GRACE AND BETTY MADE A QUICK DASH FOR SHELTER.GRACE AND BETTY MADE A QUICK DASH FOR SHELTER.
The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point.Page 83.
So they lifted the curtains and slipped out, thankful for the gravel walk that, while it was wet and slippery, was still a delightful contrast to the muddy sea of road they had left. They ran head down against the blinding rain, and gained the bottom step of the porch at the same time.
A moment more, and they had climbed to the shelter of the porch itself, out of breath but jubilant.
"Thank goodness!" cried Grace.
"And here come your mother and Mollie and Amy," chuckled Betty as the trio followed their example and raced for the porch. "I guess none of them ever knew she could run so fast in her life before. Hello, folks. Beautiful weather, isn't it?" she inquired gayly, as the three scrambled, panting, up on the porch. "You seem in a terrible hurry to get somewhere."
"Speak for yourself, John," gasped Mollie, shaking out her wet skirts and trying to regain some of her dignity by putting her hat on straight. "If you could know what I've been through forthe last hour, just coaxing the car along an inch at a time—"
"Well," laughed Betty, as she turned to the front door and pushed the bell, "I've been through a little bit of everything, myself, for the last few hours, except a good square meal. And, judging from the delightful aroma that hovers about this place," she added sniffing hungrily, "I shouldn't wonder if that oversight wouldn't be swiftly remedied!"
Then the door opened and a tall, gray-haired lady stood in the lighted doorway.
The lady stared at the bedraggled party in amazed silence for a moment. Then Mrs. Ford stepped impulsively forward.
"I don't wonder you look surprised," she said in her sweetly modulated voice, "for this is rather an unheard of calling hour. But you see we were caught in this awful downpour and had to seek your house for refuge."
"Oh, I'm sorry!" exclaimed the lady, opening the door wider and motioning them into the cheerfully lighted living room. "I didn't mean," she added with a smile, as they most willingly accepted her invitation, "that I was sorry you came, but that you were forced to come by such conditions. Won't you take off your things? But you are wet!" she exclaimed, as the girls started to remove their dripping wraps.
"And we got it all," said Mrs. Ford with a wry smile, "just running about twenty feet from our cars to your porch."
"Your cars!" the hostess repeated. "Then youmotored down. If I had known that I shouldn't have been so surprised at seeing you. Pedestrians are rather rare on a night like this."
"Yes, and motorists, too, if they have any sense," said Mollie dryly, at which they all laughed and their hostess looked still more interested.
"Please sit down and dry out a little," said the lady, indicating a grate fire which had evidently only recently been lighted on account of the chill in the air. "I'm glad I had the fire made. I must have known," she added with a gracious smile, "that you were coming to-night."
Then she excused herself, and the girls held out eager hands to the fire.
"This is bliss," sighed Amy.
"Well, this is some contrast to about five minutes ago," chuckled Grace. "I thought we were in for a night in the mud at least."
"I'll never say we aren't lucky again," agreed Betty, leaning an arm on the mantel and getting her wet skirt as close to the fire as she could. "We were just wondering," she added, addressing Mrs. Ford, "whether, if Mollie's car got stuck, you would rather have Grace and me struggle on to Bensington and get some help or stay and keep you company. Although," she added ruefully, "if we couldn't pull through that mud,I don't know what we could find in Bensington to do it."
"Probably the only gasoline vehicles they have in the place are jitneys," agreed Mollie, with a chuckle.
"I wonder," Amy broke in, apropos of nothing, "who our charming hostess is. She seems so lovely. It seems odd to meet a person like her and a house like this out in the wilderness."
"Yes, one does rather expect a farmer's wife and a rambling old farmhouse so far out in the country," agreed Mrs. Ford.
"Well, maybe her husband is a scientific farmer," suggested Mollie, adding wickedly as she turned a merry eye on Grace: "The kind Roy once said he'd like to be. Remember, Grace?"
"Yes, I remember," Grace answered in a tone that indicated the memory was not a pleasant one. "And I told him he had better drop that idea in a hurry if he expected me—I mean—any girl—" she floundered, while they laughed mockingly at her, "to have anything to do with him," she finished rather weakly, while the girls giggled exasperatingly.
"Well, I don't know," remarked Betty, in an altruistic effort to pour oil upon the troubled waters, "that I would particularly mind marrying a scientific farmer if they all have houses like thisand acres of ground with orchards and cows and chickens—"
"And potato bugs," finished Grace, while the girls laughed merrily.
"Well," remarked Mollie, with a desperate gleam in her eye, "I'd marry just about anybody who would give me a square meal."
"Goodness," remarked Betty, twinkling, "it's mighty lucky for Frank that there aren't any young men of marriageable age on the horizon just now."
The next moment she regretted her innocent little speech, for she could see that the mention of the boys had brought more vividly to Grace and Mrs. Ford and Amy the thought of Will—dear, bright, merry Will—lying wounded in some far-away hospital, how badly wounded they could not know, and dared not think.
The silence that fell upon them was broken by the sound of their hostess' voice, evidently issuing a command to some one in the kitchen. Then the lady herself swept into the room.
"I'm sorry to have kept you waiting so long," she apologized, "but I have had to help the maid get dinner on the table. She is a new one, and, oh, so utterly helpless. Then, too, I was hoping my son would come home, but since everything is ready and I know you must be starving, wewon't delay dinner any longer. If you will come, please—"
"But this is imposing upon good nature," protested Mrs. Ford, as the lady held back the portiers and disclosed an inviting table set for seven, elaborate with shining crystal and silver. "To drop down upon you from a clear—or rather, a cloudy sky—"
They laughed, and their hostess dismissed the protest with a little wave of her hand.
