CHAPTER XXII--SOMETHING FOR CURLY

Helen Cameron was very proud of Curly. She was, in the first place, deeply grateful for what the boy had done for her the time the stag frightened her so badly in the City Park at Norfolk. Then, it seemed to her, that he had shown a deal of pluck in getting so far from home as this Southern land, and keeping clear of the police, as well.

"You must admit, Ruth, that he is awfully smart," she repeated again and again to her chum.

"I don't see it--much," returned Ruth Fielding. "I don't see how he got away down here on the little money he says he had at the start. He bought the frock and hat and shoes he wore with his own money, and paid his fare on the boat. But that took all he had, and he had to get work in Norfolk. He worked a week for a contractor there. That's when he saved you from the _deer_, my _dear_!"

"Oh, indeed? And didn't he earn enough to pay his way down here? He says he rode in the cars."

"I'll ask him about that," said Ruth, musingly.

But she forgot to do so just then. In fact there was another problem in both the girls' minds: What would become of Curly when the water subsided and he would have to be taken away from the hotel?

"Nettie says there is a hospital in Georgetown. But it is a private institution. Curly will be laid up a long while with that leg. It is a compound fracture and it will have to be kept in splints for weeks. The doctor says it ought to be in a cast. I wish he were in the hospital."

"I suppose he would be better off," said Helen, in agreement. "But isn't it awful that his grandmother won't take him back?"

"I don't understand it at all," sighed Ruth. "I didn't think she was really so hard-hearted."

The marooned guests of the hotel and the servants were quite comfortable in their quarters; but the women and girls did not care to descend to the lower floor of the big house. The men waded around the porches; and two men who owned cottages on the island which had not been swept away by the flood, used a storm-door for a raft and paddled themselves over to inspect their property. Their families were much better off with the Holloways at the hotel, however.

There had been landings and boats along the shore of the island; but not a craft was now left. The river had risen so swiftly the evening before, while the dancing was in full blast, that there had been no opportunity to save any such property.

Every small structure on the island had been swept down the current; and only half a dozen of the cottages were left standing. These structures, too, might go at any time, it was prophesied.

Jimson and his negroes could not get back across the river, and not a craft of any description came in sight.

The two negroes who had climbed into the tree at the edge of the island, were rescued by the aid of the storm-door raft; and as Jimson said, in his rough way, they only added to the number of mouths to feed, for they were of no aid in any way.

The hotel keeper chanced to have a good supply of flour, meal, sugar and the other staples on hand; and they had been removed to dry storage before the flood reached its height. There was likewise a well supplied meat-house behind the hotel.

Naturally the ladies and girls, marooned on the upper floor of the hotel, were bound to become more closely associated as the hours of waiting passed. The two girls who roomed with Nettie and her party, learned that Ruth Fielding and Helen Cameron were very nice girls indeed. They did not have to take Nettie's word for it.

Perhaps they influenced public opinion in favor of the Northern girls as much as anything did. Miss Miggs was Northern herself, and not much liked. Her spitefulness did not compare well with Ruth's practical kindness to the boy with the broken leg.

Before night public opinion had really turned in favor of the visitors from the North. But Ruth and Helen kept very much to themselves, and Nettie was so angry with Mrs. Holloway that she would scarcely speak to that repentant woman.

"I don't want anything to do with her," she said to Ruth. "If Aunt Rachel had been here last night I don't know what she would have done when that woman seemed to side with that crazy school teacher."

"You could scarcely blame her. Miss Miggs is Mrs. Holloway's cousin."

"Of course I can blame her," cried Nettie. "And I do."

"Well, I think it was pretty mean, myself," said Helen. "But I didn't suppose you would hold rancor so long, Nettie Sobersides! Come on! cheer up; the worst is yet to come."

"The worst will certainly come to these people at this hotel," threatened the Southern girl. "Aunt Rachel will have the last word. You are her guests and a Merredith or a Parsons never forgives an insult to a guest."

"Goodness!" cried Ruth, trying to laugh away Nettie's resentment. "It is fortunate you are not a man, Nettie. You would, I suppose, challenge somebody to a duel over this."

