Quicksilver Sue

"And losing all my money, too! If you hadn't lost my money, I should not have been robbed of my beautiful jewelry – all I had in the world! and it was worth lots and lots."

Sue, in bitterness of spirit, thought, "How about the diamond chain?" but she said nothing. She felt, suddenly, many years older than Clarice. Was this a girl of fifteen, whimpering like a baby? Was this the friend for whom she had given up Mary?

"And how are we ever to get home?" asked Clarice, in conclusion.

"We must walk!" said Sue, briefly.

"Walk!" shrieked Clarice. "Sue Penrose, are you crazy? It's twenty miles, if it's a step!"

"Nonsense!" said Sue. "It's a short six miles."

"That's just as bad!" moaned Clarice. "You know I should die before we had gone a mile; you know I should, Sue! Isn't there some one we can borrow money from? Can't we go to the hotel and telephone to somebody at home?"

They might indeed have done this, but in her excited state Sue could not think it possible. Her high-strung, sensitive nature was strained beyond the possibility of sober judgment; she could only act, and the action that began instantly was the only one that she could think of. Besides, to see more strangers, perhaps meet with more insults – never! They must walk home; there was no other way; and they must start this instant.

"I am sure you can do it, Clarice," she said, speaking as cheerfully as she could. "You can take my arm, and lean on me when you are tired; and every little while we can sit down and rest. Come! we must start at once; it will be dark before we get home, as it is."

Clarice still protested, but yielded to the stronger will, and the two girls started on their lonely walk.

As they turned their backs on the station, a head was cautiously advanced from behind the building; a pair of sharp eyes followed the retreating figures for a few moments, then the head was as cautiously withdrawn.

The road from Chester to Hilton was a pleasant one. On one side was the railway, with the river beyond; on the other, green meadows rolling up and away to the distant hills. There were few houses, and these scattered at long distances. To Sue the road was familiar and friendly enough; but to Clarice it seemed an endless way stretching through an endless desert. She was thoroughly frightened, and her blood was of the kind that turns to water; very different from the fire that filled Sue's veins and made her ready to meet an army, or charge a windmill or a railway-train, or anything else that should cross her path.

Over and over again Clarice lamented that she had ever come to Hilton.

"Why did I come to this hateful, poky place?" she wailed. "Aunt Jane didn't want me to come. She said there wouldn't be anybody here fit for me to associate with. Oh! why did I come?"

"I suppose because you wanted to!" said Sue; and it might have been Mary that spoke.

"Come, Clarice," she went on more gently, "we might as well make the best of it. Let's tell stories. I'll begin, if you like. Do you know about the Maid of Saragossa? That is splendid! Or Cochrane's 'Bonny Grizzy'? Oh! she had to do much worse things than this, and she never was afraid a bit – not a single bit."

Sue told the brave story, and the thrill in her voice might have warmed an oyster; but Clarice was not an oyster, and it left her cold.

"Grizzy is a horrid, ugly name," she said. "And I think it was real unladylike, dressing up that way, so there!"

"Clarice!" – Sue's voice quivered with indignation, – "when it was to save her father's life! How can you? But perhaps you will care more about the Maid of Saragossa."

But after a while Clarice declared that the stories only made her more nervous. She was unconscious of the fact that they had carried her over two miles of the dreaded six.

"Besides," she said peevishly, "I can't hear when you are talking, Sue. Listen! I thought I heard footsteps behind us. I do! Sue Penrose, there is some one following us!"

Sue listened. Yes, there were footsteps, some way behind. "But, my dear," she said, "this is the highroad! Why should they be following us? People have a right to walk on the road – as good a right as we have."

They stopped a moment, instinctively, and listened; and the footsteps behind them stopped too. They went on, and the steps were heard again, light yet distinct, keeping the distance between them, neither more nor less.

Clarice grasped Sue's arm. "They are tramps or robbers, Sue! We are going to be murdered. Oh, I shall scream!"

"You will not scream!" said Sue, grasping her arm in return, and resisting the impulse to shake it. "You are talking nonsense, Clarice! I believe – I believe it is nothing in the world but an echo, after all. If it were not for this fog, we could see whether there was any one there."

She looked back along the road, but the river-fog was rising white and dense, and closed in behind them like a curtain.

"They can't see us, anyhow, whoever they are!" said Sue. "Why, it's exciting, Clarice! It's like the people in the forest in 'Midsummer-Night's Dream.' If we were only sure that these were nice people, we might call, and they could answer, and hunt round for us, and it would be fine."

"Oh, it's awful! It's just awful!" moaned Clarice; and she shook with real terror. "And the worst of it is, I can't walk any more. I can't, Sue! It's no use! I am going to faint – I know I am."