"It is a pleasure," she said, adding, as they took their places: "I am only thankful that a lucky chance enabled me to entertain you well to-night. I was expecting guests from the nearest farm, but since our next door neighbors are five miles down the road, they hesitated to make the trip because of the threatening weather. I guess it is just as well for them they did not come," and she paused to listen to the rain which was still pouring down in torrents.
Mrs. Ford made an appropriate answer, and the two ladies entered into a little confidential chat that left the girls pretty much to their own devices. And they were trying their best not to disgrace themselves and to pay decorous attention to what their hostess was saying, while their hearty young appetites were crying their protests aloud.
At last came the new maid whom their hostess had described as 'so utterly helpless,' looking to the famished girls an angelic being, bearing about her an aroma of tomato soup and fried chicken, more tempting than ambrosia.
Without any perceptible hesitation, the girls immediately began to eat and continued the agreeable occupation without interruption to the end of the meal, save for an answer to a question or two asked by their hostess.
The helpless maid was just bringing in an enormous layer cake to the accompaniment of admiring glances from the girls when the sound of a latch key in the door made the lady of the house look up with a start.
"It must be my son!" she said, rising hastily, "if you will excuse me a moment—"
Then came the sound of a hearty greeting in a masculine voice, followed by a slithery sound of wet clothing. Evidently the newcomer was divesting himself of some uncomfortably damp apparel. They could hear his mother speaking in a low voice—probably she was preparing him to meet the unexpected guests.
"By Jove! did you say two cars?" they heard him exclaim, and it suddenly seemed to them there was something familiar about his voice. "Now I wonder—all right, Mother. Just give me aminute to get some dry clothes on and I'll be right with you. Gosh, but I'm starved!"
The girls smiled sympathetically, for was it only half an hour ago they had been in that identically uncomfortable state.
"I bet he's nice," said Mollie to Betty, in a whisper just before their hostess once more entered the room. "Anybody with an appetite like that, has to be."
"Oh, you shouldn't have waited for me," said the lady, noting that the ice cream that had followed hard on the heels of the chocolate cake had begun to melt. "I don't know what to do with that boy," she added, smiling with a mixture of irritation and fond indulgence. "When he gets out on his motorcycle, miles mean nothing to him and time means less. He is always late to dinner."
"I shouldn't think he would have found the riding very pleasant to-night," said Betty smiling. "In fact, it is a wonder he could ride at all—the roads are almost impassable."
"Quite impassable, you mean," put in Mollie.
"Oh, he has conquered that difficulty," their hostess explained, her eyes once more lighting with pride in her son. "He has a sort of path through the woods, which, while it perhaps lacks the comforts of a state road, at least is not inchesdeep in mud. He did get caught that way once and was several hours coming a few miles."
"She said he rode a motorcycle," remarked Grace to Mollie with apparent irrelevance as the lady turned to speak to Mrs. Ford.
"Well, what about it?" inquired Mollie, as she proceeded with wonderful concentration to spear one last small but delicious piece of chocolate on the end of her fork.
"Doesn't that convey anything to your benighted mind?" Grace was drawling sarcastically when Betty leaned toward her eagerly.
"I thought his voice sounded familiar," she said. "Of course we know who he is now."
"Good evening, everybody," said the familiar voice, and they turned to find its owner strolling toward them across the room.
"Mr. Joe Barnes!" cried Mollie impulsively, then checked herself and slowly grew red.
"That's who," sang out Joe Barnes slangily, and in the laughter and greetings that followed Mollie forgot her embarrassment.
Only Joe Barnes' mother looked completely surprised and taken aback.
"You know each other, then," she rather stated than asked as there was a lull in the conversation. "I had no idea—"
"Of course you hadn't," agreed her son, as hetook the vacant seat beside her and turned upon her a pair of very handsome laughing eyes. "I didn't either until a few minutes ago, and we haven't been acquainted more than a few hours."
"Your son did us the favor of helping us out of a difficulty this afternoon," Mrs. Ford explained, taking pity on the lady's bewilderment. "To be explicit, he performed the very disagreeable operation of putting a new tire on the front wheel of our car."
"Oh, so that's it," laughed Mrs. Barnes.
"Mother, what do you say to cutting out ceremony and getting down to brass tacks?" put in Joe Barnes, eyeing hungrily the plate of steaming soup the maid had set before him.
"We don't serve them," said his mother demurely. "But I shouldn't wonder if what we have would prove more digestible."
So Joe Barnes entertained them with fun and jokes while he devoured the different courses with a thoroughness that awoke the admiration of the girls.
But no matter how conscientiously Joe did justice to the good things set before him, there was not a moment when he was not conscious of Betty—Betty on the other side of the table, dimpling and sending him back sally for sally with ready wit. What lucky chance had promptednature to send a thunderstorm that afternoon? The jolly old lady was certainly on his side!
Then when Joe had decided that nothing remained to devour, the party adjourned to the living room, where the former put some records on the phonograph.
The Barnes had a collection of very wonderful records, and for more than an hour the girls sat entranced as, one by one, Joe produced for their enjoyment, the greatest artists of the musical world.
Finally some one suggested that Betty play some of the songs they had loved in those service-filled days at the Hostess House. As the girlish voices rang out in one patriotic song after another, Joe Barnes, who was seated on the edge of a table with one foot swinging idly, fidgeted uneasily, while over his face came a sober, almost sullen expression.
"Gee, I wish they wouldn't!" he murmured to himself.
