he started over that way and ran
into the most surprising incident!

Coming out of the cook tent with a huge apron enveloping her queer, tight
dress and tilting forward upon her high heels, appeared Bella Pike! Ruth
Fielding might have met somebody whose presence here would have surprised
her more, but at the moment she could not imagine who it could be.

"Ara-bella!" gasped Ruth.

The child turned to stare her own amazement. She changed color, too, for
she knew she had done wrong to run away; but she smiled with both eyes and
lips, for she was glad to see Ruth.

"My mercy!" she ejaculated. "If it ain't Miss Fielding! How-do, Miss
Fielding? Ain't it enough to give one their nevergitovers to see you
here?"

"And how do you suppose I feel to find you here at Beach Plum Point,"
demanded Ruth, "when we all thought you were so nicely fixed with Mr. and
Mrs. Perkins? And Mrs. Holmes wrote to me only the other day that you
seemed contented."

"That's right, Miss Fielding," sighed the actor's child. "I was. And Miz
Perkins was always nice to me. Nothing at all like Aunt Suse Timmins. But,
you see, they ain't like pa."

"Did your father bring you here?"

"No'm."

"Nor send for you?"

"Not exactly," confessed Bella.

"Well!"

"You see, he sent me money. Only on Tuesday. Forty dollars."

"Forty dollars! And to a child like you?"

"Well, Miss Fielding, if he had sent it to Aunt Suse I'd never have seen a
penny of it. And pa didn't know what you'd done for me and how you'd put
me with Miz Perkins."

"I suppose that is so," admitted the surprised Ruth. "But why did you come
here?"

"'Cause pa wrote he had an engagement here. I came through Boston, an' got
me a dress, and some shoes, and a hat--all up to date--and I thought I'd
surprise pa----"

"But, Bella! I haven't seen your father here, have I?"

"No. There's a mistake somehow. But this nice Miz Paisley says for me not
to worry. That like enough pa will come here yet."

"I never!" ejaculated Ruth. "Come right along with me, Bella, and see Mr.
Hammond. Something must be done. Of course, Mrs. Perkins and the doctor's
wife have no idea where you have gone?"

"Oh, yes'm. I left a note telling 'em I'd gone to meet pa."

"But we must send them a message that you are all right. Come on, Bella!"
and with her arm about the child's thin shoulders, Ruth urged her to Mr.
Hammond's office--and directly into her father's arms!

This was how Arabella Montague Fitzma