“What’s up?” asked Ben, looking over his shoulder at their retreating figures.
But nobody could answer the question. The girls were getting into their ulsters and Percy was arranging the rubber blankets and rugs in the car.
“What a confoundedly low, mean trick of that fellow to do this,” he kept saying to himself, keeping one eye on the black clouds piling up and the other on Billie and Ben. He figured that it would take an hour and a half at least to get all four tires on and, he thought, Billie would be a pretty smart girl to do it that quickly. It was half-past three o’clock.
“What about that ferry,” he said to himself.
At last they were pumping up the third tire. It seemed an age to those who were idly looking on. The girls sat in a row on the side of the road, their hands folded patiently in their laps, while Percy paced up and down, watching the top of the bluff uneasily.
“Where are Charlie and Merry?” he said at last, unable to conceal his anxiety any longer.
“Idiots,” exclaimed Nancy. “Haven’t we enough to worry us?”
While she spoke there came a blinding flash of lightning and a clap of thunder seemed to split the heavens in two.
Nancy hid her face on Elinor’s shoulder. Billie and Ben kept on working steadily. They had reached the fourth tire now and Billie had managed to patch the punctured place just as the first great drops of rain began to fall.
“Where are those boys?” Ben called over his shoulder, not stopping to look up.