CHAPTER XVI
GOOD MEDICINE
“But, Bab, where can it be?”
Barbara Winters shrugged her shoulders. She looked the picture of discouragement as she sat in one of the roomy leather chairs in the library, staring at the grate.
The boys and Gerry stood or sat about her in a grave, concerned circle, discussing the disappearance of the lucky ring.
“As you know,” said Bab dully, “I have never had the ring off my finger since we started from Scarsdale. It was on my finger,” her voice sank almost to a whisper, “when I went to bed last night.”
“Dead sure of that?” Charlie insisted.
“Dead sure. I,” with a faint smile, “asked it for luck just before I turned in.”
“Perhaps it slipped off during the night,” Gordon suggested. “Have you searched the room?”
“Every square inch of it,” Gerry returned, before Bab could reply. “It isn’t in our room, Gordon. Me, myself, could swear to that.”
“So many other things have disappeared too,” added Charlie.
“And now the lucky ring,” said Bab wearily. “I don’t know how the rest of you feel, but I’m just about ready to go home.”
“Not like you, Bab!” said Gordon. Bab, looking up, flushed as she met the grave eyes of the boy. “That sounds like a quitter and the girl next door was never that, even in the old days.”
Bab got up abruptly and went over to the window. Gerry followed and flung an arm about her.
“You shan’t call my Bab names,” she flashed at Gordon. “She isn’t a quitter, and you know it.”
“Of course I do,” returned the boy quietly.
Bab turned about and faced her friends. There were tears in her eyes, but her head was held high.
“Thank you, Don,” she said quietly. “I guess I needed that.”
Gordon went over to her and took her hand in his.
“What you need is a day in the woods, Bab,” he said. “Sunshine and a hike through the woods will sweep away some of the grim and ghostly things we’ve all been thinking for the past few days. Will you be a good girl and take Doctor Seymour’s medicine?”
Bab wept a few tears against Gordon’s woolly sweater while Gordon held her, big-brother fashion, an arm about her shoulders.
“Now see what you’ve gone and done!” cried Gerry indignantly. “You’ve made her cry!”
Bab looked up, smiling through her tears.
“I’m all right now. I think I needed some of Doctor Seymour’s medicine! Has any one got a h-hanky?”
“There you go!” cried Gerry, as she slipped one of her own handkerchiefs into Bab’s hand. “If I said half the things to you that Gordon does you’d never speak to me again.”
The boy laughed and ruffled Bab’s soft hair.
“Treat ’em rough!” he said. “She’s scared of me!”
“You!” cried Bab, and laughed.
Rosa Lee was easily persuaded to pack a lunch for them and the boys and girls set off almost immediately, secretly glad to be rid of the grim old house in the glen if only for a few hours.
As they were leaving by the side door “Wigs” Wiggley drove up with a batch of letters. The girls greeted him eagerly and Gerry sorted the letters, dropping half of them upon the ground as she did so.
“Bab gets three and I’ve only one.” Gerry’s tone was plaintive. “I’d like to know if you call that fair!”
The boys had been remembered to the extent of one or two letters from home. So they said good-by to Wigs, after thanking him, and started to climb from the glen and into the woods, reading as they went.
Rosa Lee called to them from the doorway.
“Mis’ Fenwick says yo’-all’s to be home befo’ dark. If you’s not, she’s lak’ to worry her haid off ’bout you!”
They promised, waved to her gayly and disappeared through the trees.
Gerry and Charlie took the lead. Bab observed with amusement that her chum was setting a stiff pace for the lazy lad.
“She will wake him up if any one can,” she observed to Gordon.
“The boy has improved,” agreed Charlie’s cousin magnanimously. “If the improvement continues, we may yet make a man of Charlie!”
“They have the lunch basket though,” added Bab, suddenly remembering. “If we fall too far behind them I guess we don’t eat.”
“Don’t worry, we won’t starve,” chuckled Gordon. “I’ve a hook and some string in my pocket. And there should be fish in this creek somewhere.”
Bab nodded and opened one of her letters. As she read, Gordon shortened his step to match hers. She appeared utterly absorbed and finally the boy said:
“Share your news, Bab. Don’t be so selfish. Is it from your grandmother?”
Bab shook her head absently.
“You’d never guess. The letter is from the lawyer, Mr. James.”
Gordon whistled and looked amused.
“What kind of letter?”
She held it out to him with an odd glance.
“Take it and read it yourself, Don. I’d like your opinion.”
Gordon read the missive through, frowning. At the end he whistled again, this time with surprise.
“Great Scott, this is rich, Bab! The old boy wants to buy your house!”
Bab nodded.
“That means something, don’t you think?” she asked anxiously.
Gordon considered.
“Why, your inheritance is scarcely the sort of place one would want for a summer home, Bab--especially an old codger like Samuel James. He was your great-uncle’s lawyer, wasn’t he? Probably quite intimate with the old man for a number of years.”
Bab nodded without speaking.
“It’s possible, then,” said Gordon, reasoning aloud, “that this Samuel James knew, or at least had a shrewd suspicion, that your uncle was a man possessed of a considerable fortune.”
Bab nodded again and the boy, smiling, tucked her hand under his arm.
“Hold fast, Bab. I believe we’re getting somewhere at last!”
“I know what you believe, and of course it’s what I believe too,” she cried. “The lawyer thinks as we do that there is money hidden somewhere about the old house and--and he wants to get it!”
“Looks like it,” said the boy thoughtfully. “Looks, I should say, very much like it!”
Bab stamped her foot on the ground. Her eyes flashed.
“Then if there really is money hidden about that grim old house--I thought I should love it, but now I hate it--and Uncle Jeremiah liked me enough to want me to have it, why did he make the money so hard to find?”
Gordon shook his head without answering.
“There you have me, Bab,” he said, after a moment. “I wish I had known this old uncle of yours. He must have been quite a character.”
They strolled on for some time in silence.
The others had definitely left them behind now, but neither Bab nor Gordon appeared to notice. The day was beautiful, the water rippled lazily, mirroring back the trees that bordered the stream, a soft, warm breeze whispered through the woods, lifting Bab’s hair from her cheek and tangling it in lovely confusion about her serious face.
“On a day like this every one should be happy, shouldn’t they, Don?” she asked, a bit wistfully.
“Why, yes, Bab,” returned the boy. “Everybody should.”
“But money makes a big difference with people--I mean when they haven’t it,” Bab explained a trifle incoherently. But Gordon seemed to understand.
“Yes, I suppose it does,” he said.
Bab paused and thoughtfully kicked a stone into the water where it fell with a musical plop. Gordon stopped beside her, hands in pockets.
“I suppose it sounds a bit silly,” said Bab. “But do you know what I’d do with that money--if I should be lucky enough to find it?”
“What would you do, Bab?” he asked, and she stole a swift glance at him to see if he were laughing. He was not.
“I’d use it to help people who haven’t any,” said Bab, stirring the ground about and about with the toe of her shoe. “I’d try to see that everybody I met--who needed help--would be a little happier because I’d come along. You aren’t laughing, Gordon?”
“Great Scott, Bab!” cried the boy huskily. “What do you think I am? You good little sport! Say, Bab, I like you for that! I wish I could help.”
“You do help,” said Bab. “You helped this morning when you called me a quitter----”
“I didn’t!”
“Well, you must admit it sounded something like that,” she said, with a smile. “But the loss of the lucky ring frightened me. I’m frightened right now! But whatever happens, don’t let me give up, Gordon. I’ve got to find that money!”
She paused and looked up at him, startled.
“Why! what’s that?”
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