Ruth and Alice liked the farmer's wife at once. There was a stoop to her shoulders that told of many weary days of work, and she looked worn and tired, but there was a bright welcome in her eyes as she greeted the visitors. "Pa Felix," as Sandy called his father, was rather old and feeble. "Come right in and make yourselves to home," urged Mrs. Apgar. "Your rooms is all ready for ye!" "Where is the bell-boy?" asked Miss Pennington, with uptilted head and powdered nose. "I want him to take my valise to my room at once. And I shall want a bath before dinner." "Isn't she horrid, to try to put on such airs here?" said Alice to Ruth, nodding in the direction of the vaudeville actress. "Yes. She only does it to make trouble." Sandy and his father were talking together in low tones in one corner of the big parlor. "You didn't get any word; did you?" asked the old man. "No, Pa. There wasn't no letter." "Then we won't git th' money." "It don't look so." "And we'll have to lose th' place?" "I--I'm afraid so," replied Sandy. "Gosh! That--that's hard, in my old age," said the elderly farmer, softly. "I hoped your ma and I'd be able to end our days here. But I guess it ain't to be. However, this company will help us pay some of the claims. We'll do the best we can, Sandy." "That's what we will!" Alice wondered what secret trouble could be worrying the farmer and his son. Mrs. Apgar, too, had an anxious look on her face, but she tried to make her visitors feel at home. CHAPTER IV A QUEER PROPOSAL Oak Farm was a most delightful place. Ruth and Alice agreed to this even before the first meal was served. They stood at the window of their room--a large one with two beds--and gazed across the green meadows, off to the greener woodland and then to the distant hills which girt the valley holding Oak Farm in its clasp. The hills were purple now with the coming of night--a deep purple like the depth of a woodland violet--and their tops were shrouded in mist. At the foot of the hills ran a little river, and now it looked like some ribbon of silver, twining in and out amid the green carpet of the fields. "Oh, isn't it beautiful--just beautiful!" sighed Ruth. "Do you mean the odor of that fried chicken?" asked Alice, with a frank laugh, as she let down her hair, preparatory to putting it up again, in the general process of "dressing." "It is delightful; but I would hardly call it 'beautiful.'" "Oh, you know what I mean!" returned Ruth, not turning from the window which gave a view of the distant hills. "I'm speaking of the scenery." "Oh, yes, I suppose it is beautiful," agreed Alice, who, truth to tell, was not gifted with a very strong aesthetic sense. "But I suppose Mr. Pertell came here because it was so practical for the rural dramas." "Beauty counts in them, too," said Ruth, softly. "Oh, just look at the purple light on those hills, Alice!"