BETTY GORDON IN WASHINGTON

OR

Strange Adventures in a Great City

BY

ALICE B. EMERSON

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I THE GORED COW II HOSPITALITY UNDER DIFFICULTIES III BOB HAS GREAT NEWS IV AT THE VENDUE V CONSEQUENCES VI THE RUNAWAY MISSED VII A BELATED LETTER VIII GOOD-BY TO BRAMBLE FARM IX NEW FRIENDS X FELLOW TRAVELERS XI A SERIOUS MIX-UP XII STRAIGHTENING THINGS OUT XIII WASHINGTON MONUMENT XIV LIBBIE IS ROMANTIC XV OFF TO INVESTIGATE XVI WHAT HALE HAD TO TELL XVII MORE SIGHTSEEING XVIII BETTY UNDERSTANDS XIX AN UNEXPECTED MEETING XX MUTUAL CONFIDENCES XXI THE ACCIDENT XXII BEING RESCUED XXIII ANOTHER RESCUE XXIV BOB IS CLEARED XXV FUTURE PLANS

CHAPTER I

THE GORED COW

For lack of a better listener, Betty Gordon addressed the saucy little chipmunk that sat on the top rail of the old worn fence and stared at her with bright, unwinking eyes.

"It is the loveliest vase you ever saw," said Betty, busily sorting the tangled mass of grasses and flowers in her lap. "Heavy old colonial glass, you know, plain, but with beautiful lines."

The chipmunk continued to regard her gravely.

"I found it this morning when I was helping Mrs. Peabody clean the kitchen closet shelves," the girl went on, her slim fingers selecting and discarding slender stems with fascinating quickness. "It was on the very last shelf, and was covered with dust. I washed it, and we're going to have it on the supper table to-night with this bouquet in it. There! don't you think that's pretty?"

She held out the flowers deftly arranged and surveyed them proudly. The chipmunk cocked his brown head and seemed to be withholding his opinion.

Betty put the bouquet carefully down on the grass beside her and stretched the length of her trim, graceful self on the turf, burying her face luxuriously in the warm dry "second crop" of hay that had been raked into a thin pile under the pin oak and left there forgotten. Presently she rolled over and lay flat on her back, studying the lazy clouds that drifted across the very blue sky.

"I'd like to be up in an airplane," she murmured drowsily, her eyelids drooping. "I'd sail right into a cloud and see—What was that?"

She sat up with a jerk that sent the hitherto motionless chipmunk scurrying indignantly up the nearest tree, there to sit and shake his head angrily at her.

"Sounds like Bob!" said Betty to herself. "My goodness, that was Mr. Peabody—they must be having an awful quarrel!"

The voices and shouts came from the next field, separated from her by a brook, almost dry now, and a border of crooked young willow trees grown together in an effective windbreak.

"Anybody who'll gore a cow like that isn't fit to own a single dumb creature!" A clear young voice shaking with passion was carried by the wind to the listening girl.

"When I need a blithering, no-'count upstart to teach me my business, I'll call on you and not before," a deeper, harsh voice snarled. "When you're farming for yourself you can feed the neighbors' critters on your corn all you've a mind to!"

"Oh, dear!" Betty scrambled to her feet, forgetting the bouquet so carefully culled, and darted in the direction of the willow hedge. "I do hope Mr. Peabody hasn't been cruel to an animal. Bob is always so furious when he catches him at that!"

She crossed the puttering little brook by the simple expedient of jumping from one bank to the other and scrambled through the willow trees, emerging, flushed and anxious-eyed, to confront a boy about fourteen years old in a torn straw hat and faded overalls and a tall, lean middle-aged man with a pitchfork in his hands.

"Well?" the latter grunted, as Betty glanced fearfully at him. "What did you come for? I suppose you think two rows of corn down flat is something to snicker at?"

They stood on the edge of a flourishing field of corn, and, following the direction of Mr. Peabody's accusing finger, Betty Gordon saw that two fine rows had been partially eaten and trampled.

"Oh, that's too bad!" she said impulsively, "What did it—a stray cow?"

"Keppler's black and white heifer," answered Mr. Peabody grimly. "Bob here is finding fault with me because I didn't let it eat its head off."

"No such thing!" Bob Henderson was stung into speech. "Because the poor creature didn't get out fast enough to suit you—and you bewildered her with your shouting till she didn't know which way to turn—you jabbed her with the pitchfork. I saw the blood! And I say nobody but an out and out coward would do a thing like that to a dumb animal."

"Oh!" breathed Betty again, softly. "How could you!"

