"Goodness, Will had better look out," chaffed Mollie, a little gleam of humor shining through her weariness. "I always thought you had it in you to run off with a chauffeur, Amy."
Before Amy had time to retort they saw a stalwart and familiar figure swinging toward them and recognized Sergeant Mullins.
"Good afternoon," he called to them, with the smile that always so surprisingly lighted up his usually grave face. "You look as if you had had rather an exciting time of it."
"Oh, we did almost have such a beautiful adventure!" cried Mollie, her eyes sparkling with the memory of it.
"And all we really got," said Grace gloomily, "were four pairs of sore feet."
Sergeant Mullins laughed at her with the rest, then asked, with real interest:
"But the adventure that you almost had,—would you mind telling me about it?"
Whereupon Betty launched into a full and graphic account of the chase in somebody else's automobile after an unknown criminal who, at the last minute, had escaped in an apparently impossible manner.
"And that's all there is to it," she finished plaintively. "After all our trouble and everything, we find ourselves just where we were before."
The sergeant looked very grave.