“I know,” exclaimed Ed, suddenly. “That’s a treadmill.”
“A thread mill?” asked Walter.
“No, a treadmill—a mill that was treaded. They used to make butter in olden times by having a sheep or a dog travel around on that sort of wheel, which was geared to a churn.”
“See page one hundred and eight Encyclopedia Fosteria,” put in Jack, with a good natured slap on Ed’s broad shoulders. “When you don’t see what you want—ask Ed,” he finished.
Feeling that they had actually solved the mystery of the circular platform, the boys spent some time in examining the strange machine. Meanwhile the girls were peering in the broken windows of the old house, for Bess insisted that Nellie and Rose might have fallen ill after their long tramp from the strawberry patch, and that they might actually be lying within the tottering mass of mortar, beams and stones. But, of course, the fears of Bess were soon proved unfounded, and, at the urgent order of Cora, the party started again on the road to Squaton to get that “much delayed” crate of berries for Mrs. Perry Robinson.
“Keep a lookout along the road for the girls,” Cora directed, as they started off. “We might spy them resting under a tree.”
“You will never spy them,” insisted Jack. “I am going to find Rose—my Rose, and Walter has his heart set on Nellie—the Nellie. So you girls may go to sleep, if you wish, for all the good your looking will do.”
Only a joke—but many a jest begets a truth!
So the motor girls thought, in their long search for the unfortunate runaways.