“I don’t know why not,” said Helen, pouting.  “I know she never treats anyone nicely, but I don’t mind.  If it does her good to do what Tom calls ‘bully-ragging,’ I can stand it as well as Ruth—­ better, perhaps.”

“No,” said the doctor, gravely.  “I have told you before why you shouldn’t call there.  You have everything that Mercy can possibly desire.  Comparisons with poor Mercy certainly are odious.  Ruth, she knows, is not so fortunately placed in life as yourself.  She is not so fortunately placed, indeed, as Mercy is.  And Mercy is in an extremely nervous state just now, and I do not wish her to excite herself beyond reason.”

“Well, I declare,” exclaimed Helen, but good-naturedly after all.  “I don’t like to be told I’m not wanted anywhere.  But if you say so, I’ll not go with Ruth to the house.”

Doctor Davison opened a new topic of conversation by asking after Tom.

“Oh, his head is all healed up—­ you can just barely see the scar,” Helen declared.  “And his arm is only a little tender.  We think he got out of it very lucky indeed—­ thanks to Ruth here.”

“Yes, thanks to Ruth,” repeated the doctor, his eyes twinkling.

Ruth was “on pins and needles,” as the saying is, for she very well remembered what the injured boy had murmured, in his half conscious state, when they brought him along the road on the stretcher.  Had it been Jabez Potter who ran down Tom Cameron and forced him down the embankment with his motorcycle?  This thought had been bobbing up in Ruth’s mind ever since she had come to the Red Mill.

She had seen her uncle driving his team of mules in one of his reckless moods.  She would never forget how the team tore down the long hill and was forced through the flood the day the Minturn dam had burst.  Had Jabez Potter been driving through the dark road where Tom Cameron was hurt, in any such way as that, he would have run down a dozen cyclists without noticing them.

Fortunately Tom’s injury had not been permanent.  He was all right now.  Ruth felt that she must be loyal to her uncle and say nothing about her own suspicions; but as long as the matter was discussed between Helen and Doctor Davison she was anxious.  Therefore she hurried their departure from the kind physician’s office, by rising and saying: 

“I think we would better go, Helen.  You know how slow Tubby is, and perhaps I can give the little Curtis girl some pleasure by calling on her.”

“Without doubt she’ll have pleasure,” observed Helen, somewhat bitingly.  “She is likely to scold and ‘bullyrag’ to her heart’s content.  You’re such a meek thing that you’ll let her.”

“If that’s what gives her pleasure, Helen,” said Ruth, with a quiet smile, “why, I guess I can stand it for an hour.”

Doctor Davison had risen likewise, and he went to the front door with them, his hand resting lightly on Ruth’s shoulder.