When she heard nothing from them again on the morning of the thirtieth, she grew anxious and called Mrs. Haydock on the telephone.
"I don't want to alarm you, Miss Carlton," answered Louise's mother, "but I am afraid something has happened."
"Why? What makes you think so? Because we haven't heard from them since the twenty-seventh?"
"Not only that," replied Mrs. Haydock. "But I put in a long distance call for Ted Mackay—Louise said they would keep him informed of their whereabouts, in case they had any difficulties—and I got the message that he had gone to Canada in search of two missing flyers!"
"Canada!" repeated Miss Carlton, aghast. "That couldn't be our girls! They were going to New York."
"So I understood. But they may have gone on to Canada.... Well, let us hope that Ted flew up to search for someone else. All we can do is wait."
"Oh, those dreadful airplanes!" wailed Miss Carlton, hysterically. "I wish they had never been invented.... Well, I'll call my brother," she concluded, for she had no idea what to do.
That, of course, was the difficulty everybody met—every one of Linda Carlton's and Louise Haydock's friends at Spring City, when the news got around that the girls were lost. Nobody knew where they were; nobody had any way of helping find them.
Anxiety for them spread over the little town where they were so popular. Particularly at the Flying Club, where their most intimate friends were gathered that afternoon to play bridge or to dance, as the mood seized them. A skating party which had been planned by Dot Crowley and Jim Valier had to be canceled on account of a heavy snow the night before. Even now the storm was still raging, reminding them all the more of their two friends with the open Arrow.
Dot Crowley, however, resolutely decided to be hopeful, to make an effort to dispel the gloom that threatened to engulf them all.