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+Project Gutenberg's The Automobile Girls at Newport, by Laura Dent Crane
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Automobile Girls at Newport
+       Watching the Summer Parade
+
+Author: Laura Dent Crane
+
+Release Date: May 30, 2011 [EBook #36273]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AUTOMOBILE GIRLS AT NEWPORT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: “The Automobile Girls” Were Fairly Started.
+_Frontispiece._]
+
+
+
+
+                    The Automobile Girls at Newport
+
+                                   OR
+
+                       Watching the Summer Parade
+
+                                   By
+                            LAURA DENT CRANE
+
+         Author of The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires, The
+             Automobile Girls Along the Hudson, Etc., Etc.
+
+                              Illustrated
+
+                              PHILADELPHIA
+                         HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+                 Copyright, 1910, by Howard E. Altemus
+
+
+
+
+                                CONTENTS
+
+           CHAPTER                                         PAGE
+                I. Barbara to the Rescue                      7
+               II. Lost, Strayed or Stolen                   16
+              III. Ruth’s Perfect Plan                       30
+               IV. Mother’s Secret                           39
+                V. The Glorious Start                        47
+               VI. What Happened the First Day               59
+              VII. Showing Their Mettle                      71
+             VIII. “For We Are Jolly Good Fellows!”          86
+               IX. Only Girls                                93
+                X. Enter Gladys and Mr. Townsend            104
+               XI. Newport at Last                          111
+              XII. A Week Later                             121
+             XIII. The Night of the Ball                    131
+              XIV. Barbara’s Secret                         142
+               XV. Ruth in Danger                           150
+              XVI. Help Arrives                             162
+             XVII. The Fortune-Tellers                      169
+            XVIII. A Word to the Wise                       180
+              XIX. “Eyeology”                               190
+               XX. Ruth Wakes Up!                           204
+              XXI. The Capture of the Butterfly             213
+             XXII. The Tennis Tournament                    224
+            XXIII. Brought to Bay                           236
+             XXIV. Good-Bye to Newport                      242
+
+
+
+
+THE AUTOMOBILE GIRLS AT NEWPORT
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I—BARBARA TO THE RESCUE
+
+
+“Pink hair ribbons!”
+
+Barbara Thurston’s brown, bright face seemed to twinkle all over, as she
+clinked a yellow coin on the marble top of the little sewing table.
+
+“Silk stockings!” chorused Mollie Thurston gleefully. “Wasn’t it the
+luckiest thing that the hotel people wanted so many berries this year!”
+And she, too, sent a gold piece spinning over the smooth surface. “But,
+perhaps, we won’t be invited after all,” she sighed.
+
+“Nonsense!” rejoined Barbara energetically. “When Grace Carter says
+she’ll fix a thing, you can wager she will. She’s known Ruth Stuart for
+three summers now, and she’s told us we’d be invited to Ruth’s party
+this year. I can read the invitations already. The only thing worrying
+me was what we’d wear. Now the strawberry crop has turned out so well,
+and mother’s a brick, and will let us use our money as we wish—I think
+we’re fixed. Then—who knows?”
+
+“I am sure Ruth Stuart’s lots of fun when you get to know her,”
+interrupted Mollie eagerly. “If Cousin Gladys wasn’t boarding at the
+hotel with her, we’d have met her long before. Isn’t Gladys a stuck-up
+goose? Never mind. We’ll have the laugh on her when she sees us at the
+party. Let’s be de-lighted to meet her. I should love to watch her when
+she is fussed!”
+
+“After all,” mused Barbara, thoughtfully, “her father was in partnership
+with papa. It’s mighty funny that uncle got all the money. I wonder——”
+She stopped playing with her gold piece and gazed thoughtfully out of
+the sitting room window at the hot, empty, yellow road that ran so near
+the tiny cottage.
+
+Barbara Thurston was sixteen, Mollie just two years younger, and nearly
+all their lives had been spent in that little cottage. John Thurston,
+the girls’ father, had died suddenly when Mollie was only three years
+old.
+
+He had been at that time in the wholesale clothing business with his
+wife’s brother, Ralph Le Baron, and was supposed to be a rich man. But
+when his affairs were settled up, his brother-in-law, the executor,
+announced that a very small interest in the business remained to Mrs.
+Thurston. He hinted, darkly, at stock speculation on her husband’s part,
+and poor Mrs. Thurston, overcome by grief, had not wanted to question
+deeply.
