A distant "honk-honk" startled the girls. Cora rushed out to the road, and before the others knew what she was about she was in conversation with Ed Foster. So quickly did he run up to the Grotto in Jack's car that no one but Cora realized who he was until the machine was stopped and he was out beside her. There was a stranger with him—a business-like looking man. He did not leave the car.
"There!" exclaimed Ray. "Didn't I tell you? It was this Co-Ed business that kept her. Cora can't fool me."
"Hazel," said Cora, stepping up to the porch, "Ed thinks you had best not go on with us. Paul is not well—he is not very sick, though—"
Hazel turned white, and Cora put her arm around her. "Now you must not be frightened. It is nothing serious, and I will go back with you," she said.
"Indeed you shall not!" exclaimed Hazel, now calling up all her courage, and proving herself to be the girl she really could be in an emergency. "I shall go back with Ed, if I may."
The girls glanced from one to the other. They understood this was an emergency, that Hazel had been called back to her sick brother, yet with girlish curiosity some of them, at least, showed surprise that Hazel should offer to ride back with Ed Foster.
"But I am not going back," said Ed; "at least not until we—this gentleman and I—have followed the trail a little farther. You see, girls, we are out on a 'bear hunt.'"
But the girls did not see—only Cora looked as if she understood. She said to Hazel:
"There is no hurry, dear. You can go with them when they come back.
They have to pass this way, don't you, Ed?"
"Would you mind, Cora," said Ed suddenly, "if the gentleman outside asked you a few private questions?"