When the party arrived, Mrs. Cartwright, still in her yachting suit, ran out to meet them. Ruth came to the door, walking a little stiffly. Barbara followed her, and straightway begged Mollie not to cry.
“It’s all over, silly little Mollie,” she whispered, “and neither Ruth nor I am hurt. We are just a little scratched, and very dirty, and we want to go to bed.”
“Mr. Cartwright has already had the doctor in to see us, Auntie,” said Ruth. “He is in the drawing room now. We have no broken bones or strains, though my shoulders ache rather badly.”
Mollie and Grace were both crying, just because there was nothing, now, for them to cry about.
Miss Sallie made Ruth sit down again, as her niece was almost too weak to stand. After listening in silence to Ruth’s story, Aunt Sallie held out her hand to Mr. Cartwright. “My brother and I can never thank you, and I shall not attempt it. Ruth means all our world.” Then she turned to Barbara, and gathered her in her arms. “My child,” she said, “you are the bravest girl I ever knew.” Miss Stuart choked, and could say no more.
“Do you remember, Bab,” asked Mollie, when Barbara was safe in her own bed, “how once you said you would one day repay Ruth and Mr. Stuart for their kindness to us? Well, I think, and I know they will think, that you have kept your promise. Yes; I’m going to let her go to sleep, Miss Sallie,” Mollie called back, in answer to Miss Stuart’s remonstrance.
Ruth and Barbara were utterly worn out, and had been put into warm baths and rubbed down with alcohol. “I am not even going to give two such sensible girls doses of aromatic spirits of ammonia,” declared the doctor, who had driven over from Mrs. Cartwright’s with them and had seen the girls safely in bed. “They will be all right in a day or two,” he assured Miss Sallie, “as soon as they get over the nervous shock.”
It took six telegrams to Mr. Stuart and Mrs. Thurston to persuade them the girls were unhurt and able to remain in Newport.
CHAPTER XVII—THE FORTUNE-TELLERS
“My dears,” said Mrs. Cartwright, two days after the accident, coming into the sitting-room, where Ruth and Bab were idling, “I suppose you know that you are the heroines of Newport. No one is talking about anything but your accident. You have almost put the jewel robbery out of our minds. How do you feel this morning?”