate put in.

“Ow-wow!” moaned Jennie at this reminder that they had been refused breakfast.

Captain Tom, however, had handled too many serious situations in France to be browbeaten by a termagant like Miss Susan Timmins.  He went down to the kitchen, ordered a good breakfast for all of his party, and threatened to have recourse to the law if the meal was not well and properly served.

“For you keep a public tavern,” he told the sputtering Miss Timmins, “and you cannot refuse to serve travelers who are willing and able to pay.  We are on a pleasure trip, and I assure you, Madam, it will be a pleasure to get you into court for any cause.”

On coming back to the front of the house he found two of the neighbors just entering.  One proved to be the local doctor’s wife and the other was a kindly looking farmer.

“I knowed that girl warn’t being treated right, right along,” said the man.  “And I told Mirandy that I was going to put a stop to it.”

“It is a disgrace,” said the doctor’s wife, “that we should have allowed it to go on so long.  I will take the child myself ­”

“And so’ll Mirandy,” declared the farmer.

“It is an auction,” whispered Helen, overhearing this from the top of the stairs.

The party of guests came down with their bags now, bringing Bella in their midst ­and in the new shirt-waist.

“Let her choose which of these kind people she will stay with,” Tom advised.  “And,” he added, in a low voice to Ruth, “we will pay for her support until we can find her father.”

“Like fun you will, young feller!” snorted the farmer, overhearing Tom.

“I could not hear of such a thing,” said the doctor’s wife.

“I’d like to know what you people think you’re doing?” demanded Miss Timmins, popping out at them suddenly.

“Now, Suse Timmins, we’re a-goin’ to do what we neighbors ought to have done long ago.  We’re goin’ to take this gal ­”

“You start anything like that ­taking that young one away from her lawful guardeen ­an’ I’ll get Elnathan Spear after you in a hurry, now I tell ye.  I’ll give you your nevergitovers!”

“If Nate Spear comes to my house, I’ll ask him to pay me for that corn he bought off’n me as long ago as last fall,” chuckled the farmer.  “Just because you’re own cousin to Nate don’t put all the law an’ the gospel on your side, Suse Timmins.  I’ll take good care of this girl.”

“And so will I, if Bella wants to live with me,” said the doctor’s wife.

“Mirandy will be glad to have her.”

“And she’d be company for me,” rejoined the other neighbor.  “I haven’t any children.”

“Bella must choose for herself,” said Ruth kindly.

“I guess I’ll go with Mr. Perkins,” said the actor’s daughter.  “Miz Holmes is real nice; but Doctor Holmes gives awful tastin’ medicine.  I might be sick there and have to take some of it.  So I’ll go to Miz Perkins.  She has a doctor from Maybridge and he gives candy-covered pellets.  I ate some once.  Besides, Miz Perkins is lame and can’t get around so spry, and I can do more for her.”

“Now listen to that!” exclaimed the farmer.  “Ain’t she a noticing child?”

“Well, Mrs. Perkins will be good to her, no doubt,” agreed the doctor’s wife.

“I’d like to know what you fresh city folks butted into this thing for!” demanded Miss Timmins.  “If there’s any law in the land ­”

“You’ll get it!” promised Tom Cameron.

“Go get anything you own that you want to take with you, Bella,” Ruth advised the shrinking child.

With another fearful glance at her aunt, Bella ran upstairs.

Miss Timmins might have started after her, but Tom planted himself before that door.  The lout of a boy began bringing in the breakfast for the automobile party.  Ruth talked privately with the doctor’s wife and Mr. Perkins, and forced some money on the woman to be expended for a very necessary outfit of clothing for Bella.

Miss Timmins finally flounced back into the kitchen where they heard her venting her anger and chagrin on the kitchen help.  Bella returned bearing an ancient extension bag crammed full of odds and ends.  She kissed Ruth and shook hands with the rest of the company before departing with Mr. Perkins.

The doctor’s wife promised to write to Ruth as soon as anything was heard of Mr. Pike, and the automobile party turned their attention to ham and eggs, stewed potatoes, and griddle cakes.

“Only,” said Jennie, sepulchrally, “I hope the viands are not poisoned.  That Miss Timmins would certainly like to give us all our ’nevergetovers’.”