Mollie leaned her head against Miss Sallie’s knee, so intimate had she grown in a day and a half with that awe-inspiring person. “Is it true,” she inquired in a voice of reverence, “that every person who lives in Newport is a millionaire?”
“And are the streets paved with gold, Miss Sallie?” queried Grace. She was Mollie’s special friend, and fond of teasing her. “I read that the water at Bailey’s Beach is perfumed every morning before the ladies go in bathing, and that all the fish that come from near there taste like cologne.”
Miss Sallie laughed. “There are some people at Newport who are not summer people,” she explained. “You must remember that it is an old New England town, and there are thousands of people who live there the year around. My brother has persuaded some old friends of ours, who used to be very wealthy when I was a girl, to take us to board with them. There are very few hotels.”
Several times during their talk Ruth’s eyes had wandered a little anxiously to the sky above them. Every now and then the shadows darkened under the old elm where they were eating their luncheon, bringing a sudden coolness to the summer atmosphere.
“Aunt Sallie made me nervous about the weather with that story of her shoulderblade,” Ruth argued with herself. So she was the first to say: “Come, we had better be off. What a lot of time we’ve wasted!”
“No hurry, Ruth,” Aunt Sallie answered, placidly. “New Haven is no great distance. We shall be there before dark.”
It was fully half after two before the automobile girls had gathered up their belongings and were again comfortably disposed in the car.
“It certainly is great, Ruth, the way you crank up your own car,” Grace declared. “It must take an awful lot of strength, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” admitted Ruth, as she jumped back into her automobile and the car plunged on ahead. “But I’ve a strong right arm. I don’t row and play tennis for nothing. Father says it takes skill and courage, as well as strength, to drive a car. I hope I’m not boasting; it’s only that father believes girls should attempt to do things as well as boys. Girls could do a lot more if they tried harder. ‘Sometimes,’ Dad says, ‘gumption counts for more than brute force.’”
“Whew, Ruth! You talk like a suffragette,” objected Grace.