She felt oddly light-headed--like someone unknown to herself. She wanted to laugh and chatter about she knew not what. She wanted to--
But here certain external happenings cruelly grabbed her attention. Old Ben, who had seemed to slow down obligingly upon the girls' greeting of Raymond, had refused to heed Tess's tugging effort to bring him to a standstill. To be sure, he moved more slowly, but move he did, and determinedly; till--merciful heaven!--he came to a dead and purposeful halt in front of the saloon. Not “a saloon,” but “the saloon!”
Now, more frantically than she had urged him to pause, Tess implored Ben to proceed. No local standards are so hide-bound as those of a small town, and in Cherryvale it was not deemed decently permissible, but disgraceful, to have aught to do with liquor. “The saloon” was far from a “respectable” place even for men to visit; and for two girls to drive up openly--brazenly--
“Get up, Ben! Get up!” rang an anguished duet.
Missy reached over and helped wallop the rains. Oh, this pain!--this faintness! She now comprehended the feeling which had so often overcome the fair ladies of England when enmeshed in some frightful situation. They, on such upsetting occasions, had usually sunk back and murmured:
“Please ring the bell--a glass of wine!” And Missy, while reading, had been able to vision herself, in some like quandary, also ordering a “glass of wine”; but, now!... the wine was only too terribly at hand!
But he was not a good old Ben. He was a mean old Ben--mean with inborn, incredibly vicious stubbornness. How terrible to live to come to this! But Missy was about to learn what a tangled web Fate weaves, and how amazingly she deceives sometimes when life looks darkest. Raymond and the Stranger (Missy knew his name was Ed Brown; alas! but you can't have everything in this world) started forth to rescue at the same time, knocked into each other, got to Ben's head simultaneously, and together tugged and tugged at the bridle.
Ben stood planted, with his four huge feet firmly set, defying any force in heaven or earth to budge them. His head, despite all the boys could do, maintained a relaxed attitude--a contradiction in terms justified by the facts--and also with a certain sidewise inclination toward the saloon. It was almost as if he were watching the saloon door. In truth, that is exactly what old Ben was doing. He was watching for Tim. Ben had good reason for knowing Tim's ways since, for a considerable time, no one save Tim had deigned to drive him. Besides having a natural tendency toward being “set in his ways,” Ben had now reached the time of life when one, man or beast, is likely to become a creature of habit. Thus he had unswervingly followed Tim's route to Tim's invariable first halt; and now he stood waiting Tim's reappearance through the saloon door. Other volunteer assistants, in hordes, hordes, and laughing as if this awful calamity were a huge joke, had joined Raymond and the Other. Missy was flamingly aware of them, of their laughter, their stares, their jocular comments.