“How jolly of you, Ruth, and how clever! I am so glad you are going to Newport. Did you know my summer place is down there? I am only in town for a day or two. My husband had to come on business and I am with him. We shall be motoring home, soon, and may pass you if you are to take things slowly. Why not join me at New Haven? My husband’s brother is a junior at Yale, and we’ve promised to stop there for a day. There is a dance on at Alumni Hall. I’d be too popular for words if I could take you four pretty girls along with me!”
Ruth turned to her aunt with glowing eyes. “We did want to see the college dreadfully,” she said. “I have never seen a big Eastern university. We didn’t dream of knowing anybody who would show us around. Wouldn’t it be too much for you to have us all on your hands?”
“Certainly not,” said Mrs. Cartwright, “but a most decided pleasure. I shall meet you in New Haven, say, day after to-morrow, and I’ll telegraph to-night to my brother, whose name is Donald Cartwright, by the way, to expect us.”
The music was about to begin again, but, before Mrs. Cartwright went over to her seat, she put her hand on Mollie’s curls. “I must see this little girl often at Newport. Then I can thank her better for saving my lovely butterfly for me. I hope to make all of you have a beautiful time.” She put the jewel into her hair again, and Mollie looked at it thoughtfully. She was to know it again some day, under stranger circumstances.
CHAPTER VII—SHOWING THEIR METTLE
“Girls!” Aunt Sallie said solemnly next morning, as Mr. Cartwright and two footmen helped her into the motor car, while Barbara, Grace and Mollie stood around holding her extra veils, her magazines and pocketbook. “I feel, in my bones, that it is going to rain to-day. I think we had better stay in town.”
“Oh, Aunt Sallie!” Ruth’s hand was already on the spark of her steering wheel, and she was bouncing up and down on her seat in her impatience to be off. “It’s simply a splendid day! Look at the sun!” She leaned over to Mr. Cartwright. “Do say something to cheer Aunt Sallie up. If she loses her nerve now, we’ll never have our trip.”
Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright both reassured her. “The paper says clear weather and light winds, Miss Stuart. You’ll have a beautiful day of it. Remember we shall meet you in New Haven to-morrow, and you have promised to wait for us.”
Aunt Sallie settled herself resignedly into her violet cushions, holding her smelling bottle to her nose. “Very well, young people, have it your own way,” she relented. “But, mark my words, it will rain before night. I have a shoulderblade that is a better weather prophet than all your bureaus.”
“You’re much too handsome a woman,” laughed Ruth, the other girls joining her, “to talk like Katisha, in the ‘Mikado,’ who had the famous shoulderblade that people came miles to see.”