WHAT HAPPENED TO TOMMY
"Oh-h-h!" moaned Margery. "Poor Tommy has been killed."
In that terrible moment Hazel Holland came nearer to fainting than ever before in her life. She pulled herself sharply together. Margery was by this time sobbing hysterically.
"Don't do that," commanded Hazel sharply, "We must do something. Come quickly!"
Hazel started down the hillside in the trail followed by Tommy during her break-neck sprint to meet Miss Elting. The latter was already running toward the scene of the accident. Hazel recalled afterwards having wondered at the time that a woman could run so fast. Miss Elting's feet seemed barely to touch the ground. Margery, mustering her courage, staggered to her feet and followed Hazel at a slower pace, though she, too, was running.
Hazel was the first to reach the place where Grace had been hurled from the highway by the car.
"Grace!" she screamed, clambering awkwardly over the fence, dropping down on the road side. "Oh, Grace, are you killed?"
A pale-faced girl was sitting at the bottom of the dry ditch with both feet tucked under her. There was a bewildered look on her small face. She was blinking dazedly.
"Oh, dearie, are you injured?" cried Miss Elting, slipping and sliding down into the ditch beside the pale-faced Tommy.
"Yeth."
"Tell me where, what?"
"My feelingth are hurt."
"She's alive! She's alive," cried Hazel, throwing impulsive arms about the neck of her little friend.
"Your feelings are hurt? Well, dear, if that is all, you are a lucky girl," smiled Miss Elting. "Did the automobile hit you?"
"Yeth."
At this juncture, Margery made her appearance in a wholly unexpected manner. Margery in climbing the fence had caught her skirt on a nail. She plunged headlong down the bank into the ditch, almost falling on Grace.
"Oh, oh!" groaned Margery.
Hazel, laughing almost hysterically in her joy at finding Grace alive, quickly assisted Margery to her feet, wiping the dirt from Buster's flushed face.
"She isn't hurt at all," laughed Margery, fixing a glance of inquiry on Tommy's face.
"Tommy says her feelings are hurt," Miss Elting informed Buster.
"Then I am worse off than she. Because I tore my skirt and hurt my arm, too. Catch me running on another wild goose chase like this one. I don't believe the car hit you at all, Tommy Thompson."
"Yeth it did," protested Tommy. "Of courthe it did. I gueth I know. I felt it."
"Stand up," commanded Miss Elting, placing both hands under the arms of the girl and assisting her to her feet. "There! Now see if you can walk. Of course you can," comforted the teacher. "The car never touched you. You must have leaped out of the way just in time. Come, I will help you into the road, then we will take you home. But where is Harriett? I heard she was out here with you girls."
"I should not be here had not Tommy and Hazel dragged me out," declared Margery. "Violent exercise is not good for one during the hot weather."
"It'th very good for you, Buthter," remarked Tommy wisely. "It ithn't good for a growing girl to be thtout, tho I've heard."
"Don't worry. You will never suffer from being too stout," retorted Margery. "You can't keep still long enough."
"Mith Elting, I've been thitting here in the ditch for ever and ever tho long and not thaying a word, and Buthter thayth I can't keep thtill."
"Why don't you girls stop squabbling and answer Miss Elting's question?" demanded Hazel. "Harriet is at home, Miss Elting."
"Yeth, Harriet ith wathing ditheth for her mother," said Tommy. "I'd like to thee anybody make me wath ditheth if I didn't want to."
"That isn't a nice thing to say, Grace," rebuked the teacher. "Of course Harriet is a great help to her mother, as every girl should be. Suppose, Grace, that your mother could not afford to hire a servant to do these things for her? In that case I am positive you would do whatever you could to assist your mother. I believe you would make a fine little housekeeper."
Grace shook her head with emphasis.
"No? Then what would you do if your mother insisted upon your washing dishes?"
"I'd drop the ditheth. Maybe they wouldn't want me to wath any more ditheth after that," replied Tommy, screwing up her face so impishly that Miss Elting laughed aloud.
