“I must hurry away again, Signor Baretti. I must go back to town for Miss Moore and Miss Severn,” Robin explained a little later to the Italian as she saw the last of the dormitory girls ushered high and dry into the inn. “I’ll stop here on my return trip with the girls’ umbrellas. They’ll need them when they are ready to go over on the campus. I don’t believe it will ever stop raining.” Standing in the open door of the inn she made a grimace of mock despair.
“It rain, oh, way late tonight, mebbe,” prophesied Baretti. “I have look at the sky verra hard. Well, it is not that much to be sad to me if I have not many more than the dorm girls for the dinner. After the dinner, Pedro, my man, stay here at the restaurant. I am the one to go to the town and see Sabani. I know him. I speak the verra cross words to him. He knows how I can be verra mad. I make him send the busses to the campus after the ginnasio for the dorm girls.”
CHAPTER XV.
AN UNEXPECTED SHOWER
It seemed to Robin as though the road between Baretti’s and the town of Hamilton was never ending. While she and Marjorie counted the odd little inn-keeper as their friend and a sincere advocate of the dormitory project, she was amazed at this latest proffer of friendship. She had little doubt as to what would be the result of his call upon Sabani, a fat, taciturn fellow with a surly, hang-dog manner. Among the sprinkling of Italians who lived in or near the town of Hamilton, Guiseppe Baretti was held in the light of an uncrowned monarch by his humbler countrymen.
“Baretti’s,” as his restaurant was familiarly called, had been for years the favorite rendezvous of the students of Hamilton College. Like the inn, its silent, keen-eyed proprietor had found lasting favor with the campus dwellers. From faculty to freshmen the little man was known and liked. His interest in the Travelers and their ambitious plans for a free dormitory had been awakened on the evening when Marjorie, Robin, Phil and a group of their boon companions had, in a spirit of mischief, serenaded him. Since that memorable evening, when he had entertained them with a story of his own miseries as an emigrant in New York City, his interest in their work and accomplishment had grown greater. The Travelers now numbered him as one of their staunchest allies.
“At last!” Robin exclaimed half aloud as the familiar turn into Linden Avenue appeared, only a few rods ahead. She sent the car fleeing down the wet avenue, bent on reaching the drug store at the earliest moment. She had hardly begun slowing down as the car neared the store when Phil and Barbara issued from it and ran down to the edge of the walk to meet her.
“You made dandy time,” Phil called out. “Are you sure you weren’t speeding?”
“It seemed as though I’d never reach here,” Robin declared. “I spun the car along as fast as I dared. I’ve come for you and the girls’ umbrellas.” Robin hopped agilely from the car and landed on the walk between Phil and Barbara. “We must start back in about three minutes. We’ll be late for dinner, but not too late. I’m famished. I left Lillian at the inn, starving. She’s saving her appetite for Thanksgiving dinner at home, and it won’t be served until four o’clock.”
The three promoters of happiness swung gaily up the walk, oblivious to the drizzling rain, entered the store and made an energetic onslaught upon the two make-shift racks of damp umbrellas. With the help of the proprietor and a ball of heavy twine the umbrellas were made into several bundles and deposited on the floor of the car. Barbara volunteered to keep them company on the back seat of the machine.