Page:Ruth Fielding at Lighthouse Point.djvu/99

Rh of speech, her rough and ready ways, and her evident lack of the influence of companionship with refined girls were marked in this Nita's character.

Ruth wondered much what manner of home she could have come from, why she had run away from it, and what Nita really proposed doing so far from home and friends. These queries kept the girl from the Red Mill awake for a long time—added to which was the excitement of the evening, which was not calculated to induce sleep.

She would have dropped off some time after the other girls, however, had she not suddenly heard a door latch somewhere on this upper floor, and then the creep, creep, creeping of a rustling step in the hall. It continued so long that Ruth wondered if one of the girls in the other room was ill, and she softly arose and went to the door, which was ajar. And what she saw there in the hall startled her.