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CHAPTER XVII
AN OMINOUS QUARREL

Mrs. O'Hara went back to Glenside at the end of ten days, leaving Mrs. Peabody well enough to be about, though the doctor had cautioned her repeatedly not to overdo. Doctor Guerin came for Mrs. O'Hara in his car, and it was to be his last visit unless he was sent for again. Bob's finger had healed, and he was hard at work at his carving in spare moments.

"Norma hopes you will come over to see her soon," said Doctor Guerin to Betty, as he was leaving. "She and Alice have their heads full of boarding school. By the way, Betty, what do you intend to do about school?"

"Well, I keep hoping Uncle Dick will write. It's been three weeks since I've had any kind of letter," answered Betty. She had long ago told the doctor about her uncle and the reasons that led to her coming to Bramble Farm. "When he wrote he was in a town where there were only six houses and no hotel. He must come East soon, and then he will receive my letters and send for me. I'm sure I could go to school and keep house for him, too."

The car with the doctor and his convincing personality and Mrs. O'Hara and her quick tongue and heavy hand were hardly out of sight, before Mr. Peabody assumed command of his household. He had been chafing under the rule of that "red-haired female," as he designated the capable Irish-woman, and now he was bound to make the most of his restored power.

"Gee, he sure is a driver," whispered the perspiring Bob, as Betty came down to the field where the boy was cultivating corn. Betty had brought a pail of water and a dipper, and Bob drank gratefully.

"No, don't give the horse any," he interposed, as Betty seemed about to hold the pail out to the sorrel who looked around with patient, pleading eyes. "He'll have to wait till noon. 'Tisn't good to water a horse when he's working, anyway. Put the pail under that tree and it'll keep cool. Lieson and Wapley go over to the spring when they're thirsty, but Peabody said he'd whale me if he caught me leaving the cultivator."

"The mean old thing!" Betty could hardly find a word to express her indignation.

"Oh, it's all in the day's work," returned Bob philosophically. "What are you doing?"

"Hanging out clothes for Mrs. Peabody. She's getting another basketful ready now. She would wash, and that's as much as she'll let me do to help her, though of course when she irons I can be useful. I don't think she ought to get up and go to washing, but you can't stop her."

"Having a woman come to wash about killed the old man," chuckled Bob, starting the horse as he saw Mr. Peabody climbing stiffly over the fence. "Thanks for the water, Betty."

Betty had no wish to meet her host, for whom another check had come that morning from her uncle's lawyer. Betty herself was out of money, Uncle Dick having sent no letter for three weeks and apparently having made no provision to bridge the gap.

She hung out clothes till dinner time, and then helped put the boiled dinner on the table in the hot, steamy kitchen. Wapley and Lieson ate in silence, and Bob found a chance to whisper to Betty that he thought there was "something doing" between them and their employer.

Whatever this something was, there were no further developments till after supper. Peabody got up from the table and lurched out to the kitchen porch to sit on the top step, as was his invariable custom. He was too mean, his men said, to smoke a pipe, though he did chew tobacco. Bob had already taken the milk pails and gone to the barn.

As Mrs. Peabody and Betty finished the dishes, Wapley and Lieson came downstairs, dressed in their good clothes, and went out on the porch where Mr. Peabody sat silently.

"Can you let me have a couple of dollars to-night?" asked Lieson civilly. "Jim and me's going over to town for a few hours."

"You'll get no money from me," was the surly answer. "Fooling away your time and money Saturday night ought to be enough, without using the middle of the week for such extravagance. Anyway, you know well enough I never pay out in advance."

There was an angry murmur from Wapley.

"Who's asking you for money in advance?" he snarled. "Lieson and me's both got money coming to us, and you know it. You pay us right up to the jot to-night or we quit!"

Peabody was quite unmoved. He stood up, leaning against a porch post, his hands in his pockets.

"You can quit, and good riddance to you," he drawled. "But you won't get a cent out of me. You overdrew, both of you, last Saturday, and there's nothing coming to you till a week from this Saturday."

The men were a little confused, neither accustomed to reckoning without the aid of pencil and paper, but Wapley held doggedly to his argument.