Betty presently broke into the opening strains of "There's a long, long road awinding," and the girlish voices took it up eagerly. They put into the melody all the pathos and longing of their hearts. They forgot where they were, the pleasant room faded away, and they saw only a sinister gray line of trenches, trenches that were death traps for the flowering youth of America. They were singing to the boys, their boys, and as she listened Mrs. Ford's eyes filled with tears.
Nor was she the only one of that little audience who could not listen to the song unmoved. Joe Barnes felt a great, unaccustomed lump rising in his throat, and as the hot tears stung his eyes he rose hastily and stood staring at, though not seeing, a great picture of some illustrious ancestor that hung over the mantel.
And Mrs. Barnes, looking at her son, pressed a hand over her heart, as though to still a hurt, while in her eyes grew a look of yearning.
"My poor, poor boy!" she murmured over and over to herself.
And the girls, all unaware of the emotions they had awakened, drew the last sweet note to a lingering close and stood quiet for a moment while Betty's fingers rested on the keys. Then—
"That was very beautiful," said Mrs. Barnes, trying to speak in a matter-of-fact tone. "You girls sing wonderfully together."
"We ought to," said Betty, forcing a lightness she did not feel, for as usual she was the first to sense the tense quality in the atmosphere, "for we have certainly had practice enough. We used to sing for the soldier boys at the Hostess House almost every night."
"Yes, but it was sometimes very hard to makethemsing," added Amy. "Often they didn't want to at first. But they always joined in toward the end, and the gloomiest of them went away with a smile on his lips."
"They could afford to laugh," said Joe Barnes bitterly. He had left the picture of his illustrious ancestor and had dropped down in his old position on the edge of the table, leg swinging idly. But his expression had changed. It was grim and hard.
Betty, looking at him, suddenly remembered, and she could see by the expressions on the facesof her chums that they also had awakened to the situation.
With horrible lack of tact, they had offended their kind host and hostess. That they had not done so deliberately, helped their self-condemnation not at all.
They had sung patriotic songs, they had spoken of their work at the Hostess House and of the soldier boys, while Joe Barnes, of military age and seemingly in perfect health, did not wear a uniform. Even though he were a slacker, it was terribly bad taste to tell him so in his own home, while accepting his, or his mother's, hospitality.
And something deep down in their hearts, intuition, perhaps, perhaps a sort of sixth sense born of their wide experience of boys of all ages, told them that he was not a slacker. There must be some reason, some real excuse for his behavior.
"Won't you sing some more?" asked their hostess in an attempt to relieve the situation, while she kept one eye anxiously on her son. "Surely you haven't finished."
"I'm afraid we have," said Betty, with a gay little laugh, "for the very good reason that we don't know any more songs to sing."
"And we want to hear some more real music,"added Mollie, gamely following her lead. "That is, if you are not tired."
"Oh, no, music never tires us," returned Mrs. Barnes, adding, with a little entreating glance at her son: "Will you put on another record, dear—something light and merry this time?"
"How about some dance music?" queried Joe pleasantly. He was very much ashamed of his weakness and ill temper, and was determined to make up for it. "That's about the lightest and merriest we have."
The girls assented eagerly, and in a few minutes the unpleasant episode was forgotten—or apparently forgotten. At least, for the time being it was relegated to the background, and it was not till some time later that Joe unexpectedly broached it to Betty.
The drenching downpour had changed to a sort of dismal drizzle and Mrs. Ford, upon remarking this fact had made the suggestion that they get into the machines again and try to make Bensington. But Mrs. Barnes had so promptly and emphatically negatived this that there was really no room left for argument.
"Why, even with dry roads it would take you two hours or more to get there, for at all times the road is bad between here and Bensington, but such a thing is simply out of the question withroads that are two feet deep in mud. No, you must stay for the night. I have plenty of room and am more than delighted to have you. No, please don't object, for I will not hear of your doing otherwise."
And so it had been settled, much to everybody's satisfaction.
However, Betty was very much surprised when, in the midst of a beautiful dance with Joe Barnes—for Joe was a rather wonderful dancer—the latter whirled her off toward a window seat in one corner of the room and placed her, a little breathless, upon it.
"Well," she said, that unconquerable imp of mischief dancing in her eyes, "have you any adequate excuse to offer for the spoiling of an exceptionally good dance?"
"Is it spoiled?" he asked reproachfully, as he sank down beside her. "I thought perhaps I was improving—the occasion."
She made a little face at him, incidentally showing all her dimples.
"I suppose, if I were a coquette," she said, flushing a little under the very open admiration of his eyes, "which I am not—"
"I'm not so sure," he murmured but she pretended not to hear the interruption.
"I should deny that you had spoiled the dance.As it is," she flashed him a pretty smile that robbed her words of all sting, "I'm telling you the truth."
"And I," he countered, "am telling you the truth when I say that if it were possible to talk with you and dance at the same time, I should not have brought you here. As it is, I choose the greater of the two blessings."
"It must be very important—this that you have to say to me," replied Betty, adding demurely: "Perhaps if you would tell me all about it, we could dance again."
"In other words, 'get the agony over'," said Joe, with a grimace. He waited a moment, while the girls, who had danced to the end of the record, turned it over, put in a new needle and started off all over again.
"I don't know whether it will seem important to you or not," he said at last, turning slowly toward her. "But what I have to tell you is just about the most important thing in life to me."
The tone as well as the words sobered Betty, and she turned to him earnestly.
"I shall be very glad to hear it then," she said simply.
"I—you—it's rather hard to begin," he stammered, then straightened up and faced her frankly.
