“I will!” volunteered Florence, immediately. “I don’t want to go back and paw around that old lady as if to beg her for a car. I guess we can get accommodations on some train.”
“I’m with you, Flos and Daisy,” declared Ethel, briefly.
“But won’t anybody help me?” begged Marjorie. “Aren’t you a bit curious?”
“I’ll stick with you, Marj!” said Lily. “At least until the boys come and we get their advice.”
“Oh, thank you, Lily!” exclaimed Marjorie, impulsively hugging her chum. “Now we will find out something!”
“If there’s anything to be found out!” remarked Florence, cynically.
The others lost no time in consulting time-tables, and phoning about reservations, and found, to their joy, that they could leave at noon on a train for Chicago. Marjorie and Lily looked rather wistful as the locomotive pulled out of the station, leaving them all alone, save for Mrs. Hart, in this strange town. They had been secretly hoping all morning that the boys would arrive before the others left; now, as they turned their faces back toward the hotel it was their one thought. But the clerk’s answer to their inquiry was just the same as before: no one had called for them.
“Can you imagine what could have happened to them?” asked Marjorie. “I thought I caught a glimpse of them over at that hotel across the street, about supper time last night. Surely they wouldn’t start without us.”
“And they must have heard about the stolen car,” added Lily. “The police are investigating it already.”
The girls returned listlessly to Mrs. Hart’s room and found her engaged in the process of packing. She looked up gloomily at their entrance, and informed them that she was returning to San Francisco on the morrow.