Ruth was going back to school this term with a delightful sense of having gained Uncle Jabez’s special approval.  He admitted that schooling such as she gained at Briarwood was of some use.  And he made her a nice present of pocket-money when she started.

The Cameron auto stopped for her at the Red Mill before mid-forenoon, and Ruth bade the miller and Aunt Alvirah and Ben—­not forgetting Jerry Sheming, her new friend—­good-bye.

“Do—­do take care o’ yourself, my pretty,” crooned Aunt Alvirah over her, at the last.  “Jest remember we’re a-honin’ for you here at the ol’ mill.”

“Take care of Uncle Jabez,” whispered Ruth.  She dared kiss the grim old man only upon his dusty cheek.  Then she shook hands with bashful Ben and ran out to her waiting friends.

“Come on, or we’ll lose the train,” cried Helen.

They were off the moment Ruth stepped into the tonneau.  But she stood up and waved her hand to the little figure of Aunt Alvirah in the cottage doorway as long as she could be seen on the Cheslow road.  And she had a fancy that Uncle Jabez himself was lurking in the dark opening to the grist-floor of the mill, and watching the retreating motor car.

There was a quick, alert-looking girl hobbling on two canes up and down the platform at Cheslow Station.  This was Mercy Curtis, the station agent’s crippled daughter.

“Here you are at last!” she cried, shrilly.  “And the train already hooting for the station.  Five minutes more and you would have been too late.  Did you think I could go to Briarwood without you?”

Ruth ran up and kissed her heartily.  She knew that Mercy’s “bark was worse than her bite.”

“You come and see Jane Ann—­and be nice to her.  She doesn’t look it, but she’s just as scared as she can be.”

“Of course you’d have some poor, unfortunate pup, or kitten, to mother, Ruth Fielding,” snapped the lame girl.

She was very nice, however, to the girl from Silver Ranch, sat beside her in the chair car, and soon had Jane Ann laughing.  For Mercy Curtis, with her sarcastic tongue, could be good fun if she wished to be.

Here and there, along the route to Osago Lake, other Briarwood girls joined them.  At one point appeared Madge Steele and her brother, Bob, a slow, smiling young giant, called “Bobbins” by the other boys, who was always being “looked after” in a most distressing fashion by his sister.

“Come, Bobby, boy, don’t fall up the steps and get your nice new clothes dirty,” adjured Madge, as her brother made a false step in getting aboard the train.  “Will you look out for him, Mr. Cameron, if I leave him in your care?”

“Sure!” said Tom, laughing.  “I’ll see that he doesn’t spoil his pinafore or mess up his curls.”

“Say!  I’d shake a sister like that if I had one,” grunted “Busy Izzy” Phelps, disgustedly.

“Aw, what’s the odds?” drawled good-natured Bobbins.