Alice Emerson - Ruth Fielding Down in Dixie; Great Times in the Land of Cotton

“Poor men! And no ladies around. Unless they have mermaids visit them,” and Helen chuckled too. “Wouldn’t it be fun to hire a nice big launch – a whole party of us Briarwood girls, for instance – and sail out there and go aboard that lightship? Wouldn’t the crew be surprised to see us?”

“Maybe,” said Ruth seriously, “they wouldn’t let us aboard. Maybe it’s against the rules. Or perhaps they only select men who are misanthropes, or women-haters, to tend lightships.”

“ Are there such things as women-haters?” demanded Helen, big-eyed and innocent looking. “I thought they were fabled creatures – like – like mermaids, for instance.”

“Goodness! Do you think, Helen Cameron, that every man you meet is going to fall on his knees to you?”

“No-o,” confessed Helen. “That is, not unless I push him a little, weeny bit! And that reminds me, Ruthie. You ought to see the great bunch of roses Tom had the gardener cut yesterday to send to some girl. Oh, a barrel of ’em!”

“Indeed?” asked Ruth, a faint flush coming into her cheek. “Has Tom a crush on a new girl? I thought that Hazel Gray, the movie queen, had his full and complete attention?”

“How you talk!” cried Helen. “I suppose Tom will have a dozen flames before he settles down – ”

Ruth suddenly burst into laughter. She knew she had been foolish for a moment.

“What nonsense to talk so about a boy in a military school!” she cried. “Why! he’s only a boy yet.”

“Yes, I know,” sighed Helen, speaking of her twin reflectively. “He’s merely a child. Isn’t it funny how much older we are than Tom is?”

“Goodness me!” gasped Ruth, suddenly seizing her chum by the arm.

“O-o-o! ouch!” responded Helen. “What a grip you’ve got, Ruth! What’s the matter with you?”

“See there!” whispered Ruth, pointing.

She had turned from the rail. Behind them, and only a few feet away, was the row of staterooms of which their own was one. Near by was a passage from the outer deck to the saloon, and from the doorway of this passage a person was peeping in a sly and doubtful way.

“Goodness!” whispered Helen. “Can – can it be?”

The figure in the doorway was lean and tall. Its gown hung about its frame as shapelessly as though the frock had been hung upon a clothespole! The face of the person was turned from the two girls; but Ruth whispered:

“It’s that boy they were looking for.”

“Oh, Ruth! Can it be possible?” Helen repeated.

“See the short hair?”

“Of course!”

“Oh!”

The Unknown had turned swiftly and disappeared into the passage. “Come on!” cried Helen. “Let’s see where he goes to.”

Ruth was nothing loath. Although she would not have told anybody of their discovery, she was very curious. If the disguised boy had left his first disguise in stateroom forty-eight, he had doubly misled his pursuers, for he was still in women’s clothing.

“Oh, dear me!” whispered Helen, as the two girls crowded into the doorway, each eager to be first. “I feel just like a regular detective.”

“How do you know how a regular detective feels?” demanded Ruth, giggling. “Those detectives who came aboard just now did not look as though they felt very comfortable. And one of them chewed tobacco!”

“Horrors!” cried Helen. “Then I feel like the detective of fiction. I am sure he never chews tobacco.”

“There! there she is!” breathed Ruth, stopping at the exit of the passage where they could see a good portion of the saloon.

“Come on! we mustn’t lose sight of her,” said Helen, with determination.

The awkward figure of the supposedly disguised boy was marching up the saloon and the girls almost ran to catch up with it.

“Do you suppose he will dare go to room forty-eight again?” whispered Ruth.

“And like enough they are watching that room.”

“Well – see there!”

The person they were following suddenly wheeled around and saw them. Ruth and Helen were so startled that they stopped, too, and stared in return. The face of the person in which they were so interested was a rather grim and unpleasant face. The cheeks were hollow, the short hair hung low on the forehead and reached only to the collar of the jacket behind. There were two deep wrinkles in the forehead over the high arched nose. Although the person had on no spectacles, the girls were positive that the eyes that peered at them were near-sighted.

“Why we should refer to her as she , when without doubt she is a he , I do not know,” said Helen, in a whisper, to Ruth.

The Unknown suddenly walked past them and sought a seat on one of the divans. The girls sat near, where they could keep watch of her, and they discussed quite seriously what they should do.

“I wish I could hear its voice,” whispered Ruth. “Then we might tell something more about it.”

“But we heard him speak on the dock – don’t you remember?”

“Oh, yes! when he almost knocked that poor colored man down.”

“Yes. And his voice was just a squeal then,” said Helen. “He tried to disguise it, of course.”

“While now,” added Ruth, chuckling, “he is as silent as the Sphinx.”

The stranger was busy, just the same. A shabby handbag had been opened and several pamphlets and folders brought forth. The near-sighted eyes were made to squint nervously into first one of these folders and then another, and finally there were several laid out upon the seat about the Unknown.

Suddenly the Unknown looked up and caught the two chums staring frankly in the direction of “his, her, or its” seat. Red flamed into the sallow cheeks, and gathering up the folders hastily, the person crammed them into the bag and then started up to make her way aft. But Ruth had already seen the impoliteness of their actions.

“Do let us go away, Helen,” she said. “We have no right to stare so.”

She drew Helen down the saloon on the starboard side; it seems that the Unknown stalked down the saloon on the other. The chums and the strange individual rounded the built-up stairwell of the saloon at the same moment and came face to face again.

“Well, I want to know!” exclaimed the Unknown suddenly, in a viperish voice. “What do you girls mean? Are you following me around this boat? And what for, I’d like to know?”

“There!” murmured Ruth, with a sigh. “The worm has turned. We’re in for it, Helen – and we deserve it!”

A mistake could scarcely be made in the sex of the comical looking individual at whom the chums had been led to stare so boldly, when once they heard the voice. That shrill, sharp tone could never have come from a male throat. Now, too, the Unknown drew a pair of spectacles from her bag, adjusted them, and glared at Ruth and Helen.

“I want to know,” repeated the woman sternly, “what you mean by following me around this boat?”

The chums were tongue-tied in their embarrassment for the moment, but Helen managed to blurt out: “We – we didn’t know – ”

She was on the verge of making a bad matter worse, by saying that they didn’t know the lady was a lady! But Ruth broke in with:

“Oh, I beg your pardon, I am sure. We did not mean to offend you. Won’t you forgive us, if you think we were rude? I am sure we did not intend to be.”

It would have been hard for most people to resist Ruth’s mildness and her pleading smile. This person with the spectacles and the short hair was not moved by the girl of the Red Mill at all. Later Ruth and Helen understood why not.

“I don’t want any more of your impudence!” the stern woman said. “Go away and leave me alone. I’d like to have the training of all such girls as you. I’d teach you what’s what!”