"Now I've heard about enough of that!" retorted Mr. Peabody angrily. "If you'd both attend to your own business and leave me to mind mine, we'd save a lot of time. You, Bob, go let down the bars and turn that critter into the road. Maybe Keppler will wake up and repair his fences after all his stock runs off. You'd better help him, Betty. He might step on a grub-worm if you don't go along to watch him!"

Bob strode off, kicking stones as he went, and Betty followed silently. She helped him lower the bars and drive the cow into the road, then put the bars in place again.

"Where are you going?" she ventured in surprise, as Bob moodily trudged after the animal wending an erratic way down the road.

"Going to take her home," snapped Bob, "Peabody would like to see Keppler have to get her out of the pound, but I'll save him that trouble. You can go on back and read your book."

"Just because you're mad at Mr. Peabody is no reason why you should be cross to me," said Betty with spirit. "I wasn't reading a book, and I'm coming with you. So there!"

Bob laughed and told her to "come on." He was seldom out of sorts long. Indeed, of the two, Betty had the quicker temper and cherished a grudge more enduringly.

"Just the same, Betty," Bob announced, as he skillfully persuaded the cow to forego the delights of a section of particularly sweet grass and proceed on her course, "I'm about through. I can't stand it much longer; and lately I've been afraid that in a rage I might strike Mr. Peabody with something and either kill him or hurt him badly. Of course, I wouldn't do it if I stopped to think, but when he gets me furious as he did to-day, I don't stop to think."

"Well, for mercy's sake, Bob Henderson," ejaculated Betty in an instant alarm, "don't kill him, whatever you do. Then you'd be put in prison for life!"

"All right," agreed Bob equably, "I won't kill him—just nick him in a few places—how will that do?"

"But I'm really serious," insisted Betty. "Don't let the cow turn up that lane. Think how awful you would feel if you were sent to prison, Bob."

Bob took refuge in a masculine stronghold.

"If that isn't just like a girl!" he said scornfully. "Who said I was going to prison? I merely say I don't want to lose my temper and do something rash, and you have me convicted and sentenced for life. Gee, Betty, have a little mercy!"

Betty's lips trembled.

"I can't bear to think of you going away and leaving me here," she faltered. "I'm not going to stay either, Bob, not one minute after I hear from Uncle Dick. I'm sure if the Benders knew how things were going, they would think we had a right to leave. I had the loveliest letter from Mrs. Bender this morning—but it had been opened."

Bob switched an unoffending flower head savagely.

"You come out of that!" he shouted to the perverse cow that seemed determined to turn to the left when she was plainly asked to turn to the right. "Wait a minute, Betty; here's Fred Keppler."

The half-grown boy who accosted them with "What are you doing with our cow?" grinned fatuously at Betty, showing several gaps in a row of fine teeth.

"Keep your cow at home where she belongs," directed Bob magnificently. "She's been making her dinner off our corn."

"Oh, gee," sighed the boy nervously. "I'll bet old Peabody was in a tearing fury. Look, Bob, something's tore her hide! She must have been down in the blackberry bushes along the brook."

"Well, see that it doesn't happen again," commanded Bob, gracefully withdrawing by walking backward. "Corn that's as high as ours is worth something, you know."

"You never told him about the pitchfork," said Betty accusingly, as soon as Fred Keppler and the cow were out of earshot. "You let him think it was blackberry bushes that scratched her like that."

"Well, his father will know the difference," grinned Bob cheerfully. "Why should I start an argument with Fred? Saving the cow from the pound ought to be enough, anyway. Mr. Keppler has had to buy more than one animal out before this; he will not pay attention to his fences."

Betty sat down on a broad boulder and leaned up against an old hickory tree.

"Stone in my shoe," she said briefly. "You'll have to wait just a minute, Bob."

Bob sat down on the grass and began to hunt for four leaf clovers, an occupation of which he never tired.

"Do you think Mr. Peabody opened your letter?" he asked abruptly.

Betty paused in the operation of untying her shoe.

"Who else would?" she said thoughtfully. "It wasn't even pasted together again, but slit across one end, showing that whoever did it didn't care whether I noticed it or not. I'll never mail another letter from that box. I'll walk to Glenside three times a day first!"

"Well, the only thing to do is to clear out," said Bob firmly. "You'll have to wait till you hear from your uncle, or at least till the Benders get back. We promised, you know, that we wouldn't run away without telling them, or if there wasn't time, writing to them and saying where we go. That shows, I think, that they suspected things might get too hot to be endured."

