CHAPTER XIV

AN IMPORTANT ARRIVAL

Agnes _did_ fall asleep; but Ruth only dozed, if she closed her eyes at all. The rumble of the storm shook the nerves of the oldest Corner House girl—and no wonder!

Ruth felt the weight of responsibility for her sisters’ safety. If anything happened while they were under canvas she knew that she would be blamed.

Sometimes the spray swept in from the river and spattered on the canvas like a drenching shower. The walls of the tent shook. She heard many sounds without that she could not explain—and some of these sounds frightened her.

Suppose the tent should blow down? The way the wind sometimes shook it reminded Ruth of a dog shaking a bit of rag.

Then, when the wind held its breath for a moment, the roaring of the sea in the distance was a savage sound to which the girl’s ears were not attuned.

She had left the lantern lit and it swung from a rope tied to the ridgepole of the tent, and beyond the half partition of canvas. Its flickering light cast weird shadows upon the canvas roof.

Now and then the spray beat against the front of the tent, while the roof shook and shivered as though determined to tear away from the walls. Ruth wished she had gone all around the tent before dark to make sure the pegs were driven well into the sand.

Occasionally children cried shrilly, for the noise of the elements frightened them; Ruth was thankful that Tess and Dot slept on.

She slept herself at last; how long she did not know, for when she awoke she was too greatly frightened to look at her watch. The wind seemed suddenly to have increased. It seemed struggling to tear the tent up by the roots!

And as the canvas shook, and swelled, and strove to burst its fastenings, there came a sudden snap on one side and one of the pegs flew high in the air at the end of its rope, coming down slap on the roof of the tent!

“The peg has pulled out!” gasped Ruth, sitting up in her cot and throwing off the blanket.

The canvas was straining and bellying fearfully at the point where the peg had drawn. It was likely to draw the pegs on either side. Ruth very well knew that if a broad enough opening was made for the wind to get under, the tent would be torn from its fastenings.

She hopped out upon the matting and shook Agnes by the shoulder.

“Get up! Get up, Ag!” she called, breathlessly. “Help me.”

She ran to the front of the tent for the maul—a long-handled, heavy-headed croquet-mallet. When she returned with it, Agnes was trying to rub her eyes open.

“Come quick, Ag! We’ll be blown away,” declared Ruth.

“I—I——What’ll we do?” whimpered Agnes.

“We must hold the tent down. Come on! Get into your mackintosh. I’ll get the lantern.”

Around the upright pole in the sleeping part of the tent were hung the girls’ outer garments. Ruth got into her own raincoat and buttoned it to her ankles. She left Agnes struggling with hers while she ran to unhang the lantern. She knew the night must be as black as a pocket outside.

“Wha—what you going to do?” stuttered Agnes.

“Drive the pegs in deeper. One of them pulled out.”

“Oh, dear! _Can_ we?”

“I guess we’ll have to, if we don’t want to lose our tent. Hear that wind?”

“It—it sounds like cannon roaring.”

“Come on!”

“But that isn’t the front flap——”

“Think I’m going to unlace that front flap when the wind’s blowing right into it?”

“Can’t we get out yonder, where the peg has been pulled?”

“But how’ll we get in again when all the stakes are driven down hard?” snapped Ruth, beginning to unlace the flaps of the rear wall of the tent.

“Oh! oh!” moaned Agnes. “Hear that wind?”

“I wouldn’t care if it only _hollered_,” gasped Ruth. “It’s what it will do if it ever gets under this tent, that troubles me!”

She unlaced the flaps only a little way. “Come along with that lantern, Ag. We’ve got to crawl under.”

“‘Get down and get under,’” giggled Agnes, hysterically.

But she brought the lantern and followed Ruth out of the tent, on hands and knees. When they stood up and tried to go around to that side of the tent where the peg had pulled out, the wind almost knocked them down.

“And how the sleet cuts!” gasped Agnes, her arm across her eyes for protection.

“It’s sand,” explained Ruth. “I thought it was spray from the river. But a good deal of it is sand—just like a sand-storm in the desert.”

“Well!” grumbled Agnes, “I hope it’s killing a lot of those sandfleas that bother us so. I don’t see how they can live and be blown about this way.”

Ruth tackled the first post at the corner and beat it down as hard as she could, Agnes holding the lantern so that the older girl could see where to strike.

They went from one peg to the next, taking each in rotation. And when they reached the one that had pulled out entirely, Ruth drove that into the ground just as far as it would go.

Strangely enough, throughout all this business, Tess and Dot did not awake. Ruth went clear around the tent, driving the stakes. The wind howled; the sand and spray blew; and the voices of the Night and of the Storm seemed fairly to yell at them. Still the smaller Corner House girls slept through it all. Ruth and Agnes crept back into the tent and laced the flaps down in safety.

A little later, before either of them fell asleep again, they heard shouting and confusion at a distance. In the morning they learned that two of the tents in the Enterprise Camp had blown down.

The shore was strewn with wreckage, too, when daybreak came; but the wind seemed to have blown itself out. Many small craft had come ashore, and some were damaged. It was not often that the summer visitors at Pleasant Cove saw any such gale as this had been.