"The truth is, I can't help knowing that youwondered when you first saw me and am wondering now—as any one has a right to wonder these days when they see a fellow like me in civilian clothes—"
Betty started and the color rushed to her face.
"No, I haven't—" she began, then stopped confused, remembering that she had been wondering just that thing only a few minutes, yes, only a minute before. "I mean I thought—"
"Yes, it's easy to guess what you thought," he interrupted, misinterpreting her sentence while the bitter look crept once more into his eyes. "It's easy enough to guess what everybody thinks. But," he straightened his shoulders and threw back his head, "I don't think anybody will have a right to think that very much longer. You see," he added, turning to her again and speaking more calmly, "I tried to enlist at the beginning of the war, but they told me there was something wrong here," he touched his chest, "with my lungs."
Betty gave an involuntary exclamation of pity.
"The doctor said it was just beginning," he went on slowly, "and he said—he was a good old scout, that doctor—that if I got out of the city where I could get fresh air, eggs, and milk—you know, the same old stuff—that I might succeed in curing myself up in a hurry and get in the game in time to bring in my share of helmets after all."
"Oh, so that's why you and your mother are away out here!" cried Betty eagerly, laying an impulsive little hand on his. "And you are well, aren't you? Why, you must be! You look the very picture of health."
Joe gulped a little, looked at the friendly little hand on his, tried to speak once or twice and failed, then—
"I feel just fine," he said, striving to make his voice sound natural. "I never cough any more, and I've got the appetite of a wolf—you saw how I ate to-night—" a faint smile lighted his eyes and found an answering one in Betty's. "Yet, I've been holding off for more than three weeks for fear—just for fear—everything isn't all right. You see, they've made a coward of me. I'm afraid of being refused twice."
"Oh, but you won't be!" cried Betty, with honest conviction in her voice. "I'm not much of a doctor, although I've met so many of them at Camp Liberty and heard them talk so much about different diseases that I feel I ought at least to qualify as an assistant," she paused to smile at herself and he thought he had never seen anything so pretty in his life, "and I would saythat whatever your trouble has been, it is cured now. I'm sure of it."
"Hold on, hold on," he entreated a little huskily. "If I could only believe that—"
"Say, you two over there," Mollie's voice broke in upon them gayly, "we've been trying hard to be polite and not interrupt, but the clock has just struck twelve and we have a long ride before us to-morrow—or rather, to-day!"
Betty replied laughingly, but before she could rejoin the others, Joe had whispered another question.
"You really meant what you said?" he asked.
"With all my heart," she answered earnestly.
"Look at the sun! Look at the sun!" cried Betty, sitting up in bed and gazing joyfully out at the sun-drenched landscape. "Girls, for goodness sake, wake up. How can you sleep, Grace?"
Grace groaned and opened one eye.
"House afire?" she asked sleepily.
"Of course not, Silly. But the world is."
Betty was evidently in high spirits, thought Grace, as she rolled over and regarded her critically.
"What do you mean—'the world is'?" she inquired grumpily, managing with great difficulty, to open the other eye. "Can't you talk sense?"
"Not on a morning like this," retorted Betty, running to the window and thrusting her head far out into the balmy air. "Look, Lazybones, the roads are pretty nearly dry and we couldn't ask for a more wonderful day."
"What time is it?" queried Grace, without enthusiasm. She was always unenthusiastic before breakfast in the morning, especially if she happened to get to bed rather late the night before.
"Half-past six," replied Betty, turning from the window and beginning hurriedly to gather her things together. "And we all agreed last night to get up at six. I wonder if I'm the only one stirring."
As if in answer to her question, there came a soft tap on the door and their hostess' voice speaking to them.
"Breakfast is almost ready," she said. "I had it prepared early especially for you."
"That was dear of you," replied Betty, adding with the greatest of optimism, considering that three of them were not yet out of bed: "We'll be down in ten minutes."
Although the ten minutes stretched into fifteen, it is a tribute to Betty's excellent generalship that the dressing of the other three girls was managed in that time.
But perhaps the aroma of bacon floating temptingly up to them had something to do with it after all, for they all four boasted youthfully unimpaired appetites.
However that may be, the fact remains that in fifteen minutes from the time Mrs. Barnes stopped at the door, four very pretty and veryhungry young girls gathered in the dining room, ready and eager for the day's adventure. Mrs. Ford was already there.
Joe was there too, looking even more bronzed and attractive in the morning light, and Betty, glancing at him, could scarcely believe that what the boy had told her the night before had not been a dream. That splendid specimen of young manhood refused the right to serve his country because he had lung trouble! She could not even bring herself to think that other word, that horrible word, consumption.
But there was one thing certain—she had not been mistaken in her judgment of the night before. He might once have been the victim of disease, but he surely was not now.
Perhaps something of what she was thinking was reflected in her eyes as she looked at him, for he returned the glance with so much admiration in his own that she hastily looked away and became absorbed in the bacon on her plate.
It was a very merry breakfast and a very good one, and when the time came at last for taking leave of their lovely hostess, they found themselves unexpectedly reluctant to do so.
"I wish you were coming with us," said Mrs. Ford, after the lady had waved aside her thanks for the good time they had had. "I am sure youwould enjoy the trip almost as much as we would enjoy having you with us."
"I wish it were possible for me to go," Mrs. Barnes replied rather wistfully, as they started down the steps to the waiting automobiles. "It is rather lonesome out here," then, catching a glance from her son, who was trying to carry three handbags at once, she added hastily: "But of course I love it and would miss it awfully. Joe, be careful, dear, you nearly dropped that bag in the dirt."