"We quit anyway," he announced with more dignity than Betty thought he possessed. She and Mrs. Peabody were listening nervously at the window, both afraid of what the quarrel might lead to. "You go pack our suitcases, Lieson, and I will figure up what he owes us. Never again do we work for a man who cheats."

Peabody leaned up against his post and chewed tobacco reflectively, while Wapley, tongue in cheek, struggled with a stub of pencil and a bit of brown wrapping paper.

"There's twenty-five dollars coming to us," he announced. "Twelve and a half apiece. Pay us, and we go."

"I don't know about the going, but I know there won't be any paying done," sneered Peabody, just as Lieson with the two heavy suitcases staggered through the door and Bob with his two foaming pails of milk came up the steps.

Bob put down the milk pails to listen, and Wapley took a step toward Mr. Peabody, his face working convulsively.

"You cheater!" he gasped. "You miserable sneak! You've held back money all season, just to keep us working through harvest. If I had a gun I'd shoot you!"

The man was in a terrible rage, and Betty wondered how Mr. Peabody could face him so calmly. Suddenly she saw something glitter in his hand.

"I've got my pistol right here," he said, raising his hand to wave the blunt-nosed revolver toward Wapley. "I'll give you two just three minutes to get off this place. Go on – I said go!"

Wapley whirled about and saw the milk pails. He seized one in either hand, raised them high above his head and dashed the contents furiously over Bob, Mr. Peabody, the steps and the porch impartially, sprinkling himself and Lieson liberally, too.

"I never knew how much milk those cows gave," Bob said later. "Seems like there must have been a regular ocean let loose."

Mr. Peabody was furious and very likely would have fired, but Bob put out his foot and tripped him, though he managed to pass the matter off as an accident. Wapley and Lieson trudged slowly up the lane, carrying the heavy cheap leather suitcases. Betty watched them as far as she could see them, feeling inexpressibly sorry for the two who had worked through the long hot summer and were now leaving an unpleasant place with what she feared was only a too well-founded grievance.

"Some of you women," Peabody included Betty in the magnificent gesture, "get to work out there and clean up the milk. There's several pounds of butter lost, thanks to those no-'count fools. I'm going after my gun."

"Gun?" faltered Mrs. Peabody.

"Yes, gun," snapped her husband. "I don't suppose it occurs to you those idiots may take it into their heads to come back and burn the barns? Bob and me will sit up all night and try to save the cattle, at least."

Bob was furious at the idea of playing lookout all night, and he was in the frame of mind by early morning where he probably would have cheerfully supplied any arson-plotters with the necessary match. But nothing happened, and very cross and sleepy, he and Mr. Peabody came in to breakfast as usual.

Betty, too, had not slept well, having wakened and pattered to the window many times to see if the barns were blazing. Indeed, if Lieson and Wapley had deliberately planned to upset the Peabody family, they could not have succeeded better.

Bob made up his lost sleep the next night, but his appetite came in for Mr. Peabody's criticism.

"You seem to be aiming to eat me out of house and home," he observed at dinner a day or two later. "You don't have to eat everything in sight, you know. There'll be another meal later."

Bob blushed violently, not because of the reproof, for he was used to that, but because of the public disgrace. Betty, the cause of his distress, was as uncomfortable as he, and she experienced an un-Christianlike impulse to throw the dish of beans at the head of her host.

The following day Bob did not come in to dinner, and Betty, thinking perhaps that he had not heard Mrs. Peabody call, rose from the table with the intention of calling him a second time.

"Where are you going?" demanded Mr. Peabody suspiciously.

"To call Bob to dinner," said Betty. "I'm afraid he didn't hear Mrs. Peabody. The meat will be all cold."

"You sit down, and don't take things on yourself that are none of your concern," commanded Mr. Peabody shortly. "Bob isn't here for dinner, because I told him not to come. He's getting too big to thrash, and the only way to bring him to terms is to cut down his food. Living too high makes him difficult to handle. This morning he flatly disobeyed me, but I guess he'll learn not to do that again. Well, Miss, don't swallow your impudence. Out with it!"

