“Don’t worry Bab, dear,” urged Ruth. “I should have looked out for the road, too. It can’t be helped.”
“But I am going to help. You can just rely on that,” announced Barbara, shaking her brown curls defiantly. She had taken off her hat in the exertion of trying to help Ruth. “We passed a sleepy-looking old farm a little way back, but I am going to wake it up!”
She heard Miss Sallie and the girls returning to the shelter of the car, for the rain had suddenly come down in torrents. Down the road sped Bab, shaking her head like a little brown Shetland pony.
Miss Sallie was in the depths of despair.
“Child,” she said sternly to Ruth, “get into the car out of that mud. We will remain here, under the shelter of the covers until morning. Then, if we are alive, I myself will walk to the nearest town and telegraph your father. We will take the next train back to New York.” Miss Sallie spoke with the extreme severity due to a rheumatic shoulder that had been disregarded.
“Please let me keep on trying, Aunt Sallie,” pleaded Ruth. “I’ll get the tire on, or some one will come along to help me. I am so sorry, for I know it is all my fault.”
“Never mind, Ruth; but you are to come into this car.” And Ruth, covered with mud, was obliged to give in.
“Where, I should like to know,” demanded Miss Sallie, “is Barbara?”
Through the rain they could hear the patter, patter of a horse’s hoofs.