"I always thought I'd make good in the juggling profession," replied Joe ruefully, as he skillfully recovered the bag in question, "but I guess I was mistaken. Where do these go, Miss Billette—anywhere?" he asked, turning to Mollie.
"Yes, just throw them in," replied Mollie, carelessly, absorbed in testing out her engine. "Only leave room for Mrs. Ford, that's all."
Then, as Amy stopped to speak to Grace, Joe escorted Betty to her little racer and helped her into the driver's seat, though little help Betty needed or asked of anyone.
"It's rather a rough deal, isn't it?" he asked suddenly.
"What?" inquired Betty, surprised.
"Fate introduces us one minute, then snatchesyou away in the next, before I've had time for more than a word with you."
"Why, I remember several words we've had together," laughed Betty as she settled herself more comfortably in her seat. "Is there anything particular you want to say to me?"
Joe started to speak, evidently thought better of it, and looked up at her soberly.
"I've already told you more than I ever expected to tell any one," he said, and she stretched out an eager, sympathetic little hand to him.
"I know, and I have felt very proud of that confidence," she said earnestly.
"Then you will let me write to you and tell you how things are with me?"
"Oh, I should be so glad!" she said, and there was no doubting her sincerity.
He had no more than time to flash her a grateful glance when Grace came up and put an end to the conversation.
Amid expressions of friendship on both sides and laughing farewells, the two cars slid backwards along the drive and out on to the road. Then with a purring of engines, the little racer leaped ahead with Mollie in close pursuit. They were off once more.
It was as Betty had said. The long clear night and the bright morning sunshine had done muchtoward drying the roads and though they were still rather sticky and slippery, the girls had no difficulty in keeping up a good rate of speed.
"This is something like," cried Grace, as she stretched both arms above her head and breathed deep of the balmy air. "I could be completely happy if it weren't for one thing."
Betty had no need to ask what that one thing was, and at mention of it her thought turned involuntarily to Allen. Was he safe or had he too—she shuddered at the thought.
"Wasn't it strange?" she said, seeking to change the conversation and the trend of her own thoughts at the same time, "that Joe Barnes proved to be Mrs. Barnes' son?" It was not at all what she had intended to say, and out of the corner of her eye she saw Grace turn and look at her curiously.
"No, I can't see that it's so very strange," Grace said dryly. "At least I have seen stranger things."
"Well, you know what I mean," retorted Betty, still absently. "He is awfully nice, isn't he?"
"That's what he seemed to think of you," returned Grace slyly.
"Of course he did! Why shouldn't he?" challenged Betty, coming out of her abstraction and smiling gayly. "I like me, myself."
"That's the worst of it," sighed Grace, turning for consolation to her inevitable box of chocolates. "No matter how awful you are, we have to love you just the same. Look out, Betty," as the car took a curve on three wheels. "Goodness! you're getting to be a more expert skidder than Mollie."
"Thanks," returned Betty, executing a bow whose grace was somewhat impaired by the proximity of the steering wheel. "Willst hand me a candy, Gracie, honey? Thanks. That's a good girl!"
For a long time after that they were quiet, enjoying the swift motion, the warm wind upon their faces, the fragrance of flowers and of moist sweet earth flung to them from the depths of the woodland.
Before they knew it, they had reached the outskirts of Bensington, then Bensington itself, and were speeding through the queer little town without a thought of stopping when a warning signal from Mollie's horn brought them to an abrupt stop. Betty jumped out and ran back.
"We'll need some provisions," Mollie called to her. "Unless you and Grace think we can reach the next town by noon."
"That's what we planned to do," Betty answered. "Grace and I thought it would save timenot to stop here—and we haven't any time to waste, you know."
"All right," Mrs. Ford decided. "Perhaps it will be just as well, for we shall have to put on all speed in order to reach Bluff Point before night."
So Betty raced back to her machine and in a moment more they were off again, fairly eating up the miles. As the roads grew dryer and dryer beneath the scorching heat of the sun they made even better time until a little past twelve o'clock they entered the little village of Hill Crest.
The place boasted nothing so magnificent as a hotel, but they managed to find a little bake shop where the rosy-cheeked country woman who worked there made them up some delicious sandwiches, supplied them with tempting rolls and cake, and, wonder of wonders, set upon the table a pitcher of fresh milk.
When they had finished this rural but eminently satisfying repast, they hurried over to the one big general store to buy a few supplies that they would need that night. It was necessary to lay in only a limited amount, as Grace's aunt Mary had thoughtfully left her cottage well stocked and had informed them that eggs, chickens and vegetables of all kinds could be had fresh from the farmers round about.
Then they were off again, eyes upon that ribbon of road in front, intent upon reaching their destination before nightfall.
It was not till about four o'clock that they met with their first setback.
Betty had just rounded a turn in the road, horn honking for all it was worth, when she found herself almost on top of a huge farm wagon.
She yelled to the driver and put on her brakes hard, hoping desperately that Mollie would not run into her from behind. Grace shrieked and covered her face with her hands.
It was a narrow escape, for when the car had finally stopped there was not more than about an inch between it and the wagon in front. Luckily Mollie had been warned by the noise of the horn, and had stopped her machine just around the turn of the road. She and Mrs. Ford and Amy came running to see what the matter was.
Meanwhile Betty had recovered herself and was smiling apologetically up at the frightened driver. His horses, startled by the noise and shouting had tried to bolt, and he had had all he could do to hold them in. The result was a slightly heated condition on the part of his temper.
