“Come,” she continued, addressing the party, “we must be off at once. If the news of this runaway circulates through the hotel and reaches either your father or mine, Gladys, they’ll be wild with fright. Good-bye, Mrs. Thurston, and thank you. You’ve been awfully good to us. As for you two”—holding out her hands to Barbara and Mollie—“wait till tomorrow at lunch!”
Drawing the two Thurston girls with her, she stepped outside the door and to the gate, the rest of the party following. The machine was waiting in the road, and out of it hurried the hotel doctor toward Ruth.
“Aren’t you hurt, Miss Stuart?” he cried. “I would have come in, but Miss Thurston said she would go in first and see how you were.”
“I’m perfectly well, doctor,” smiled Ruth. “It’s too bad you had to come way out here. I hope father will not hear you have been sent for!”
She patted affectionately the nearest tire-rim of the big automobile. “Bless the ‘bubble’s’ heart,” she murmured. “He wouldn’t run away with his missus. Barbara, Mollie, this is my best friend, Mr. A. Bubble. I think you’ll get better acquainted with him before long. I wish you could come with me now, but I’m afraid neither you nor ‘Bubble’ would be quite comfortable. And you three must get along well together from the start.”
The doctor helped Ruth into the big red touring car and Gladys and Grace followed. The two men and the chauffeur crowded together in the front seat.
“Au revoir,” chorused the autoists, and “see you tomorrow,” nodded Ruth emphatically to the girls. Then, in a whirl of dust, the big machine sped out of sight.
“Isn’t she a dear?” burst forth Mollie, as the sisters turned to go back to the house. “How her eyes shine when she talks! I wonder if I could do my hair that way. I was sure she’d be nice—but what do you suppose she means by that plan? Barbara, for heaven’s sake, how did you happen to think of that umbrella stunt? It was great, but you did look so funny—like a sort of desperate, feminine Darius Green with his flying machine! No wonder you stopped the horses!”
“Oh, I heard of a man who stopped a stampede of cattle that way out West once,” Barbara answered abstractedly. There was a puzzled look on her face. “Mollie,” she said abruptly, as they entered the house, “you didn’t take our money with you, when you went into the bedroom for pencil and paper?”
“Why, no,” replied Mollie wonderingly. “It must be over there on the table now. I remember I noticed it as I came into the room. I wondered, for a second, why you’d gone away and left it so near the open window. That was before I looked through the window and saw what you were doing. It must be there,” and Mollie hurried over to the window.