A big touring car stood in the narrow lane, headed toward the broad highway from which Jessie and Amy had come. It was a fine car, and the engine was running. A very unpleasant looking, narrow-shouldered woman sat behind the steering wheel, but was twisted around in her seat so that she could look behind her.
In the lane was another woman. Both were expensively dressed, though not tastefully; and this second woman was as billowy and as generously proportioned as the one behind the wheel was lean. She was red-faced, too, and panted from her exertions.
Those exertions, it was evident at once to Jessie and Amy, were connected with the capturing and the subsequent restraining of a very active and athletic girl of about the age of the chums. She was quite as red-faced as the fleshy woman, and she was struggling with all her might to get away, while now and then she emitted a shout for help that would have brought a crowd in almost no time in any place more closely built up.
“Oh! What is the matter?” repeated Amy.
“Bring her along, Martha!” exclaimed the woman already in the motor-car. “Here come a couple of rubber-necks.”
This expression, to Jessie’s mind, marked the 13 driver of the automobile for exactly what she was. Nor did the face of the fat woman impress the girl as being any more refined.
As for the girl struggling with the second woman—the one called “Martha”—she was not very well dressed. But she looked neat and clean, and she certainly was determined not to enter the automobile if she could help it. Jessie doubted, although she had at first thought it possible, if either of these women were related to the girl they seemed so determined to capture.
“What are they—road pirates? Kidnapers?” demanded Amy. “What?”
The two chums stopped by the machine. They really did not know what to do. Should they help the screaming girl? Or should they aid the fleshy woman? It might be that the girl had run away from perfectly good guardians. Only, to Jessie’s mind, there was something of the refinement that pertained to the girl lacking in the appearance of these two women. She was not favorably impressed by them.
“What is the matter with the girl?” she asked the woman in the car.