"And the Twins," cried Hinpoha, forgetting her momentary offended feeling in the interest of her discovery.
"And Sirius and the Bull and the River," added Gladys. "It's just like getting a peep at the actors in their dressing-rooms before it is time for them to come out on the stage, to see the winter stars now."
"I hate to look at the stars so much," said Hinpoha, dolefully. "They make me feel so small."
"I should think that anything that made you feel small would—"
Gladys again interrupted the flow of Chapa's wit, directed this time against Hinpoha's bulk.
"I'm going to bed," she announced. There was a scramble for the robes and for comfortable places in the tonneau, and it took much adjusting and readjusting before there was anything resembling quiet in the bedchamber of the Striped Beetle. But weariness can snore even on the floor boards of a car and that long walk over the road had done its work for at least two of the girls. The last thing they heard was Hinpoha drowsily spouting:
"Let me sleep in a car by the side of the road,
Where the hop toads are croaking near-by,
With Medmangi's camera between my knees stowed,
And Gladys's foot in my eye!"
And then, when they were all nicely settled and had dropped off to sleep, Hinpoha had the nightmare and screamed the most blood-curdling screams and cried out that the apple tree was hugging her to death, which sounded nonsensical, but was really suggestive. For, in the morning she discovered that green apples are gone but not forgotten when used as an article of diet and sat doubled up in silent agony on the floor of the car and announced she was dying.
"It serves you right," said Medmangi, in her best doctor manner. "You were in such a hurry to eat them that you ate every one that came along without waiting to find out whether it was ripe or not. The rest of us stuck to the ripe ones and we're all right."
"Well, the unripe ones are sticking to me," groaned Hinpoha, unhappily.