“Stop laughing,” ordered Robin, herself giggling immoderately at the disaster which had overtaken them. “Your face looks even worse than mine. And bouncing Bab escaped just in time. That last bounce saved you,” she told grinning Barbara.
“What did I tell you only a little while ago?” Phil glanced up the pike in the direction in which the devastating car had disappeared. “She saw us before we saw her. She put on speed and did that stunt simply to be malicious. If we’d been half a second sooner in getting out of the car we might have had the most wonderful mud shower bath! She took the risk of smashing into our machine for the pleasure of spattering us. She’s vindictive—just as I said.”
“Leslie Cairns’ own variety of sport.” Barbara now hurried to where the two victims of Leslie Cairns’ ill nature stood wiping the thin oozy mud from their “polka dot” faces. “You should have seen the expression of her face as her car zipped by ours. She looked delighted—a wicked, hateful kind of delight. No wonder Muriel and Jerry call her the Hob-goblin!”
“I crowed too soon. A mud-splashing is something we didn’t dodge,” Phil said ruefully. “I feel as though I had been swimming in the mud. Come on, Barbara Severn, and get busy with these umbrellas. I can order you about. You’re only a senior. Help from P. G.’s will also be appreciated. I’m tired and hungry and muddy. Ah, there stands the guardian angel of Hamilton!” Phil waved a gay hand to Signor Baretti who had just appeared in the doorway of the inn.
The little man responded to the wave. Then he disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared. He returned at once with one of his olive-skinned kitchen helpers and proceeded to busy himself with the care of the umbrellas.
“We’ll let the men carry the bumbershoots inside. If we go in there we’ll not get away from the crowd for awhile,” Phil predicted cannily. “Remember our own Thanksgiving feed. Meanwhile I am starving to death by inches.”
“We’re not going inside, Signor Baretti,” Robin told the smiling “guardian angel” as the helper disappeared with the last of the umbrellas.
“I know,” the little man bobbed his head understandingly. “I know you are in the hurry. I don’t see you till is done in the ginnasio the ball game you have tell me about. You say it is done, mebbe five the clock. I go there. Wait for you. When I meet you I have for you the bus, the taxi—something to ride in for the dorm girls. Now I don’t know which these. But I find out.”