CHAPTER I – A WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING
“Isn’t that the oddest acting girl you ever saw, Ruth?”
“Goodness! what a gawky thing!” agreed Ruth Fielding, who was just getting out of the taxicab, following her chum, Helen Cameron.
“And those white-stitched shoes!” gasped Helen. “Much too small for her, I do believe!”
“How that skirt does hang!” exclaimed Ruth.
“She looks just as though she had slept in all her clothes,” said Helen, giggling. “What do you suppose is the matter with her, Ruth?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” Ruth Fielding said. “She’s going on this boat with us, I guess. Maybe we can get acquainted with her,” and she laughed.
“Excuse me!” returned Helen. “I don’t think I care to. Oh, look!”
The girl in question – who was odd looking, indeed – had been paying the cabman who had brought her to the head of the dock. The dock was on West Street, New York City, and the chums from Cheslow and the Red Mill had never been in the metropolis before. So they were naturally observant of everything and everybody about them.
The strange girl, after paying her fare, started to thrust her purse into the shabby handbag she carried. Just then one of the colored porters hurried forward and took up the suitcase that the girl had set down on the ground at her feet when she stepped from the cab.
“Right dis way, miss,” said the porter politely, and started off with the suitcase.
“Hey! what are you doing?” demanded the girl in a sharp and shrill voice; and she seized the handle of the bag before the porter had taken more than a step.
She grabbed it so savagely and gave it such a determined jerk, that the porter was swung about and almost thrown to the ground before he could let go of the handle.
“I’ll ‘tend to my own bag,” said this vigorous young person, and strode away down the dock, leaving the porter amazed and the bystanders much amused.
“My goodness!” gasped the negro, when he got his breath. “Dat gal is as strong as a ox – sho’ is! I nebber seed her like. She don’t need no he’p, she don’t.”
“Let him take our bags – poor fellow,” said Helen, turning around after paying their own driver. “Wasn’t that girl rude?”
“Here,” said Ruth, laughing and extending her light traveling bag to the disturbed porter, “you may carry our bags to the boat. We’re not as strong as that girl.”
“She sho’ was a strong one,” said the negro, grinning. “I declar’ for’t, missy! I ain’ nebber seed no lady so strong befo’.”
“Isn’t he delicious?” whispered Helen, pinching Ruth’s arm as they followed the man down the dock. “He’s no Northern negro. Why, he sounds just as though we were as far as Virginia, at least, already! Oh, my dear! our fun has begun.”
“I feel awfully important,” admitted Ruth. “And I guess you do. Traveling alone all the way from Cheslow to New York.”
“And this city is so big,” sighed Helen. “I hope we can stop and see it when we come back from the Land of Cotton.”
They were going aboard the boat that would take them down the coast of New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia to the Capes of Virginia and Old Point Comfort. There they were to meet their Briarwood Hall schoolmate, Nettie Parsons, and her aunt, Mrs. Rachel Parsons.
The girls and their guide passed a gang of stevedores rushing the last of the freight aboard the boat, their trucks making a prodigious rumbling.
They came to the passenger gangway along which the porter led them aboard and to the purser’s office. There he waited, clinging to the bags, until the ship’s officer had looked at their tickets and stateroom reservation, and handed them the key.
“Lemme see dat, missy,” said the porter to Ruth. “I done know dis boat like a book, I sho’ does.”
“And, poor fellow, I don’t suppose he ever looked inside a book,” whispered Helen. “Isn’t he comical?”
Ruth was afraid the porter would hear them talking about him, so she fell back until the man with the bags was some distance ahead. He was leading them to the upper saloon deck. Their reservation, which Tom Cameron, Helen’s twin brother, had telegraphed for, called for an outside stateroom, forward, on this upper deck – a pleasantly situated room.
Tom could not come with his sister and her chum, for he was going into the woods with some of his school friends; but he was determined that the girls should have good accommodations on the steamboat to Old Point Comfort and Norfolk.
“And he’s just the best boy!” Ruth declared, fumbling in her handbag as they viewed the cozy stateroom. “Oh! here’s Mrs. Sadoc Smith’s letter.”
Helen had tipped the grinning darkey royally and he had shuffled out. She sat down now on the edge of the lower berth. This was the first time the chums had ever been aboard a boat for over night, and the “close comforts” of a stateroom were quite new to Helen and Ruth.
“What a dinky little washstand,” Helen said. “Oh, my! Ruth, see the ice-water pitcher and tumblers in the rack. Guess they expect the boat to pitch a good deal. Do you suppose it will be rough?”
“Don’t know. Listen to this,” Ruth said shortly, reading the letter which she had opened. “I only had a chance to glance at Mrs. Smith’s letter before we started. Just listen here: She says Curly has got into trouble.”