CHAPTER XVIII
IN THE NAME OF DISCIPLINE

Betty opened her mouth to speak hotly, then closed it again. Argument was useless, and the distressed expression on Mrs. Peabody's face reminded the girl that it takes two to make a quarrel.

Dinner was finished in silence, and as soon as he had finished Mr. Peabody strode off to the barn.

A plan that had been forming in Betty's mind took concrete form, and as she helped clear the table she did not carry all the food down cellar to the swinging shelf, but made several trips to one of the window sills. Then, after the last dish was wiped and Mrs. Peabody had gone upstairs to lie down, for her strength was markedly slow in returning, Betty slipped out to the cellar window, reached in and got her plate, and, carefully assuring herself that Mr. Peabody was nowhere in sight, flew down the road to where she knew Bob was trimming underbrush.

"Gee, but you're a good little pal, Betty," said the boy gratefully, as she came up to him. "I'm about starved to death, that's a fact."

"There isn't much there – just bread and potatoes and some corn," said Betty hurriedly. "Eat it quick, Bob. I didn't dare touch the meat, because it would be noticed at supper. Seems to me we have less to eat than ever."

"Can't you see it's because Wapley and Lieson are gone?" demanded Bob, his mouth full. "We're lucky to get anything at all to eat. Your cupboard all bare?"

"Haven't a single can of anything, nor one box of crackers," Betty announced dolefully. "The worst of it is, I haven't a cent of money. What can be the reason Uncle Dick doesn't write?"

"Oh, you'll hear before very long. Jumping around the way he does, he can't write a letter every day," returned Bob absently.

He handed back the plate to Betty and picked up his scythe.

"Don't let old Peabody catch you with that plate," he warned her. "He's got a fierce grouch on to-day, because the road commissioners notified him to get this trimming done. He's so mean he hates to take any time off the farm to do road work."

Betty went happily back to the house, forgetting to be cautious in her satisfaction of getting food to Bob, and at the kitchen door she walked plump into Mr. Peabody.

"So that's what you've been up to!" he remarked unpleasantly. "Sneaking food out to that no-'count, lazy boy! I'll teach you to be so free with what isn't yours and to upset my discipline. Set that plate on the table!"

Betty obeyed, rather frightened.

"Now you come along with me." And, grasping her arm by the elbow, Mr. Peabody marched her upstairs to her own room very much as though she were a rebellious prisoner he had captured.

"Sit down in that chair, and don't let me hear a word out of you," said the farmer, pushing her none too gently into the single chair the room contained.

From his pocket he drew a handful of nails, and, using the door weight as a hammer, he proceeded deliberately to nail up the window that opened on to the porch roof.

"Now there'll be no running away," he commented grimly, when he had finished. "Give kids what's coming to 'em, and they flare up and try to wriggle out of it. You'll stay right here and do a little thinking till I'm ready to tell you different. It's time you learned who's running this house."

He went out, and Betty heard him turn a key in the lock as he closed the door.

"So he's carried a key all the time!" cried the girl furiously. "I thought there wasn't any for that door! And the idea of speaking to me as he did – the miserable old curmudgeon!"

She supposed she would have to stay locked in till it suited Mr. Peabody to release her, and quite likely she would have nothing to eat. If he could punish Bob in that fashion, there was no reason to think he intended to be any more lenient with her.

"Even bread and water would be better than nothing at all," said Betty aloud.

The sound of wheels attracted her attention, and she peered through the window to see Mr. Peabody in conversation with a stranger who had driven in with a horse and buggy.

Mrs. Peabody was stirring, and presently Betty heard her go downstairs, and a few minutes later she came out into the yard ready to feed her chickens.

"Don't let the hens out in the morning," ordered Mr. Peabody, meeting her directly under Betty's open window. The girl knelt down to listen, angry and resentful. "Ryerson was just here, and I've sold the whole yard to him. I want to try Wyandottes next. He'll be over about ten in the morning, and it won't hurt to keep them in the henhouses till then."

