She tacitly agreed with Helen, however, that it might be a good thing to toot the horn frequently. And the signal brought to the roadside an anxious group of women at a sprawling farmhouse not a mile beyond the spot where the two cars had been stalled.
“That is the Drake place. It must be!” Ruth exclaimed, putting out a hand to warn Colonel Marchand that they were about to halt.
A fleshy woman with a very ruddy face under her sunbonnet came eagerly out into the road, leading the group of evidently much worried women.
“Have you folks seen anything of——”
“Abby!” shrieked the woman Ruth had found, and she struggled to get out of the car.
“Well, I declare, Mary Marsden!” gasped the sunbonneted woman, who was plainly Abby Drake. “If you ain’t a sight!”
“I—I’m so scared!” quavered the unforunate victim of her own nerves, as Ruth ran back to help her out of the touring car. “God is going to punish me, Abby.”
“I certainly hope He will,” declared her friend, in rather a hard-hearted way. “I told you, you ought to be punished for wearing that dress up there into the berry pasture, and—— Land’s sakes alive! Look at her dress!”
Afterward, when Ruth had been thanked by Mrs. Drake and the other women, and the cars were rolling along the highway again, the girl of the Red Mill said to Helen Cameron:
“I guess Tom is more than half right. Altogether, the most serious topic of conversation for all kinds and conditions of female humans is the matter of dress—in one way or another.”