"There have been duels for less in this county, I can assure you," said Nettie, without smiling.

"How bloodthirsty!" laughed Ruth. "But let's think about something pleasanter. Nettie is becoming savage."

"I know what will cure her," cried Helen and bounced out of the room. She came back in a few minutes with a battered violin that she had borrowed from one of the negroes who had been a member of the orchestra the night before. It was a mellow instrument and Helen quickly had it in tune.

"Music has been known to soothe the savage breast," declared Helen, tucking the violin, swathed in a silk handkerchief, under her dimpled chin.

"I'll forgive anybody--even my worst enemy--if Ruth will sing, too," begged Nettie.

So after a few introductory strains Helen began an old ballad that she and Ruth had often practised together. Ruth, sitting with her hands folded in her lap and looking thoughtfully out on the drenched landscape, began to sing.

Nettie set the door ajar. The two girls came in from the other room. Norma, wide-eyed, crouched on the floor to listen. And before long a crowd of faces appeared at the open door.

Quite unconscious of the interest they were creating, the two members of the Briarwood Glee Club played and sang for several minutes. It was Helen who looked toward the door first and saw their audience.

"Oh, Ruth!" she exclaimed, and stopped playing. Ruth turned, the song dying on her lips. The crowd of guests began to applaud and in the distance could be heard Curly Smith clapping his hands together and shouting:

"Bully for Ruth! Bully for Helen! That's fine."

"Shut the door, Nettie!" cried Helen, insistently. "I--I really have an idea."

"The concert is over, ladies," declared the Southern girl, laughing, and shutting the door.

"What's the idea, dear?" asked Ruth.

"About raising money for poor Curly."

"We can give him some ourselves," Nettie said, for of course she had been taken into the full confidence of the chums about the runaway.

"_I_ can't," confessed Helen. "I have scarcely any left. If my fare home were not paid I'd have to borrow."

"I can give some; but not enough," said Ruth.

"That's where my idea comes in," Helen said. "That's why I said to shut the door."

Nettie ejaculated: "Goodness! what does the child mean?"

But Ruth guessed, and her face broke into a smile. "I'm with you, dear!" she cried. "Of course we will--if we're let."

"Will _what_?" gasped Nettie. "You girls are thought readers. What one thinks of the other knows right away."

"A concert," said Ruth and Helen together.

"Oh! When?"

"Right here--and now!" said Helen, promptly. "If the Holloways will let us."

"Oh, girls! what a very splendid idea," declared Nettie. Then the next moment she added: "But the piano is downstairs, and they could never get it up here. And there's no room big enough upstairs, anyhow."

Ruth began to laugh. "I tell you. It shall be a regular chamber concert. We'll have it in the bed chambers, for a fact!"

"What do you mean?" asked the puzzled Nettie.

"Why, the audience can sit in their rooms or on the stairs or in the long hall up here. We will give the concert downstairs. I don't know but we'll have to give it barefooted, girls!"

The laughter that followed was interrupted by a shout from below. They heard somebody say that there was a boat coming.

"Well, maybe there will be something for Curly after all," Helen cried, as she followed Ruth out of the room.

Through the wide doorway they could see the boat approaching. And they could hear it, too, for it was a small launch chugging swiftly up to the submerged island.

"Oh, goody!" cried Nettie. "Maybe we can get across the river and back to Merredith."

It looked as though the launch had just come from the other side of the swollen stream. Jimson and several of the negroes were on the porch to meet the launch as it touched.

There were but two men in it, one at the wheel and the other in the bow. The latter, a gray-haired man with a broad-brimmed hat, blue clothes, and a silver star on his breast, stepped out upon the porch in his high boots.

"Hullo, Jimson," he said, greeting the warehouse boss. "Just a little wet here, ain't yo'?"

"A little, Sheriff," said Jimson.

"I'm after a party they told me at your house was probably over here. A boy from the No'th. Name's Henry Smith. Is he yere? I was told to get him and notify folks up No'th that the little scamp's cotched. He's been stealin' up there, and they want him."