"They are getting lunch," said Hazel. "Look at Jack putting down the things on the grass."
"They certainly are," confirmed Cora. "Now, isn't that nice of them?
And we have been blaming them for deserting us!"
Neither the motor girls nor the motor boys knew what the meeting of the gypsy wagons was about to lead to—serious trouble for some of the party.
CHAPTER X
AN EXPLOSION
The rain came. It descended in perfect sheets, and only the fact that our tourists could reach a mountain house saved them from more inconvenience than a wetting.
They had just partaken of a very agreeable lunch by the roadside, all arranged and prepared by the boys, with endless burned potatoes down on the menu as "fresh roasted," when the lowering clouds gave Dame Nature's warning. Next the thunder roared about what it might do, and then our friends hurried away from the scene. The run brought them some way on the direct road to the Berkshires, and in one of those spots where it would seem the ark must have tipped, and dropped a human being or two, the young people found a small country community.
The special feature of this community was not a church, nor yet a meeting house, but a well-equipped hotel, with all the requisites and perquisites of a first-class hostelry.
"No more traveling to-day," remarked Cora, as, after a wait of two hours, she ventured to observe the future possible weather. "It looks as if it would rain all there was above, and then start in to scoop up some from the ocean. Did you ever see such clouds?"
Ed said he had not. Walter said he did not want to, while the girls didn't just know. They wanted to be off, and hoped Cora's observations were not well-founded.