“Honestly, it was comical,” said Agnes, telling some of her girl friends about it afterward. “In her wet, bedraggled clothes, Tess sat on the rear seat, as prim and stiff as some old-fashioned lady, and she seemed to be pretending that she was some millionaire’s wife out in her auto taking the air.”
This was just Tess—a queer little body if ever there was one.
“Oh, ye puir bairn!” cried Mrs. MacCall, when she saw Tess. “An’ are ye the only one saved?”
“Gracious, you don’t think all the rest are drowned, do you?” laughed Neale.
“I was fearin’ that,” murmured the housekeeper. “I was fearin’.”
Tess was soon clothed again in dry garments and she went back to the picnic ground with Neale after he had stopped at the service station to have the gas tank filled.
The day was nearly over—and a glorious one it had been in spite of the accident to Tess—and soon the jolly little party was on the way home, all managing to crowd into the one automobile.
“Oh, I am having such a wonderful time!” sighed Nalbro that evening on the porch, when the boys had come over for a little talk. “It was darling of you girls to ask me down.”
“We are glad you are enjoying it,” said Ruth. “And we hope you can stay a long time.”
“If it weren’t for getting ready to go to boarding school—which means having a lot more frocks made,” murmured the Boston girl—“I could stay longer.”