Читать книгу Jessica, the Heiress - Raymond Evelyn - Страница 6

The shrieks were uttered by Elsa Winkler, who frantically rushed to the horse block, demanding: “Where? Where?”

Mrs. Trent gave one glance at the rough, unkempt woman, and sternly remarked:

“Elsa, you forget yourself! Go back indoors, at once.”

The unhappy creature shivered at this unfamiliar tone, yet abated nothing of her outcry:

“My money! My money! My money!”

She had come to the ranch thinking only of Jessica’s mysterious absence, and meaning to do something, anything, which might help or comfort the child’s mother; but the long walk, for one so heavy and unaccustomed to exercise, had made her physically ill by the time she reached Sobrante. Which state of things was wholly satisfactory to Aunt Sally, who, having received the visitor with dismay, now promptly suggested bed and rest, saying:

“You poor creatur’! You’re clean beat out! If you don’t take care, you’ll have a dreadful fit of sickness, and I don’t know who’d wait on you if you did. Not with all this trouble on hand. You go right straight up into one them back chambers, where the bed is all made up ready, and put yourself to bed, and–stay there! Don’t you dast get up again till I say so; else I won’t answer for the consequences. You’re as yeller as saffron, and as red as a beet. Them two colors mixed on a human countenance means–somethin’! To bed, Elsa Winkler; to bed right away. I’ll fetch you up a cup of tea and a bite of victuals. Don’t tarry.”

“But–the mistress!” Elsa had panted. “I come so long for to speak her good cheer. I must see the mistress, then I rest.”

“The mistress isn’t seeing anybody just now, except me and–a few others. You do as I say, or you’ll never knit another wool shawl.”

“No, no. I knit no more, forever, is it? Not I. Why the reason? The more one earns the more one may lose. Yes, yes, indeed. Yes.”

“That’s the true word,” Mrs. Benton had replied; “and so being you’ve no yarn to worry you, nor no mistress to see, off to bed, I say, and don’t you dast to get sick on my hands, I warn you!”

So Elsa had obeyed the command, glad enough to rest and be idle for a time. Aunt Sally had seen to it that the visitor was kept duly alarmed concerning her red-and-yellow condition, nor had she given the permission to arise when Wolfgang and Otto arrived from their fruitless visit to El Desierto. They found the place crowded with returning searchers, and joyfully hailed the good news of Jessica’s safety. But when there was added to this the information that their own property had been found, they demanded to be taken to Elsa, and it was their visit to her room which had sent her afield, half-clad, and with thought for nothing but her lost treasure.