"It might hold out until we get to the hotel ahead; but I think we had
better stop before that time if we can," was Tom's comment. "I do not want
the thing to break and send us flying over a stone wall or up a tree."

"But you can fix it, Tom?" questioned Ruth.

"Sure! But it will take half an hour or more."

After that they ran along slowly and presently came in sight of a place
called the Drovers' Tavern.

"Not a very inviting place, but I guess it will do," was Ruth's
announcement after they had looked the inn over.

The girls and Aunt Kate alighted at the steps while the young men wheeled
the cars around to the sheds.

The housekeeper, who immediately announced herself as Susan Timmins, was
fussily determined to see that all was as it should be in the ladies'
chambers.

"I can't trust this gal I got to do the upstairs work," she declared,
saying it through her nose and with emphasis. "Just as sure as kin be,
if ye go for to help a poor relation you air always sorry for it."

She led the way up the main flight of stairs as she talked.

"This here gal will give me the nevergitovers, I know! She's my own
sister's child that married a good-for-nothing and is jest like her
father."

"Bella! You Bella! Turn on the light in these rooms. Is the pitchers
filled? And the beds turned down? If I find a speck of dust on this
furniture I'll nigh 'bout have the nevergitovers! That gal will drive me
to my grave, she will. Bella!"

Bella appeared--a rather good looking child of fourteen or so, slim as a
lath and with hungry eyes. She was dark--almost Gypsy-like. She stared at
Ruth, Helen and Jennie with all the amazement of the usual yokel. But it
was their dress, not themselves, Ruth saw, engaged Bella's interest.

"When you ladies want any help, you call for Bella," announced Miss Susan
Timmins. "And if she don't come running, you let me know, and I'll give
her her nevergitovers, now I tell ye!"

"No wonder this hotel is called 'Drovers' Tavern,'" said Jennie Stone.
"That woman certainly is a driver--a slave driver."

Ruth, meanwhile, was trying to make a friend of Bella.

"What is your name, my dear?" she asked the lathlike girl.

"You heard it," was the ungracious reply.

"Oh! Yes. 'Bella.' But your other name?"

"Arabella Montague Fitzmaurice Pike. My father is Montague Fitzmaurice."

She said it proudly, with a lift of her tousled head and a straightening
of her thin shoulders.

"Oh!" fairly gasped