"I'm sorry," Betty was saying, her voice stilltremulous from the sudden fright she had received. "I thought—"
"Yes, an' I thought too," he interrupted, in a gruff, rude tone that whipped the color to her face. "It would be a heap better if some folks'd think before they done things. Durned old gasoline wagons."
And, still muttering, the angry man turned and whipped up his team while the girls stared after him dumbly.
"Old grouch," cried Mollie, shaking a vindictive little fist after the departing farmer. "If it hadn't been that you would have killed yourself too, Betty, I almost wish you had hit him."
"Well, I don't," said Grace ruefully. "Nobody ever thinks of poor me."
"I guess we had better be a little more careful in the future," said Mrs. Ford, a worried line between her brows. "Better to be a little longer reaching Bluff Point than to endanger our lives and perhaps the lives of others."
"It almost looks as if we shouldn't have any choice," said Mollie, and they looked at her in surprise.
"Well, we can't hope to pass that wagon," she explained, indicating the vehicle that was now some hundred feet in front and was waddling along at a snail's pace. "There isn't room, with the ditch on one side and the drop on the other."
"It will be easy enough if he moves to one side of the road," suggested Amy.
"He'll move over if we toot at him," added Grace.
But Mollie shook her head doubtfully.
"I'm not so sure," she said. "It would be just like him to try to get even with us by blocking the road."
"Get even with us?" repeated Betty indignantly. "I might just as well say I want to get even with him for being in the road when I wanted to pass. How ridiculous."
"Of course it's ridiculous. That's probably the reason he would think of it," insisted Mollie. "I know these farmers," she added, nodding darkly.
They laughed at her, and Betty cried gayly: "Well, we won't get anywhere by standing here in the road. I move we follow the old fellow and see what he's up to. And if he gets too ridiculous," she added, as she climbed back into the car, "I know how I'll fix him."
"How?" they asked.
"I'll bump him," she responded ferociously, and amid more fun and laughter they climbed back into the cars and started on again.
"You know, even his back looks stubborn," remarked Grace, when, coming close to the wagon and tooting the horn vigorously, the driver refused to budge from the middle of the road. "Iguess perhaps you will have to carry out your threat, Betty."
"Well, I declare if I won't," exclaimed the Little Captain, her cheeks flushing and her eyes blazing at the stubborn insolence of the man. "It would give me great pleasure to bump him clear down the side of the mountain."
"It's getting late, too," worried Grace. "Can't you do something, Betty?"
"Will you please suggest something?" cried Betty, exasperated. "There's nothing in the rules for driving a machine that covers this difficulty. I don't know what to do, unless— Did you bring the pistol?"
Grace started.
"Goodness! you're not going to kill him are you?"
"Not unless I have to," replied Betty, and at her expression, Grace laughed weakly.
"Yes, I brought the pistol," she said. "But it's down in the bottom of the bag that is underneath all the other bags in the tonneau of Mollie's car."
Betty groaned.
"And it isn't even loaded," added Grace, as an afterthought. "Mother said it made her feel safer to have it along since there aren't going to be any men with us, but she wouldn't have it loaded."
"What good is it then?" queried Betty.
"Just to scare people with."
"Well, that's what I want to do to that—man," cried Betty, trying to think of something bad enough to call the cranky farmer, who still urged his team along squarely in the middle of the road and refused to give an inch. "Only I'd like to scare him to death. My conscience wouldn't even hurt."
"It would be murder just the same," Grace suggested, with a little hysterical laugh, "whether you shot him or scared him to death."
Betty was silent for a minute or two, crawling along behind the wagon while her blood boiled and her anger surged. For Betty came from a race of fighting ancestors who were not in the habit of submitting to indignities.
"Grace, I've got to do something!" she burst out at last, gripping the wheel so tightly her knuckles showed white. "It isn't so much the valuable time we're losing, but it's an absolute necessity to show that fellow where he—"
"'Where he gets off,'" Grace finished slangily. "I know dear, but how?"
Betty shook her head helplessly and just glared.
Then suddenly Grace uttered a little cry and sat up straight in her seat.
"I have it!" she cried. "I know what we can do."
"Tell me," demanded Betty.
"Why, I know this road pretty well," Grace explained, speaking quickly. "We're not much more than ten miles from Bluff Point."
"Yes, yes," cried Betty impatiently.
"Well, there is a short detour road that juts off from the main road just a little further on, and after running parallel to the road for half a mile or so, crosses it again."
"Yes," cried Betty again, beginning to understand the plot.
"So we'll take the detour," Grace finished triumphantly, "and come out, in front of the farmer."
"And then—" said Betty with a chuckle and a gleam in her eye.
"The rest will be up to us," finished Grace. "Shall we know what to do then?"
"I'll say we shall," chortled Betty, adding with a glance over her shoulder at Mollie's car that was creeping along some twenty feet behind them: "Of course the next thing will be to tell Mollie. Will you run back Grace?"
For once Grace did not object, and without waiting for Betty to stop the car, and indeed it was hardly necessary at the rate they were going, jumped out and ran back, waving an excited hand at Mollie.
Betty heard a whoop of delight from the rear, and in a minute Grace was back in her place.
"How far is it from here?" asked Betty, scanning the road ahead eagerly. "I hope," she added, as a horrid fear assailed her, "that he doesn't turn off on to the other road, too."
"Heavens, I hope not! Oh, there it is!" she cried a moment later, as a turn in the winding road brought the crossroads to view. "Now, if he only doesn't turn down it!"
Eagerly they watched and drew a sigh of relief as the driver jogged steadily on down the main road.
"Now's our chance," exulted Betty, as she changed gears with a challenging roar and slipped off merrily down the detour road.
