Jack was greatly taken with Andy, and promised to pick him up for a ride every time the Whirlwind came out Squaton way.
“Maybe you could get me a job,” said the little fellow, glancing up with unstinted admiration at Cora’s handsome brother.
“Believe I could,” replied Jack. “Let me see, what is your specialty—what can you do?”
“I am a caddy,” replied Andy proudly. “They say I’m just as quick as any of them to trace a ball.”
“Well now, that’s fine!” declared Jack. “We play golf out Chelton way. Suppose you just take a trolley ride in next Saturday, and we will see what we can do. Here is your car-fare. Be sure not to lose it, for trolley fellows are no respecters of persons.”
Meanwhile Bess and Belle were racing with Walter and Ed, and the afternoon was to them a time of that sort of enjoyment that comes unbidden, unplanned, and therefor proof against disappointment. Of course Cora was not by any means miserable, for no companion was to her more her chum than was Jack; then little Andy lent his novel personality to her surroundings, but still the thought that two young girls, Rose and Nellie, had deliberately run away, that they were practically accused of having taken a pair of diamond earrings valued at two hundred and fifty dollars, and that the case in which these stones seemed to have formerly reposed was actually found by Cora in the berry crate—was it any wonder that she did not laugh as lightly as did Bess Robinson? Or that she refused Ed Foster’s pressing invitation to go into Snow’s for an ice cream drink?
At the drug store Jack stopped the Whirlwind to allow little Andy to board a trolley car back to Squaton, but, as he left, Cora warned him to be very careful what he said about the runaways.
“Oh, don’t you never fear, miss,” he answered, crowding his negatives to make one good big “no.” “Rose and Nellie are my friends, and I know how to stick by ’em.”
[CHAPTER IX—COMPLICATIONS]
“Isn’t it strange, Jack,” almost whispered Cora to her brother, as, later that evening, the two sat on the veranda of their home, and talked over the day’s proceedings, “I cannot believe—they—took them. But it does look very——”