Edith Phelps! Here’s something that belongs to you.”
The sophomore turned quickly to face the girl of the Red Mill, and with no pleasant expression of countenance. “What have you there?” she snapped.
“A letter that you dropped,” said Ruth, quietly.
“That I dropped?” and she came quickly to seize the proffered missive. “Ha! I suppose you took pains to read it?”
Ruth drew back, paling. The thrust hurt her cruelly and although she would not reply, the sophomore’s gibe did not go without answer. Helen’s black eyes flashed as she stepped in front of her chum.
“I can assure you Ruth and I do not read other people’s correspondence any more than we listen to other people’s private conversation, Phelps,” she said directly. “We found that letter under our window where you dropped it last night!”
Ruth caught at her arm; but the stroke went home. Edith Phelps’ face reddened and then paled. Without further speech she hurried away with the letter gripped tightly in her hand. She did not appear at breakfast.
“It’s terrible to be always ladylike,” sighed Helen to Ruth. “I just know we have seen one end of a mystery. And that’s all we are likely to see.”
“It is the most mysterious thing why Phelps should be interested in our affairs, and be getting letters from Yucca,” admitted Ruth.
The chums had no further opportunity of talking this matter over, for it was at breakfast that Rebecca Frayne threw her bomb. At least, Jennie Stone said it was such. Rebecca came over to Miss Comstock’s table where the chums and Jennie sat and demanded:
“Ruth Fielding! who is going to chaperon your party?”
“What? Chaperon?” murmured Ruth, quite taken aback by the question.
“Of course. You say Helen’s brother is going. And there will be a guide and other men. We’ve got to have a chaperon.”
“Oh!” gasped Helen. “Poor old Tommy! If he knew that! He won’t bite you, Rebecca.”
“You girls certainly wouldn’t dream of going on that long journey unless you were properly attended?” cried Rebecca, horrified.
“What do you think we need?” demanded Jennie Stone. “A trained nurse, or a governess?”
Rebecca was thoroughly shocked. “My aunt would never hear of such a proceeding,” she affirmed. “Oh, Ruth Fielding! I want to go with you; but, of course, there must be some older woman with us.”
“Of course – I presume so,” sighed Ruth. “I hadn’t thought that far.”
“Whom shall we ask?” demanded Helen. “Mrs. Murchiston won’t go. She’s struck. She says she is too old to go off with any harum-scarum crowd of school girls again.”
“I like that!” exclaimed Jennie, in a tone that showed she did not like it at all. “We have got past the hobbledehoy age, I should hope.”
Miss Comstock, the senior at their table, had become interested in the affair, and she suggested pleasantly:
“We Ardmores often try to get the unattached members of the faculty to fill the breach in such events as this. Try Miss Cullam.”
“Oh, dear me!” muttered Helen.
Ruth said briskly, “Miss Cullam is just the person. Do you suppose she has her summer free, Miss Comstock?”
“She was saying only last evening that she had made no plans.”
“She shall make ’em at once,” declared Ruth, jumping up and leaving her breakfast. “Excuse me, Miss Comstock. I am going to find Miss Cullam, instantly.”
It was Miss Cullam, too, who had worried most about the lost examination papers which Ruth had been the means of finding (as related in “Ruth Fielding at College”); and the instructor of mathematics had taken a particular interest in the girl of the Red Mill and her personal affairs.
“I haven’t ridden horseback since I was a girl,” she said, in some doubt. “And, my dear! you do not expect me to ride a-straddle as girls do nowadays? Never!”
“Neither will Rebecca,” chuckled Ruth. “But we who have been on the plains before, know that a divided skirt is a blessing to womankind.”
“I do not think I shall need that particular blessing,” Miss Cullam said, rather grimly. “But I believe I will accept your invitation, Ruth Fielding. Though perhaps it is not wise for instructors and pupils to spend their vacations together. The latter are likely to lose their fear of us – ”
“Oh, Miss Cullam! There isn’t one of us who has a particle of fear of you,” laughed Ruth.
“Ahem! that is why some of you do not stand so well in mathematics as you should,” said the teacher dryly.
That was a busy day; but the party Ruth was forming made all their plans, subject, of course, to agreement by their various parents and guardians. In one week they were to meet in New York, prepared to make the long journey by train to Yucca, Arizona, and from that point into the mountains on horseback.
Helen found time for a little private investigation; but it was not until she and Ruth were on the way home to Cheslow in the parlor car that she related her meager discoveries to her chum.
“What did you ever learn about Edie Phelps?” Helen asked.
“Oh! Edie? I had forgotten about her.”
“Well, I didn’t forget. The mystery piques me, as the story writers say,” laughed Helen. “Do you know that her father is an awfully rich man?”
“Why, no. Edith doesn’t make a point of telling everybody perhaps,” returned Ruth, smiling.
“No; she doesn’t. You’ve got to hand it to her for that. But, then, to blow about one’s wealth is about as crude a thing as one can do, isn’t it?”
“Well, what about Edith’s father?” asked Ruth, curiously.
“Nothing particular. Only he is one of our ‘captains of industry’ that the Sunday papers tell about. Makes oodles of money in mines, so I was told. Edith has no mother. She had a brother – ”
“Oh! is he dead?” cried Ruth, with sympathy.
“Perhaps he’d better be. He was rusticated from his college last year. It was quite a scandal. His father disowned him and he disappeared. Edith felt awfully, May says.”
“Too bad,” sighed Ruth.
“Why, of course, it’s too bad,” grumbled Helen. “But that doesn’t help us find out why Edie is so much interested in our going to Yucca; nor how she comes to be in correspondence with anybody in that far, far western town. What do you think it means, Ruthie?”
“I haven’t the least idea,” declared the girl of the Red Mill, shaking her head.
CHAPTER IV – A WEEK AT HOME
Mr. Cameron met the chums en route, and the next morning they arrived at Seven Oaks in time to see Tom receive his diploma from the military and preparatory school. Tom, black-eyed and as handsome in his way as Helen was in hers, seemed to have interest only in Ruth.
“Goodness me! that boy’s got a regular crush on you, Ruthie!” exclaimed Helen, exasperated. “Did you ever see the like?”
“Dear Tom!” sighed Ruth Fielding. “He was the very first friend – of my own age, I mean – that I found in Cheslow when I went there. I have to be good to Tommy, you know.”
“But he’s only a boy!” cried the twin sister, feeling herself to be years older than her brother after spending so many months at college.
“He was born the same day you were,” laughed Ruth.
“That makes no difference. Boys are never as wise or as old as girls – ”
“Until