Sullenly the driver watched them go and then with a shrug of his shoulders, turned once more to his team.
Gayly the two cars sped along the road, bearing four Outdoor Girls bent upon revenge. The going was rough and bumpy, far worse than the main road, but the girls never noticed it.
"That was one time Grace had a good idea," Mollie was exulting as they flew along. "I never thought she was particularly brilliant before, butI have changed my mind." Then catching Mrs. Ford's eye, she added with a little laugh: "You see that's the way Grace and I talk about each other. Only," plaintively, "she says much worse things about me!"
"It will be fun," cried Amy, her eyes shining with anticipation, "to get in front of him and give that old crank a taste of his own medicine."
"He certainly deserves it," agreed Mrs. Ford, for she was as indignant as the girls at the man's insolence. "Didn't Grace say something about pretending we were stalled?"
"She did," cried Mollie gleefully. "And as luck, I mean bad luck, will have it, the mean old engine will choose the very center of the road to do it's stalling in. Bless it's little old heart," and even Mrs. Ford chuckled with her.
As Grace had said, the detour was not over half a mile long, and they soon came out on the main road again. Then they backed the cars several hundred feet down the road so as to effectually block all passage.
Betty tooted gleefully to Mollie, and Mollie tooted gleefully back again. Then they jumped from the machines and met in the middle of the road for a consultation.
"He will be coming in sight any minute now,"Betty explained hurriedly, "so we must decide on some definite plan of action."
"That's easy," said Mollie. "One of us will get down underneath the machine and pretend to be tinkering—"
"Goodness, that lets me out," said Grace in dismay. "I wouldn't get down in the dirt for fifty idiotic wagon drivers."
"Well, nobody's asking you to," cried Mollie impatiently. "I fully intend to put on my overalls and do it myself."
"Better hurry up," cried Amy, who had been glancing uneasily down the road. "He may come along any minute now and we don't want him to catch us here."
So amid much hilarity and giggling Mollie got into the begrimed overalls and proceeded to wriggle her small self beneath the car.
"I hope he hurries," she cried in a muffled voice. "It isn't exactly what you might call comfortable down here. Betty, get off my foot," as Grace wickedly stepped on her toes.
"Just hear her," cried Betty plaintively. "Everything just naturally gets blamed on me."
"Well, if you didn't, who did?" queried Mollie fiercely. "Tell me her name—"
"Betty, Betty, don't give me away," pleadedGrace, at which the girls laughed while a satisfied chuckle came from under the car.
"I knew I'd find the guilty one," Mollie was beginning when Betty cut her short with a warning cry.
"He's coming," she said, adding, as she vainly tried to straighten the corners of her mischievous mouth: "And please remember, girls, this is a very solemn occasion!"
Very anxious the Outdoor Girls looked as the grouchy old farmer came toward them. Mollie was making all sorts of noises under the car, apparently tinkering with its mechanism, while the girls kept up a running fire of questions.
"What is the matter, Mollie?"
"Can't you find the trouble?"
"Better let me get under and take a look."
"If we don't get started pretty soon, we'll not get to Bluff Point before dark."
These and other remarks like them met the suspicious ears of the driver as he jerked his team to a standstill.
"Hey, what's the matter with you?" he hailed them. "Have you got to stand right in the middle of the road? Can't you move over some?"
At this Mollie wriggled out from under the car and stood up, facing him. Her face was flushed from restrained mirth, but it might well have been the flush of indignation.
"If we could don't you suppose we would?" shequeried, rather incoherently. "Do you think I'm doing this for fun?" Then she abruptly disappeared from sight again. The abruptness was caused by the terrible fear that if she stood looking at that sour old visage another moment she would have to spoil everything by laughing.
As for the other girls, they were slowly turning purple in an effort to maintain the solemnity demanded by the occasion. A strange noise from beneath the car, promptly followed by a choked cough, didn't help them any, and they were relieved when their victim turned his suspicious gaze from them to the shallow ditch at the side of the road which was still muddy from the rain of the night before. The only hope he had of getting around them was to drive through this mud.
Without a word or a glance in their direction, he whipped up his team and started for the ditch. This was something the girls had not foreseen, and they were of no mind to let him get ahead of them again.
Grace and Amy flashed a distress signal to Betty, who stooped over Mollie's feet, the feet being all that could be seen of her, and cried with a peculiar inflection:
"I think you must have found the trouble by this time, Mollie, haven't you?"
Mollie took the hint and scrambled hurriedly to her feet.
"I think so," she said, then as her eyes swiftly took in the situation—the grim old man already struggling through the ditch intent on getting ahead of them—she jumped to her seat and started the engine. "All right," she cried gayly. "Come on, girls, jump in."
The girls jumped in with alacrity and Betty and Grace ran to the car in front. Then while the man whipped up his horses and called to them in terms far from gentle, the two cars sprang forward and were off down the road.
They turned once, to find the man urging his team to the road and shaking his fist after the "gasoline wagons." The girls waved to him merrily, before the turn in the road shut him from sight.
"I guess that will teach him a lesson," said Grace, settling back comfortably.
"Shouldn't wonder," agreed Betty absently, adding with a rueful little smile. "It was great fun, of course, but I hope we shan't meet many more of his kind, or we'll never get to Bluff Point."
"We're almost there now," said Grace. "All this part of the country is almost as familiar to me as Deepdale. When I was a little kiddie, I used almost to live with Aunt Mary."