"Oh, Joseph!" Mrs. Peabody's voice was reproachful. "I've just got those hens ready to be good layers this fall. You don't know how I've worked over 'em, and culled the best and sprayed those dirty old houses and kept 'em clean and disinfected. I don't want to try a new breed. I want a little of the money these will earn this winter."

"Well, this happens to be my farm and my livestock," replied her husband cruelly. "If I see a chance to improve the strain, I'm going to take it. You just do as I say, and don't let the hens out to-morrow morning."

His wife dragged herself out to the chicken yard, her brief insistence having completely collapsed. The girl listening wondered how any woman could give in so easily to such palpable injustice.

"I suppose she doesn't care," thought Betty, stumbling on the heart of the matter blindly. "If she did have her own way, that wouldn't change him; he'd still be mean and small and not very honest and she'd have to despise him just as much as ever. Things wouldn't make up to her for the kind of man her husband is."

Supper time came and went, and the odor of frying potatoes came up to Betty in delicious whiffs, though she had been known to turn up her little freckled nose when this dish was passed to her.

About eight o'clock Mr. Peabody unlocked the door and set inside a plate of very dry bread and a small pitcher of water, locking the door after him. Betty slid the bolt angrily and this gave her some satisfaction. She ate her bread and water and listened for a while at the window, hoping to hear Bob's whistle. But nothing disturbed the velvety silence of the night, and by half-past nine Betty was undressed and in bed, asleep.

She woke early, as usual, dressed and unbolted her door, hungry enough to be humble. But no bread and water arrived.

The rattle of milk pails and the sounds which indicated that breakfast was in progress ceased after a while and the house seemed unusually quiet. Then, just as Betty decided to try tying the bedclothes into a rope and lowering herself from the window, she heard Bob's familiar whistle.

"Hello, Princess Golden Hair!" Bob grinned up at her from the old shelter of the lilac bush. "Let down your hair, and I'll send you up some breakfast."

This was an old joke with them, because Betty's hair was dark, and while thick and smooth was not especially long.

"I want you to help me get out of here!" hissed Betty furiously. "I won't stay locked in here like a naughty little child. Can't you get me a ladder or something, Bob, and not stand there like an idiot?"

"Gee, you are hungry," said Bob with commiseration. "Dangle me down a string, Princess, and I'll send you up some bread with butter on it. I helped myself to both. We can talk while you eat."

Betty managed to find a strong, long string, and she threw one end down to Bob, who tied the packet to it; then Betty hauled it up and fell upon the food ravenously.

"I got you into this pickle," said Bob regretfully. "Old Peabody licked me for good measure last night, or I would have been round at this window trying to talk to you. Awfully sorry, Betty. It must be hot, too, with that other window nailed up."

"Do you mean he whipped you?" gasped Betty, horrified. "Why? And what did you do yesterday?"

"Oh, yesterday I wouldn't back him up in a lie he tried to tell the road commissioner," said Bob cheerfully. "And last night I sassed him when I heard what he'd done to you. So we had an old-fashioned session in the woodshed. But that's nothing for you to worry over."

"Where is he now?" asked Betty fearfully.

"Gone over to Kepplers to see about buying more chickens," answered Bob. "Mrs. Peabody has gone to salt the sheep, and I'm supposed to be cleaning harness in the barn."

"Get me a ladder – now's my time!" planned Betty swiftly. "I could bob my hair and you might lend me a pair of overalls, Bob. For I simply won't come back here. It's too far to jump to the ground, or I should have tried it. Hurry up, and bring me a ladder."

"I'll get a ladder on one condition," announced Bob stubbornly. "You must promise to go to Doctor Guerin's. Not cutting your hair and wandering around the country in boy's clothes. Promise?"

Betty shook her head obstinately.

"All right, you stay where you are," decreed Bob. "I have to go to Laurel Grove, anyway, and I ought to be hitching up right now."

He turned away.

"All right, I promise," capitulated Betty, "Hurry with the ladder before Mr. Peabody comes back and catches us."

Bob ran to the barn and was back in a few minutes with a long ladder.

