“I am dying to know what you two are confabbing about,” cried Ruth, as Mr. Stuart and Barbara returned. “Have you given Bab permission to tell us?”
“Miss Barbara Thurston is a young woman of such excellent judgment,” replied Mr. Stuart, “that I shall leave the secret entirely in her hands, and rely upon her to keep it or tell it as she thinks best.”
“Well!” exclaimed Miss Sallie, “here’s a nice mystery to commence the day on! But come along, girls; we had better be starting.”
Mr. Stuart, with Bab’s assistance, gathered up the bags and suit cases piled on the porch, packing the cases on the back with the others where they were secured with straps, and putting the small hand satchels on the floor of the car. Barbara seized her own satchel rather hastily and placed it beside her on the seat.
“Why, Bab, one would think you were a smuggler,” cried Ruth. “Don’t you want to put your satchel on the floor with the others?”
“Oh, never mind,” replied Barbara carelessly. “It’s all right here,” and she exchanged a meaning look with Mr. Stuart.
“Dear me!” exclaimed Ruth. “You and papa grow ‘curiouser and curiouser.’”
Then the good-byes were said, and the big automobile went skimming down the road in a whirl of dust, leaving Mrs. Thurston and Mr. Stuart at the gate waving their handkerchiefs, until it turned the curve and was lost to sight.
The travelers lunched at Allaire, as usual, in the little open-air French restaurant, and strolled about under the enormous elms of the deserted village while the meal was being prepared. But they did not linger after lunch. Ruth was hoping to make Tarrytown in time for dinner that evening, instead of stopping for the night in New York, which, she said, appeared to be suffering from the heat like a human being. “The poor, tired city is all fagged out and fairly panting from the humidity. If all goes well, I think we should get to New York by four o’clock, have tea at the Waldorf and start for Tarrytown at five. We ought to reach there by seven at the latest. It will be a long ride, but it’s lots cooler riding than it is sitting still. Once we get to Tarrytown we can linger as long as we please.”
They whizzed along the now familiar road, through the endless chain of summer resorts that line the Jersey coast, up the Rumson Road between the homes of millionaires, and finally struck the road to New York.