“With all my heart I thank you a thousand times,” said the English Elinor.
“I hope you will be very, very happy,” said the American Elinor.
Once more they kissed, as dear friends about to be separated for a long time, and Elinor Butler hurried to join her friends at the elevator. On the way, she caught a glimpse through an open door of a splendid looking old man leaning on a cane. He was very tall with the slight stoop of an old soldier, and as he glanced in her face, she saw that his eyes were the same as those of the cowboy’s who had sat out a dance with her one night in the courtyard of Steptoe Lodge.
At last the story is done. The journey across the continent has not been an unprofitable one. Through the kindly efforts of Miss Helen Campbell and the Motor Maids, lovers long separated have been reunited; hearts of stone melted into flesh and blood, and bad men transformed into good.
Before they left San Francisco, our young girls on a lark one day consulted a crystal gazer. She was only a common fortune teller but sometimes these wandering Gipsy souls make correct guesses.
“In the crystal,” she said, “I see a great stretch of water. There is a ship on it. The waves are rough. I see foreign countries. You will take a long journey across the ocean. I see a flash of red like a shooting star——”
“The Comet,” laughed Billie.
Perhaps, like the Motor Maids, you will be skeptical of the crystal gazer’s predictions concerning their future. But she spoke the truth as you will find for yourself if you read the next volume of this series. In the new book the Motor Maids will wander in their Comet through the British Isles and there many interesting and delightful adventures await them.
As the story ends, we find them gathered together in Miss Campbell’s sitting room at the Hotel St. Francis. On the next day they are to take the train for home. Mr. Stone is with them, and they are listening silently to a song Elinor is singing at the piano. It is a Gipsy song, and very appropriate. Our four girls after their summer wanderings have turned into Gipsy lasses, brown skinned clear-eyed daughters of the Zingari.
As they listen to the thrum of the accompaniment, the walls of the little parlor fade away and once more they find themselves around the camp fire under the stars on the plains.