"Come on, or we'll lose the train," cried Helen.

They were off the moment Ruth stepped into the tonneau. But she stood up
and waved her hand to the little figure of Aunt Alvirah in the cottage
doorway as long as she could be seen on the Cheslow road. And she had a
fancy that Uncle Jabez himself was lurking in the dark opening to the
grist-floor of the mill, and watching the retreating motor car.

There was a quick, alert-looking girl hobbling on two canes up and down
the platform at Cheslow Station. This was Mercy Curtis, the station
agent's crippled daughter.

"Here you are at last!" she cried, shrilly. "And the train already hooting
for the station. Five minutes more and you would have been too late. Did
you think I could go to Briarwood without you?"

Ruth ran up and kissed her heartily. She knew that Mercy's "bark was worse
than her bite."

"You come and see Jane Ann--and be nice to her. She doesn't look it, but
she's just as scared as she can be."

"Of course you'd have some poor, unfortunate pup, or kitten, to mother,
Ruth Fielding," snapped the lame girl.

She was very nice, however, to the girl from Silver Ranch, sat beside her
in the chair car, and soon had Jane Ann laughing. For Mercy Curtis, with
her sarcastic tongue, could be good fun if she wished to be.