"Is it any wonder that Grace and myself quarrel awfully at times, Miss Elting?" asked Margery.
"They don't mean anything by it," apologized Hazel.
"Thay, what did you come up here for, Mith Elting?" questioned Tommy, directing a glance of suspicious inquiry at the teacher. "Do you want uth to go for another nithe little walk? No, thank you. I've walked with you before. Thank you very kindly. My feet are too thore and Buthter ith too tired. Harriet'th brother thayth that Buthter wath born with that tired feeling. I geth he'th right. Don't you think tho, Miss Elting? Thit down and retht, and I'll tell your fortune with a daithy."
"If you are rested sufficiently I think we had better move on. Don't worry, Grace. I am not going to drag you away on one of those long walks. But I have something to tell you."
"I knew it," piped Tommy. "Look out! There cometh another automobile." Tommy shied from her position in the road like a skittish horse.
Just then the car that had caused all the trouble came honking toward them and slowed down with a series of explosions that sounded like the discharges of a Gatling gun. The young woman who was driving the car, brought it to a stop, leaped out and running to Grace threw her arms about the slender girl in white.
"Oh, my darlin', my darlin'. My blessed little Tommy. Did I kill you altogether? And I wasn't going a little bit, was I? But didn't I come near to ripping the cowcatcher from that engine? Wasn't it just glorious the way I dodged the old thing? I knew all the time it was going to be a close shave, but I made up my mind I'd beat 'em out even if I took off the hind wheels of my car. Get in, you dears. I'll drive you home."
"What! Ride with you?" questioned Margery. "Not for a million dollars. It's a shame. They ought to arrest you."
"Yes, Jane," rebuked Miss Elting. "You shouldn't go racing about the way you do. Your car nearly ran over Grace."
"Dad says I drive too fast. He says he doesn't blame folks for calling me 'Crazy Jane.' He says I'll meet with an accident one of these days. But Dad has old-fashioned ideas."
Jane paused long enough to brush back two stray locks from her flushed face. Her hair was all awry and her attire showed carelessness and haste in dressing.
"Well, darlin's, if you won't go with me I think I'll go and get Harriet. She isn't afraid to ride with me."
"Please don't do that," replied Miss Elting. "We are on our way to see Harriet on important business."
"So long, then. I'm off, girls."
Jane sprang into her car and drove away with a sputter and a roar, disappearing in a cloud of pungent blue smoke.
"Isn't she a crazy creature?" demanded Margery disdainfully.
"She means well," soothed Hazel.
"Yeth. Thhe meanth to kill thomebody well," corrected Tommy.
Jane McCarthy had acquired the name of "Crazy Jane" because of her reckless driving, her harum-scarum ways and her complete ignoring of public opinion. Not a few of the residents of the little New Hampshire village feared that Jane might be brought home after one of her wild drives, with broken bones, if not worse.
In spite of her reckless manner Jane was well liked. She was good hearted and very charitable, though her charity was not always bestowed with judgment Being motherless she had practically done as she pleased ever since she began to walk, and her father, a wealthy contractor, had indulged her every whim, believing that Jane could do no wrong. Jane was prompt to take advantage of this paternal leniency, though her worst offense was that of continuously terrorizing the neighborhood in which she lived and the whole countryside as well, by her reckless driving with both car and horse.
The narrow escape of Grace Thompson from being run over by the big touring car had not shaken Jane's nerve in the least. It had shaken Tommy's only briefly. Tommy, supple and alert, had leaped from the road just in time to avoid being run down by the car. A second's delay on her part would undoubtedly have proved serious if not fatal to Tommy Thompson.
But the three girls were to see more of Jane in the near future. She was to play a more active part in their lives than she had ever before done. Just now they were more interested in what they instinctively felt Miss Elting had to say to them.
"Now, listen, girls," said Miss Elting after the roar of the car had died away in the distance. "I will tell you about the very pleasant plans I have made for you and Harriet."