CHAPTER XIX
THE ESCAPE

Betty capered exultantly when she was on the ground.

"I packed my things last night," she informed Bob. "If Mr. Peabody isn't too mean, he'll keep the trunk for me and send it when I write him to. Here, I'll help you carry back the ladder."

"Take your sweater and hat," advised the practical Bob, pointing to these articles lying on a chair on the porch where Betty had left them the afternoon before. "You don't want to travel too light. I think we'll have a storm before noon."

Betty helped carry the ladder back to the barn and put it in place. Then she hung around watching Bob harness up the sorrel to the dilapidated old wagon preparatory to driving to Laurel Grove, a town to the east of Glenside.

"I'd kind of like to say good-bye to Mrs. Peabody," ventured Betty, trying to fix a buckle.

"Well, you can't. That would get us both in trouble," returned Bob shortly. "There! you've dawdled till here comes the old man. Scoot out the side door and keep close to the hedge. If I overtake you before you get to the crossroads I'll give you a lift. Doc Guerin will know what you ought to do."

Her heart quaking, Betty scuttled for the narrow side door and crept down the lane, keeping close to the osage orange hedge that made a thick screen for the fence. Evidently she was not seen, for she reached the main road safely, hearing no hue and cry behind her.

"So you haven't started?" Peabody greeted the somewhat flustered Bob, entering the barn and looking, for him, almost amiable. "Well, hitch the horse, and go over to Kepplers. He wants you to help him catch a crate of chickens. The horse can wait and you can come home at twelve and go to Laurel Grove after dinner."

Bob would have preferred to start on his errand at once, so that he might be at a safe distance when Betty's absence should be discovered; but he hoped that Peabody might not go near her room till afternoon, and he knew Mrs. Peabody was too thoroughly cowed to try to communicate with Betty, fond as she was of her.

"I'll take a chance," thought Bob. "Anyway, the worst he can do to me is to kill me."

This not especially cheerful observation had seen Bob through many a tight place in the past, and now he tied the patient horse under a shady tree and went whistling over to the Keppler farm to chase chickens for a hot morning's work.

"Oh, Bob!" To his amazement, Mrs. Peabody came running to meet him when he came back at noon to get his dinner. "Oh, Bob!"

Poor Bob felt a wobbling sensation in his knees.

"Yes?" he asked shakily. "Yes, what is it?"

"The most awful thing has happened!" Mrs. Peabody wiped the perspiration from her forehead with her apron. "The most awful thing! I never saw Joseph in such a temper, never! He swore till I thought he'd shrivel up the grass! And before Mr. Ryerson, too!"

Bob's face cleared.

"Did he try to cheat Ryerson?" he asked eagerly. "That is, er – I mean did he think Ryerson was trying to cheat him?"

"Cheat?" repeated Mrs. Peabody, sitting down on an old tree stump to get her breath. "No one said anything about cheating. I don't know exactly how to tell you, Bob. Betty has gone and she's taken all the chickens with her!"

Bob opened his eyes and mouth to their widest extent. Chickens! Betty! The words danced through his brain stupidly.

"I don't wonder you look like that," said Mrs. Peabody. "I was in a daze myself."

"But she couldn't have taken the chickens!" argued Bob, restraining a mad desire to laugh. "How could she? And what would she want with them?"

"Well, of course, I don't mean she took them with her," admitted Mrs. Peabody. "But she was mad at Joseph, you know, for locking her in her room, and he says she's just driven the hens off to the woods to spite him."

Bob walked out to the poultry yard, followed by Mrs. Peabody. The doors of the henhouses were flung wide open, and there was not a fowl in sight.

"When did you find it out?" he asked.

"When Mr. Ryerson drove in for the hens," answered Mrs. Peabody. "Joseph went out with him to help him bag 'em, and the minute he opened the door he gave a yell. I was making beds, but I heard him. The way he carried on, Bob, was a perfect scandal. I never heard such talk, never!"

"Where is he now?" said Bob briefly.

"He's gone over to the woods, hunting for the hens," replied Mrs. Peabody. "He wouldn't stop for dinner, or even to take the horse. He says you're to start for Laurel Grove, soon as you've eaten. He's going to search the woods and then follow the Glenside road, looking for Betty."

