“Oh!” gasped Jennie. “Do please find some gas, Tom. I’d be scared to death to stay out here in these woods.”
“One of the autos may bite her,” scoffed Helen, ready to scorn her own fears when her friend was even more fearful. “These cars are the wildest thing in these woods, I warrant.”
“Of course you must do what you think is best, Tom,” said Ruth, gravely. “I hope you will not have to go far.”
“No matter how long I am gone, Ruth, don’t be alarmed,” he told her. “You know, nothing serious ever happens to me.”
“Oh, no!” cried his sister. “Of course not! Only you get carried away on a Zeppelin, or are captured by the Germans and Ruth has to go to your rescue. We know all about how immune you are from trouble, young man.”
“Thanks be! there are no Boches here in peaceful New England,” exclaimed Jennie, after Tom had started off with the gasoline can. “Oh!”
A sharp clap of thunder seemingly just overhead followed the flash that had made the plump girl shriek. The explosion reverberated between the hills in slowly passing cadence.
Jennie finally removed her fingers from her ears with a groan. Aunt Kate had covered her eyes. With Helen they cowered together in the tonneau. Ruth had been sitting beside Tom in the front seat when the cars were stalled, and now Henri Marchand was her companion.
“I heard something then, Colonel,” Ruth said in a low tone, when the salvo of thunder was passed.
“You are fortunate, Mademoiselle,” he returned. “Me, I am deafened complete’.”