“Well, we might manage it,” Jack said. “We’ll talk it over, Wally. Have to see Paul, though I guess he’d fit in anywhere Bess went.”
“Oh! is that so?” cried the plump girl, blushing in her turn.
The tea room people promised to be on the lookout for the strange young men, and to notify Jack or the police if they came around again.
“But if they were the ones who took the car they won’t come back,” Walter declared.
By crowding, all the young people managed to get in Jack’s car. On the way back to Chelton a sharp lookout was kept for the missing machine, but no trace of it was seen, and Cora was much depressed when she reached home.
“Never mind,” whispered Jack, “you may use mine, Sis, until yours shows up. Don’t worry, we’ll get it yet.”
“I hope so,” murmured Cora.
CHAPTER IV—A CURIOUS STORY
Such measures as one might expect to have taken in a place like Chelton and the surrounding towns were taken by the authorities in an endeavor to recover Cora’s stolen automobile. For stolen it certainly was, and not taken in a joke. That fact was patent when several days passed and no trace of it was found and no word received as to where it might have been taken or abandoned by the two strange young men.
“They might merely have taken it to get some place, seeing that they had no money,” observed Belle, when the three girls were talking the matter over one day at Cora’s house.