But now the old man's peril, her own alarm and her desire to save the stranger's life, drove all other thoughts out of the girl's mind.
CHAPTER III
THE AERIAL TRAMWAY
He might have gone right under the wheels of the backing freight train – that queer looking old gentleman – umbrella and all! Ruth Kenway dragged him back, and the train rumbled past them so near that the umbrella scraped along the sides of the box-cars.
"What under the sun's the matter with you, girl?" snapped the old man.
He turned on her so angrily, and furled the huge umbrella with such emphasis, that Ruth was quite startled, although she had thought that this time she would be prepared for any outbreak of irritation or displeasure on his part. She backed away from him, and as other people who had seen the incident came crowding about, the girl slipped away and crossed the tracks hurriedly when the freight train had gone by.
But the one-armed flagman and other railroad employees let the old gentleman understand beyond peradventure that he had barely escaped a dreadful accident. He had been about to step directly in the path of the backing freight train.
"My, my, my!" he exclaimed at last, "'tisn't possible!"
"It just is possible!" retorted the one-armed flagman. "One minute more and you'd've been ground to powder like as not if it hadn't been for that there girl. Some spunk, she's got."
"Some quick thinkin' she done!" exclaimed another of the employees. "Man alive, you wouldn't have no head on your shoulders right now if she hadn't knowed what to do at once and done it instanter. No siree!"
"My! my! my!" said the old gentleman again. "That girl then saved my life! Possibly saved me from a worse fate – to live on through the years maimed and mutilated."
Just then the train for which the old gentleman was waiting came in sight and soon drew up at the Milton station.
"Then I really owe that girl an apology," he went on. "Who is she? Does she live here!" he asked one of the bystanders.
"Sure she lives here."
"Well, I can't stop to-day. I've got to hurry. But I shall look her up the next time I come this way. Oh, yes indeed, I shall look her up! For a girl she certainly showed good sense."
"I don't know whether she did or not," scoffed the man to whom he spoke, but under his breath. "You don't look as though you were such a lot of use in the world, if you ask me. I bet you're a Tartar!"
Ruth Kenway, however, did not expect to be thanked. The old gentleman with the green umbrella passed out of her mind for the time being before she reached home. And there she found the assembled young folks in the throes of a discussion regarding Tess and Sammy's proposed aerial tramway.
"Do call it 'tramway,'" begged Agnes. "It sounds so awfully English, don't you know!"
"It sounds so awfully foolish, don't you know," said Neale O'Neil, who had come over the fence from Mr. Con Murphy's yard and sat on the stoop regaling himself upon a summer apple he had picked on his way. "Have a summer sweetnin', Ag?"
"I do wish you would call her by her right name, Neale," said Ruth, sharply, for she did not approve of Neale's slang.
"Dear me! 'What's in a name?' to quote the Immortal Bard," drawled the youth.
"A good deal sometimes," chuckled Agnes, who did not much mind having her name shortened. "Wait till I look up in my scrap book the name of that special cheese which is made by the Swiss for use in Passion Play week. It's got all the letters of the alphabet in it twice."
"Never mind looking it up," advised Ruth, quickly.
"No," said Neale. "We'll take your word for there being something in it. An odoriferous odor, I bet, if it's like most of those fancy cheeses."
"Why," said Tess, reprovingly, "I thought we were talking about my airship line."
"'Back to the mines, men! there'll be no strike to-day!'" quoted Agnes. "It's up to you, Neale. Sammy and Tess have originated the idea. All you have to do is to find the materials and do the work."
"If Ruth says we may," added Tess, without at all appreciating her sister's sarcasm.
"Why, there's no harm, I suppose. A basket to pull across the street? Does your mother say you may, Sammy?"
"Oh, yes, Ruth," declared the boy. "I just ran and asked her."
"What did she say?"
"We-ell," Sammy admitted slowly, "she was busy cutting out something on the dining-room table and her mouth was full of pins. I had to ask her two or three times before she seemed to hear me."
"And then what did she say?" insisted Ruth, with suspicion, knowing both Sammy and his mother pretty well.
"Why, she said: 'If you will only go out and stop bothering me for an hour I don't care what you do.' So, ain't that saying I can?" demanded Sammy.
"I should say she had given you carte blanche," chuckled Neale, while the older Corner House girls laughed.
"I think you may go as far as to get the wire, pulleys, and other things needed," Ruth said. "I will ask Sammy's mother myself when she is not so strenuously engaged."
Dot listened to this and gazed after the departing older sister in something like awe.
"What is it, Dottums?" asked Agnes, chucking the little fairy-like child under her soft chin.
"Oh, our Ruth does talk so beautifully," sighed the smallest Corner House girl. "What does 'strain – strain-u-ous-ly' mean, Aggie?"
"Exactly that," laughed her sister. "Mrs. Pinkney certainly was working under a 'strain.' You have hit the meaning of 'strenuously' better even than Mr. Dick."
"Who is Mr. Dick?" demanded Dot, the unappeasable.
"The man who knows everything," said Neale, throwing away the core of his apple and strolling to the gate on his way to the hardware store to purchase the materials for the Aeriel tramway.
"The dictionary, goosey," said Tess in explanation to Dot. "Don't you know yet what they mean when they are joking us?"
"I only wanted to know," said Dot rather grieved.
"Never mind," said Sammy, being left alone with the two smaller girls. "Let 'em laugh. We won't get mad at 'em till that wire's up and the car is running all right."
Oh, Sammy Pinkney was a practical lad.
Dot, unable long to keep any exciting happening or interest to herself, was disseminating the news of the proposed "airship line" throughout the Corner House household. Uncle Rufus, the brown black-man, who was working just then in the garden, was vastly astonished.
"Ma 'Lantic Ocean!" he gasped. "What will dese yere chillun be doin' next, I want to know! Puttin' up a trolley line, is they, fo' airships? Who ever heard de like?"
"Oh, air-re-ro-planes!" said Dot, having heard a new word and rather liking the rolling syllables of it. "Air-re-ro-planes are getting very common, so Aggie says. There is going to be one at the County Fair. Why, people will be riding in them just like trolley cars, pretty soon!"
"Ma goodness! No!" ejaculated the old man. "I don't want to wake up on dat day when dat dere comes to pass. Lookut, chile! If de airships was a steamin' around over our haids, we'd nebber be sure of our lives. Why, dey'd be throwin' over ashes, and de cooks would be emptyin' garbage pails over de rails like dey does aboard steamships. Wouldn't be no sharks dere to gobble down de leavin's – no, ma'am! On'y birds. And folks aboard would be droppin' t'ings out'n de airship. An' w'en a man fell overboard – ma mercy, chile! he'd come down plump on you' haid, mebbe! No, ma'am, dey won't never 'low it," and the old negro shook his head seriously.
These perfectly good objections to the practicability of airship flying impressed the smallest Corner House girl deeply. She intended to return to talk to Sammy and Tess about it; but on her way, as she came along the path next to the Willow Street