"Nonsense!" said Sue, stoutly, though her heart sank. "Keep up a little, Clarice, do! There is a watering-trough a little farther on, and we can bathe our feet. That will be a great help; and we must be nearly half-way home now."

But tight lacing and tight shoes are not nonsense. They are very real things, and poor Clarice was really suffering more than Sue had any idea of. The stitch in her side was not imaginary this time. She stopped involuntarily to draw breath; and the footsteps behind them stopped too, and went on when they did. There was no longer any doubt; the girls were being followed.

Clarice began to cry again; and Sue set her teeth, and felt that a crisis was coming.

"Clarice," she said, "let me see if I can carry you! I think I can! I know the way Sir Bedivere did with King Arthur: he made broad his shoulders to receive his weight, you know, and round his neck he drew the languid hands – kind of pickaback, you see. You are not heavy; I think I can do it!"

And she actually took Clarice on her back, and staggered on perhaps a hundred yards – till they both came to the ground, bruised and breathless.

"I'm going to die!" said Clarice, doggedly. "I won't walk another step. I may just as well be murdered as plain die. I – can't see!" and the poor girl sank down, really half fainting.

Sue set her teeth hard. She dragged Clarice back from the road, and propped her against a tree, then took her stand in front of her. She felt no fear; the quicksilver ran riot in her veins. If she only had her dagger, the good sharp dagger paper-knife that she had worn in her boot for two whole months, while she was playing cow-boy! It hurt a good deal, and made holes in her stockings, so she had given it up. What would she not give for it now! Or if she had something poisoned that she could hand to the people when they came up, – like Lucrezia Borgia, – and see them drop dead at her feet! But she had nothing! Stop! yes! her hat-pin, the hat-pin Uncle James had sent her from Russia! Carefully, with a steady hand, she drew out the long, sharp steel pin, and felt its point; then set her back against the tree, and waited.

The footsteps behind the fog-curtain hesitated, stopped altogether. There was a silence, but Sue's heart beat so loud, the sound seemed to fill the air. All at once, from the opposite direction came another sound, the sound of horses' hoofs, the rattle of wheels; and, as if at a signal, the footsteps came on again, quickened their pace, were close at hand. Two figures loomed through the white fog; paused, as if reconnoitering in the dim half-light. Then, at sight of Sue standing alone before her prostrate companion, they broke into a run, and came up at racing speed, panting.

"Anything wrong?" asked Tom.

"Because we're right here!" said Teddy.

"Right here, Quicksilver!" said Tom.

The hat-pin dropped from Sue's hand. A great sob rose and broke, – only one! – and then – oh! it didn't matter now if she was getting to be a big girl. Her arms were round Tom's neck, and her head was on his good broad brotherly shoulder, and she was crying and laughing and saying, "Oh, Tom! Oh, Tom!" over and over and over again, till that young gentleman began to be seriously alarmed.

"I say!" he said; "I wouldn't, Quicksilver! Come! I wouldn't if I were you! Teddy, you've got the handkerchief, haven't you? I had the peanuts, you know."

But Teddy, who was going to be a surgeon, was stooping over Clarice with keen professional interest.

"We might haul her down to the river and put her head in!" he said. "This hat won't hold water any more; will yours? I say! don't they still bleed people sometimes, when they haven't got salts and things? My knife is just as sharp!"

Poor Clarice started up with a faint scream. Altogether, these four were so absorbed that they never heard the approaching wheels, and Mr. Hart almost ran over them before he could pull up his horse.

"Hallo!" he said. "What upon earth – now, Mary, Mary, do be careful, and wait till I – Dear me, sirs! What a set of children! Stand still, Jupiter!"

For Mary had scrambled down among wheels and legs, and had thrown herself upon Sue and Tom; and Teddy, abandoning Clarice, exhausted himself in a vain endeavor to get his short arms round the three.

"Oh, Mary, Mary! is it really you? Can you ever forgive me?"

"Sue! Sue, my Sue, don't talk so, dear! It is all my fault, for not telling Mammy this morning. Oh, Tom, you blessed boy, I might have known you would take care of her!"

"Young people," said Mr. Hart, bending over from the wagon, "perhaps if you would kindly get in, it might facilitate matters, and you can continue this highly interesting conversation as we go along. Other girl faint? Hand her here, Tom! Put your arm round my neck, my child – so! there we are!"

They jogged along in silence for a few minutes. Sue and Mary had nothing to say at first – in words, at least. They sat with their arms round each other's neck and their heads together. Now and then one would make a little murmur, and the other respond; but for the most part they were still, too full of joy to speak.