"I simply must get a letter from Uncle Dick or go crazy," sighed Betty feverishly. She put on her shoe and stood up. "I wish he would come for me himself and see how horrid everything is."

CHAPTER II

HOSPITALITY UNDER DIFFICULTIES

Betty Gordon had come to Bramble Farm, as Mr. Peabody's home was known, early in the summer to stay until her uncle, Richard Gordon, should be able to establish a home for her, or at least know enough of his future plans to have Betty travel with him. He was interested in mines and oil wells, and his business took him all over the country.

Betty was an orphan, and this Uncle Dick was her only living relative. He came to her in Pineville after her mother's death and when the friends with whom she had been staying decided to go to California. He remembered Mrs. Peabody, an old school friend, and suggested that Betty might enjoy a summer spent on a farm. These events are related in the first book of this series, called "Betty Gordon at Bramble Farm."

That story tells how Betty came to the farm to find Joseph Peabody a domineering, pitiless miser, his wife Agatha, a drab woman crushed in spirit, and Bob Henderson, the "poorhouse rat," a bright intelligent lad whom the Peabodys had taken from the local almshouse for his board and clothes. Betty Gordon found life at Bramble Farm very different from the picture she and her uncle had drawn in imagination, and only the fact that her uncle's absence in the oil fields had prevented easy communication with him had held her through the summer.

Once, indeed, she had run away, but circumstances had brought her and Bob to the pleasant home of the town police recorder, and Mr. and Mrs. Bender had proved themselves true and steadfast friends to the boy and girl who stood sorely in need of friendship. It was the Benders who had exacted a promise from both Bob and Betty that they would not run away from Bramble Farm without letting them know.

Betty had been instrumental in causing the arrest of two men who had stolen chickens from the Peabody farm, and at the hearing before the recorder something of Mr. Peabody's characteristics and of the conditions at Bramble Farm had been revealed.

Anxious to have Betty and Bob return, Joseph Peabody had practically agreed to treat them more humanely, and for a few weeks, during which the Benders had gone away for their annual vacation, matters at Bramble Farm had in the main improved. But they were gradually slipping back to the old level, and this morning, when Peabody had gored the cow with his pitchfork, Bob had thought disgustedly that it was useless to expect anything good at the hands of the owner of Bramble Farm.

As he and Betty tramped back after delivering the cow, Bob's mind was busy with plans that would free him from Mr. Peabody and set him forward on the road that led to fortune. Bob included making a fortune in his life work, having a shrewd idea that money rightly used was a good gift.

"Where do you suppose your uncle is?" he asked Betty, coming out of a reverie wherein he bade Bramble Farm and all the dwellers there with a single exception a cold and haughty farewell.

"Why, I imagine he is in Washington," returned Betty confidently. "His last letter was from there, though two days ago a postal came from Philadelphia. I think likely he went up to see his lawyer and get his mail. You know it was held there while he was out West. I hope he has all my letters now, and last night I wrote him another, asking him if I couldn't leave here. I said I'd rather go to the strictest kind of a boarding school; and so I would. I'll mail the letter this afternoon in Glenside."

"It's too long a walk for you to take on a hot afternoon," grumbled Bob. "I'm going over to Trowbridge, and I'll mail it there for you."

Betty pulled the letter from her blouse pocket and handed it to him.

"Where's Trowbridge?" she asked, as they came in sight of the boundary line of Bramble Farm and sighted Mr. Peabody in conversation with the mail carrier at the head of the lane. "Can I go with you?"

"We'd better hurry," suggested Bob, quickening his steps. "Trowbridge is four miles beyond Laurel Grove. You've never been there. No, you can't go, Betty, because I have to ride the sorrel. I suppose in time old Peabody will buy another wagon, but no one can tell when that will come to pass."

The wagon house had burned one night, and the master of Bramble Farm could not bring himself to pay out the cash for even a secondhand wagon. As a result, the always limited social activities of the farm were curtailed to the vanishing point.

"What are you going for?" persisted Betty, who had her fair share of feminine curiosity with the additional excuse that interesting events were few and far between in her present everyday life.

Bob grinned.

"Going to a vendue," he announced. "Now how much do you know?"

Betty tossed her head, and elevated her small, freckled nose.

"A vendue?" she repeated. "Why, a vendue is a—a—what is it, Bob?"

"A sale," said Bob. "Some farmer is going to sell out and Peabody wants a wagon. So I have to ride that horse fourteen miles and back—and he has a backbone like a razor blade!—to buy a wagon; that is, if no one bids over me."

