"What are the plans for the day, dear?" questioned Olive, turning to Ruth.
"We are first to go to the office to pick up father. He is to take us to the Pit. I don't know where we shall go from there."
About this time a maid came up to tell them that the car was at the door. The girls hurried down, laughing and chatting, Ruth's irritation apparently having been banished from her mind. It was a bright, sparkling day. The lake glistened and the wind from it again blew the color into the faces of the "Automobile Girls."
Mr. Stuart's office was in one of the tall office buildings on La Salle Street, not far from the Board of Trade. The girls were shot up to the seventeenth floor on the elevator with a speed that fairly took their breaths away. Mollie uttered a chorus of subdued "ohs" all the way up.
Even in the staid business office the girls found much to interest them. Mollie's attention was first attracted to an energetic little machine at one side of the room. This odd looking machine ticked like a clock, but resembled one in no other way, and from it at intervals spun a narrow, ribbon-like strip of paper which curled and coiled into an elongated waste-paper basket. Mollie stood over the basket regarding the perplexing letters and figures printed on the paper ribbon.
"Do—do you make ribbons on this?" she questioned, laying a finger on the glass globe that covered the mechanism.
"Not exactly, my dear," answered Mr. Stuart. "But that little machine sometimes helps us to buy ribbons for our families. That is a ticker. It gives the market quotations. I hardly think you will be interested in it."
Mollie decided that she wasn't.
"If you are ready, girls, we will go over to the Board of Trade, where you will see the bulls and bears engaged in a pitched battle. It is to be a lively day on the floor of the Pit."
Mollie was frowning perplexedly.