"It's wonderful how little children love the woods and brooks and all wild things," mused Betty, adding, as the picture of Dodo and Paul, hiding in the machines and begging to be taken along, came back to her: "I almost wish we could have brought the twins with us. They would have so loved it."
"And we would have spent all our time trying to keep them from falling into the ocean," added Grace dryly. "Besides," she added, "I don't believe Mrs. Billette would have let them come. They are such little mischiefs, and she is always afraid something will happen to them."
"Yes, and they're good company for her," agreed Betty thoughtfully; "especially when Mollie is away."
After a few minutes of silence Grace suddenly clutched Betty's arm, making the Little Captain jump.
"Betty," cried the former excitedly, "we're almost there. Just around that curve—"
"Well, you needn't scare me to death," protested Betty, taking one hand from the wheel to rub the arm Grace had clutched.
"But I love it so," Grace cried, standing up only to be jerked back into her seat as Betty swung round the curve. "It's such a wonderful place!"
"Is that it up on the hill?"
"Yes," answered Grace, standing up in earnest now. "Turn up the drive—it leads to the garage at the back. And, Betty, the house stands on a little bluff looking out over the ocean. Do you hear it—the ocean I mean, not the house, Silly!"
The road that they had traveled from Deepdale to Bluff Point had led across country, Deepdale being in the interior, so that the girls had scarcely realized how close they were coming to the coast.
Now, as Betty stopped the car at the back of the quaint little cottage, that sound of romance and mystery, the soft lapping of water with the deeper undertone of waves against rock came up to her and she threw back her head with a little bubbling laugh.
"I don't wonder you love it, Gracie dear," she said. "I do already. It's glorious."
They jumped out and ran back to meet Mollie's car, which was puffing like an old man up the steep grade.
"The ocean! The ocean!" cried Betty ecstatically, as she opened the doors and the girls tumbled out. "Do you smell it? Do you hear it? Oh, girls, hurry up, I can't wait to feel it!"
"Goodness, are you going to commit suicide?"cried Mollie. "If that's what you want, I don't see why you bothered to come away up here."
"Mother, Mother, give me the key, quick," demanded Grace, as they ran around the side of the house and Betty made a face at Mollie. "You haven't forgotten it, have you?"
"No, I tied it on a ribbon around my neck," said Mrs. Ford, with a smile. "I had no intention of forgetting it. Here it is."
"Thank you."
Grace fitted the key in the lock and opened the door, but when she turned, expecting to find the girls at her back, she found that they had deserted her.
They were standing, gazing out over a gleaming white stretch of sand to the shimmering water beyond, absolutely oblivious to everything but the beauty of the scene.
The bluff on which they stood sloped gently down to the beach below. Once down there, the girls knew they would feel as though they were isolated from all the rest of the world, for the beach was in the form of a semi-circle, surrounded on three sides by rocky bluffs and blocked off in front by the ocean.
"How beautiful!" breathed Betty, as Grace stole up and joined them. "We've seen a great many wonderful views, but I never saw one toequal this. Just look at the reflection of the sun out there."
"Blood red," murmured Mollie. "That looks like a hot day to-morrow."
"All the more excuse for taking a swim," put in Amy, adding longingly: "I wish it weren't too late now."
"I'm afraid it is," said Mrs. Ford, seizing her opportunity. "We still have to put the cars away and get our provisions and cook supper—"
"Who said 'supper'?" Mollie demanded hungrily. "Mrs. Ford," she added, as they started for the house, "won't you please make Betty make some biscuits?"
"But you make as good biscuits as I do," protested Betty.
"No, I don't, Darling," denied Mollie, putting an arm about her chum. "And, anyway," she added convincingly, "I can eat more when I don't have to make them!"
The girls were almost as pleased with the interior of the house as they had been with its surroundings. There were odd little passages and unexpected window seats such as Betty had dreamed of having in her own little home some day.
The thought brought back the picture of Allen as he had gone away, gallant, hopeful, brave—oh, so brave—and involuntarily she uttered a little sigh.
"Please don't do that," said Grace, as they entered the room they were to have together. "I'm trying my best not to be as gloomy as I feel. But if you begin to sigh, I'll just have to give up and spoil the party."
"I won't," said Betty, trying a little smile before the mirror and doing it pretty successfully. "I didn't mean to that time, only, I was—just thinking."
"I know," said Grace a little petulantly, as she pulled off her hat and threw it on the bed. "It seems to me that's all I'm ever doing—'just thinking.' If I could only really do something! Some time I'll scream aloud!"
"Well, don't you think we're all pretty much in the same fix?" suggested Betty gently, coming over and putting an arm about her.
"I suppose so," she answered, eyes fixed moodily on the floor. "Only the rest of you have only one to worry about, while I—" she stopped, flushed, and began letting down her thick hair. "If I could only cry!"
"I imagine that might help us all," said Betty wistfully, adding, with a touch of her old gayety: "Perhaps I can arrange it after supper."
"What?" asked Grace.
"A cry party," she answered, and the absurdity of it made them both laugh.
In spite of the shadow hanging over them, dinner that night was a great success. Everybody pitched in, and, having acquired ravenous appetites on their long ride, did the cooking in record time, and of course everything tasted ambrosial.
After dinner they wandered out on the veranda, which was almost as big as the rest of the house put together. It was a wonderful night, with the moon so bright that it shed a magic silver radiance over everything while the lapping of the water came softly up to them.
Suddenly Mollie's hand slipped into Betty's where they stood together looking out.
"On such a night as this," breathed Mollie, scarcely above a whisper, "there should be nothing but peace in the world."
"Should be—yes," agreed Betty, a little bitterly. "But things are not always as they should be!"