That volume is named “The Motor Girls on Waters Blue.” I forgot to mention that the girls, after having served their apprenticeship, as it were, in automobiles, had acquired a fine, large motor boat. In this they had many good times, though it was not this boat that figured largely on the blue waters. When Mr. Robinson had been called to Porto Rico on business he had taken his daughters and Cora with him.
How the steamer on which Mr. Robinson sailed to another island was endangered, how the Tartar was chartered by Cora and her chums to look for the shipwrecked ones, and how Inez Ralcanto, the beautiful Spanish girl, and her father, a political refugee, were aided—all this is set down in the book preceding this present volume.
It was not until after many hardships and not a little anxiety that matters were finally straightened out, and our friends came back to Cheerful Chelton, which had never seemed so homelike or so desirable, Cora said, as after the exciting episodes in what was practically a foreign land.
A fall and winter of gaiety had brought spring and early summer, in which delightful time of the year we now find our girl friends once more.
“It is gone! My car is gone!” exclaimed Cora, as they ran out of the tea room.
“Of course it is!” declared Belle. “Didn’t I see them take it!”
“Two young men, you say?” asked her sister.
“Yes. I didn’t see their faces, but I knew they were young by the way they moved about—so lively!”
“Say!” cried Cora, imbued by a sudden idea. “Could they have been Jack and Walter?”
“Your brother?” asked Bess.