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"Tell me all about it," he suggested, with such an air of confidence and interest that Ruth warmed more and more toward him. But it was a little hard to begin. When he told her, however, that he was going to Cheslow, too indeed, that that was his home it was easier by far. "I am Doctor Davison, my dear," he said.
Boggs," urged Helen. "They'll kill him! He's crazy! It's his money the poor, poor man!" It was evident that Aunt Alvirah read the miller's excitement aright. Ruth remembered the cash-box and wondered if it had been left in the mill while her uncle went to Cheslow? However that might be, her attention indeed, the attention of everybody about the mill was held by the reckless actions of Mr. Potter.
There might be something ahead on the track." "You get out at Cheslow; don't you Miss?" asked the conductor. "Yes, sir," returned Ruth, sitting down with an air of possession upon her old-fashioned cowhide trunk that had already been put out by the door ready for discharging at the next station. "And you were sitting in the last car. Have you a bag there?" "Yes, sir, a small bag. That is all."
It was not fifteen minutes after the wave had hit the mill and torn away a part of the outer office wall and the loading platform, or wharf, when the racing mules came down to the turbulent stream that lay between the Cheslow road and the Red Mill.
He trotted meekly beside her with head hanging. At the open baggage-car door one of the brakemen lifted her in. "Come, Reno! Come up, sir!" she said, and the great mastiff, crouching for an instant, sprang into the car. Even before they were fairly aboard, the train started. They were late enough, indeed! But the engineer dared not speed up much for that last mile of the lap to Cheslow.
Ruth made many friends in her new home, among them Helen and Tom Cameron, the twin, motherless children of a wealthy dry-goods merchant who had a beautiful home, called "the Outlook," near the mill, and Mercy Curtis, the daughter of the railroad station agent at Cheslow, the nearest important town to Ruth's new home.
Ruth, Helen, and Mercy all went to Briarwood Hall, a girls' school some distance from Cheslow, while Master Tom attended a military academy at Seven Oaks, near the girls' institution of learning. The incidents of their first term at school are related in the second volume of the series, while in the mid-winter vacation Ruth and her friends go to Snow Camp in the Adirondacks.
"Good-bye, Ruthie Oh, my back and oh, my bones!" groaned Aunt Alvirah, as she hobbled into the house again, while Ruth ran down to the car, leaped aboard, and the chauffeur started immediately. Ben, the hired man, had gone on to Cheslow with Ruth's trunk early in the morning, and now the automobile sped quickly over the smooth road to the railroad station.
Ruth told him of the Red Mill on the bank of the Lumano, of her fishing trips with Tom Cameron, and of all the fun that they had about Cheslow, and up the river above the mill. Mid-forenoon came and Curly produced some crackers and a piece of bologna. The doughnuts he had pocketed were gone long ago. "Have a bite, Ruth?" he said generously.
Of the twelve books that have gone before that only a brief mention can be made while Ruth and the young French girl are waiting for an answer to the bell. At first we meet Ruth Fielding as she approaches Cheslow and the Red Mill beside the Lumano River, where Uncle Jabez, the miserly miller, awaits her coming in no pleasant frame of mind.
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