Everything was all right with the Corner House girls, and Ruth decided they would stick to the tent, in spite of the fact that some of the camping families were frightened away from the tent colonies by this disgraceful exhibition of Mr. Wind!

The smaller Kenways, as well as the bigger girls, were enjoying the out-of-door life immensely. They were already as brown as berries. They ran all day, bare-headed and bare-legged, on the sands. It was plain to be seen that the change from Milton to Pleasant Cove was doing all the Corner House girls a world of good.

And during the extremely pleasant days that immediately followed the night of the big wind, many new colonists came to the tents. Two big tents were erected in the Willowbend Camp, for Joe Eldred and _his_ friends—and that included, of course, Neale O’Neil. But the Milton boys would not arrive until the next week.

On Monday afternoon the Corner House girls walked down to the railroad station to greet Rosa Wildwood. It had been a very hot day in town and it was really hot at Pleasant Cove, as well.

“Oh! you poor thing!” gasped Ruth, receiving Rosa in her strong arms as she stumbled off the car steps with her bag.

“I’m as thin as the last run of shad, am I not?” asked Rosa, laughing. “That train was _awful_! I am baked. It’s never like this down South. The air is so much dryer there; there isn’t this humidity. Oh!”

“Well, you’re here all right now, Rosa,” cried Ruth. “We have a nice, easy carriage for you to ride in. And the _dearest_ place for you to live!”

“And scrumptious eating, Rose,” added Agnes.

“With the little old woman who lives in a shoe,” declared Tess, eager to add her bit of information.

Dot’s finger had strayed to the corner of her mouth, as she stared. For she had never met Rosa before, and she was naturally rather a bashful child.

“Now!” cried Ruth, again. “Where is he?”

“Who?” demanded Agnes, staring all about. “Neale didn’t come, did he?”

“Oh, he’s up in the baggage-car ahead,” said Rosa, laughing.

“You sit right down here till I get him,” Ruth commanded.

“Here’s the check,” Rosa said, and to the amazement of the other Corner House girls Ruth ran right away toward the head of the train with the baggage check, and without saying another word.

There were two baggage cars on the long train and from the open door of the first one the man was throwing trunks and bags onto the big wheel-truck.

So Ruth ran on to the other car. The side-door was wheeled back just as she arrived, and a glad bark welcomed her appearance.

Tom Jonah stood in the doorway, straining at his leash held in the hands of the baggageman. His tongue lolled out on his chest like a red necktie, and he was laughing just as plainly as ever a dog _did_ laugh.

“I see he knows you, Miss,” said the man. “You don’t have to prove property. He sure is glad to see you,” and he accepted the check.

“No gladder than I am to see him,” said Ruth. “Let him jump down, please.”

She caught the leather strap as the baggageman tossed it toward her, and Tom Jonah bounded about her in an ecstasy of delight.

“Down, sir!” she commanded. “Now, Tom Jonah, come and see the girls. But behave.”

He barked loudly, but trotted along beside her most sedately. Tess and Dot had heard him, and deserting Rosa and Agnes, they came flying up the platform to meet Ruth and the big dog.

The two younger Corner House girls hugged Tom Jonah, and he licked their hands in greeting. Agnes was as extravagantly glad to see him as were the others.

“How did you come to send for him, Ruthie?” Agnes cried.

“I thought we might need a chaperon at the tent,” laughed Ruth.

“The Gyps!” exclaimed Agnes, under her breath. “Let them come now, if they want to. You’re a smart girl, Ruthie.”

“Sh!” commanded the older sister. “Don’t let the children hear.”

They helped Rosa into the wagonette and then climbed in after her. Ruth had taken off Tom Jonah’s leash and the good old dog trotted after the carriage as it rolled through Main Street and out upon the Shore Road toward the tent colonies.

Rosa brought all the news of home to the Corner House girls and many messages from Mrs. MacCall and Uncle Rufus. Of course, they could expect no word from Aunt Sarah, for it was not her way to be sympathetic or show any deep interest in what her adopted nieces were doing.

The girls from the old Corner House might have been a little homesick had there not been so much to take up their attention each hour at Pleasant Cove.

They brought Rosa to the little old woman who lived in a shoe, and the moment Mrs. Bobster saw how weak and white she was her sympathy went out to her.

“Tut, tut, tut!” she said, clucking almost as loudly as Agamemnon himself. “We’ll soon fix you up, my dear. If you stay long enough here at the beach, you’ll be as brown and strong as these other gals.”

Rosa put her arm about Ruth’s neck when the Corner House girls were about to leave.

“This is a heavenly place, Ruth Kenway, and you are an angel for bringing me down heah. I don’t know what greater thing anybody could do fo’ me—and you aren’t even kin!”

“Don’t bother, Rosa. I haven’t done much——”

“There’s nothing in the world—but one thing—that could make me happier.”

Ruth looked at her curiously, and Rosa added:

“To find June. I hope to find her some day—yes, I do.”

“And suppose I should help you do _that_?” laughed the oldest Corner House girl.

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