"And Mr. Peabody won't pay more than six dollars; he said so at the supper table last night," mourned Betty. "You'll never be able to buy a wagon for that. I wish I could go, too. Bob, I never saw a country vendue. Please, can't I?"

"You cannot," replied Bob with unaccustomed decision. Betty usually wheedled him into granting her requests. "Haven't I just told you there is nothing to go in? If you see yourself perched on that raw-boned nag with me, I don't, that's all. But I tell you what; there's a sale to-morrow at a farm this side of Glenside—I'll take you to that, if you like. I guess Peabody will let me off, seeing as how there are wagons advertised. We can easily walk to Faulkner's place."

This promise contented Betty, and she ate her dinner quietly. Bob rode off on the old horse directly after dinner, and then for the first time Betty noticed that Mrs. Peabody seemed worried about something.

"Don't you feel well? Won't you go upstairs and lie down and let me do the dishes?" urged the girl. "Do, Mrs. Peabody. You can have a nice, long rest before it's time to feed the chickens."

"I feel all right," said Mrs. Peabody dully. "Only—well, I found this card from the new minister back of the pump this morning. It's a week old, and he says he's coming out to call this afternoon. There's no place in the house I can show him, and I haven't got a decent dress, either."

Betty swallowed her first impulse to say what she thought of a husband who would make no effort to see that his wife received her mail, and instead turned her practical mind to consideration of the immediate moment. The so-called parlor was hopeless she knew, and she dismissed it from the list of possibilities at once. It was a sparsely furnished, gloomy room, damp and musty from being tightly closed all summer, and the unpainted, rough boards had never been carpeted.

"There's the porch," said Betty suddenly. "Luckily that's shady in the afternoon, and we can bring out the best things to make it look used. You let me fix it, Mrs. Peabody. And you can wear—let me see, what can you wear?"

Mrs. Peabody waited patiently, her eyes mirroring her explicit faith in Betty's planning powers.

"Your white shirtwaist and skirt," announced the girl at length. "They're both clean, aren't they? I thought so. Well, I'll lend you a ribbon girdle, and you can turn in the high neck so it will be more in style. You'll see, it will look all right."

While Mrs. Peabody washed her dishes with more energy than usual because she had a definite interest in the coming hours, Betty flew to the shabby room that was titled by courtesy the parlor. She flung up the windows and opened the blinds recklessly. She would take only the plain wooden chair and the two rockers, she decided, for the stuffed plush furniture would look ridiculous masquerading as summer furnishings. The sturdy, square table would fit into her scheme, and also the small rug before the blackened fireplace.

She dashed back to the kitchen and grabbed the broom. She did not dare scrub the porch floor for fear that it would not dry in time, but she swept it carefully and spread down the rug. Then one by one, and making a separate trip each time, she carried out the table and the chairs. With a passing sigh for the bouquet abandoned in the field and probably withered by this time, she managed to get enough flowers from the overgrown neglected garden near the house to fill the really lovely colonial glass vase she had discovered that morning.

"It looks real pretty," pronounced Mrs. Peabody, when she was brought out to see the transformed corner of the porch. "Looks as if we used it regular every afternoon, doesn't it? Do you think it will be all right not to ask him in, Betty?"

"Of course," said Betty stoutly. "Don't dare ask him in! If he wants a drink of water, call me, and I'll get it for him. You must be sitting in your chair reading a magazine when he comes and he'll think you always spend your afternoons like that."

"I'll hurry and get dressed," agreed Mrs. Peabody, giving a last satisfied glance at the porch. "I declare, I never saw your beat, Betty, for making things look pretty."

Betty needed that encouragement, for when it came to making Mrs. Peabody look pretty in the voluminous white skirt and stiff shirtwaist of ten years past, the task seemed positively hopeless. Betty, however, was not one to give in easily, and when she had brushed and pinned her hostess's thin hair as softly as she could arrange it, and had turned in the high collar of her blouse and pinned it with a cameo pin, the one fine thing remaining to Mrs. Peabody from her wedding outfit, adding a soft silk girdle of gray-blue, she knew the improvement was marked. Mrs. Peabody stared at herself in the glass contentedly.

"I didn't know I could look that nice," she said with a candor at once pathetic and naive. "I've been wishing he wouldn't come, but now I kinda hope he will."

Betty gently propelled her to the porch and established her in one of the rocking chairs with a magazine to give her an air of leisure.

"You'll come and talk to him, won't you?" urged Mrs. Peabody anxiously. "It's been so long since I've seen a stranger I won't know what to say."