Bob did not worry over the possibility of Betty being overtaken by the angry farmer. He counted on her getting a lift to Glenside, since the road was well traveled in the morning, and probably she was at this very moment sitting down to lunch with the doctor's family. He was puzzled about the loss of the chickens, and curious to know how the Peabodys had discovered Betty's escape.

He and Mrs. Peabody sat down to dinner, and, partly because of her excitement and partly because in her husband's absence she dared to be more generous, Bob made an excellent meal. Over his second piece of pie he ventured to ask when they had found out that Betty was not in her room.

"Oh, Joseph thought of her as soon as he missed the chickens," answered Mrs. Peabody. "I never thought she would be spiteful, but I declare it's queer, anyway you look at it. Joseph flew up to her room and unlocked the door, and she wasn't there! Do you suppose she could have jumped from the window and hurt herself?"

Bob thought it quite possible.

"Well, I don't," said Mrs. Peabody shrewdly. "However, I'm not asking questions, so there's no call for you to get all red. Joseph seemed to think she had jumped out, and he's furious because he didn't nail up both windows, though how he expected Betty to breathe in that case is more than I can see."

Bob was relieved to learn that apparently Mr. Peabody did not connect him with Betty's disappearance. He finished his dinner and went out to do the few noon chores. Then he started on the drive to Laurel Grove.

"Looks like a storm," he muttered to himself, as he noted the heavy white clouds piling up toward the south. "I wish to goodness, old Peabody would spend a few cents and get an awning for the seat of this wagon. Last time I was caught in a storm I got soaked, and my clothes didn't dry overnight. I'll be hanged if I'm going to get wet this time – I'll drive in somewhere first."

Bob's predictions of a storm proved correct, and before he had gone two miles he heard distant thunder.

With the first splash of rain Bob hurried the sorrel, keeping his eyes open for a mail-box that would mark the home of some farmer where he might drive into the barn and wait till the shower was over.

He came within sight of some prosperous looking red barns before the rain was heavy, and drove into a narrow lane just as the first vivid streak of lightning ripped a jagged rent in the black clouds.

"Come right on in," called out the farmer, who had seen him coming and thrown open the double doors. "Looks like it might be a hummer, doesn't it? There's a ring there in the wall where you can tie your horse."

"He stands without hitching," grinned Bob. "Only too glad to get the chance. Gee, that wind feels good!"

The farmer brought out a couple of boxes and turned them up to serve as seats.

"I like to watch a storm," he observed. "The house is all locked up – women-folk gone to an all-day session of the sewing circle – or I'd take you in. We'd get soaked walking that short distance, though. You don't live around here, do you?"

"Bramble Farm. I'm a poorhouse rat the Peabodys took to bring up."

He had seldom used that phrase since Betty's coming, but it always irritated him to try to explain who he was and where he came from.

"I was bound out myself," retorted the farmer quickly. "Knocked around a good bit, but now I own this ninety acres, free and clear. You've got just as good a chance as the boy with too much done for him. Don't you forget that, young man."

They were silent for a few moments, watching the play of lightning through the wide doors.

"Didn't two men named Wapley and Lieson used to work for Peabody?" asked the farmer abruptly. "I thought so," as Bob nodded. "They were around the other day asking for jobs."

"Are you sure?" asked Bob. "I thought they had left the state. Lieson, I know, had folks across the line."

"Well, they may have gone now," was the reply. "But I know that two days ago they wanted work. I've a couple of men, all I can use just now, but I sent them on to a neighbor. They looked strong, and good farm help is mighty scarce."

Bob waited till the rain had stopped and the clouds were lifting, then drove on, thanking the friendly farmer for his cordiality.

"Don't be calling yourself names, but plan what you want to make of yourself," was that individual's parting advice.

"If I had a nickel," said Bob to himself, urging the sorrel to a brisk trot, for the time spent in waiting must be made up, "I'd telephone to Betty from Laurel Grove. But pshaw! I know she must be all right."