+
+She, herself, happened to own the little cottage, in Kingsbridge, in
+which she and her brother had lived as children. Acting on his advice,
+she settled there with her two little girls, and had remained ever
+since, subsisting on the small income her brother regularly transmitted
+to her from her dead husband’s tiny business interest. Le Baron and his
+wife, with their daughter, Gladys, usually spent the summer in
+Kingsbridge, at the one “summer hotel” in the place; but intercourse
+between the two families had come to be little sought on either side.
+Kingsbridge was a quiet little village in New Jersey, and, except for
+the summer visitors, there was little gayety. Gladys Le Baron,
+especially, had shown herself icily oblivious of the existence of her
+younger cousins, Barbara and Mollie.
+
+These two were delightful examples of self-reliant young America.
+Barbara, the elder, looked a regular “nut-brown maid,” with chestnut
+hair that never would “stay put,” and usually a mischievous twinkle in
+the brown eyes beneath the straying locks. But there was plenty of
+genuinely forceful energy stored away in her slim, well-knit young body,
+and her firm chin and broad forehead told both of determination and
+intelligence.
+
+Her sister, Mollie, was fair, with lovely curling blond hair, and a
+quaint drollery of speech that won her many friends. Both sisters had
+grown up quietly, helping their mother about the house, as they could
+afford no servant, going to the village school, and, when they wanted
+anything beyond the plainest necessities of life, earning it.
+
+This summer both had set their hearts on “really-truly” party clothes,
+not “hand-me-downs.” Their friend, Grace Carter, daughter of Squire
+Carter, the village dignitary, had promised them invitations to “the
+event of the season,” the party to be given by her friend Ruth Stuart, a
+rich Western girl who quite recently had come to spend her summer at
+Kingsbridge. And didn’t Ruth Stuart live at the same hotel with Gladys
+Le Baron, the snobbish cousin?
+
+To meet the enemy on her own ground, and to have the fun of a party
+besides, was certainly worth picking strawberries for, thought Barbara
+and Mollie. So they scoured the country round for the sweet wild ones
+the hotel visitors liked best. Now each of the girls was fingering
+gleefully her twenty-dollar gold-piece that meant many days’ work in the
+past, but pretty dresses in the future.
+
+The prospect was too alluring for Barbara to spend much time in
+wondering about the real “why” of their fallen fortunes, though the
+question had come to her before, and would again. Now she was ready to
+join Mollie in eager planning as to “just what they’d get.”
+
+“Go get a pencil and paper, Molliekins, and we’ll set it all down,” she
+laughed.
+
+Mollie went into the further room and Barbara waited, eyes
+absent-mindedly fixed on the yellow stretch of road.
+
+Suddenly she became conscious of a curious pounding. There was a queer,
+wild rhythm to it, and it seemed to be coming nearer and nearer.
+
+Barbara put her head out of the open window. She could see nothing but a
+cloud of dust far down the road. Yet the pounding sounded louder every
+moment.
+
+Then she knew. The noise came from the furious feet of runaway horses.
+And they were coming past the house with their helpless, unknown
+victims.
+
+What could Barbara do? Her mother was asleep upstairs and there was no
+man about the place. There was no other house near. Besides, the
+slightest delay might prove fatal.
+
+All this seemed to flash through Barbara’s brain in a second. She knew
+she must act. Swiftly and easily as a boy she vaulted the open window,
+pausing only to snatch a closed umbrella that leaned against the sill.
+How glad she was she had forgotten to put it away in the closet when she
+came in from the shower yesterday!
+
+In an instant the girl sped through the gate and out into the road,
+opening her umbrella as she ran.
+
+There she paused, squarely in front of the approaching dust cloud, very
+near now. She could hear the click of the stones, cast aside by the
+flying feet of the horses, and she caught a glimpse of two black heads,
+wild-eyed and foam-flecked, through the whirling dust.
+
+Barbara strained her eyes to locate hanging bridles. But meantime,
+swiftly and mechanically, she was opening and shutting the big black
+umbrella.
+
+“If they’ll only stop!” she murmured.
+
+And they did. Fear-crazed already, their legs trembling after a terrific
+run, the horses dared not seek encounter with that horrible bat-like
+creature that seemed to await them.
+
+Scarcely five feet away, their wild pace broke. They hesitated, and
+Barbara flung herself forward and seized the dangling bridles. For a
+moment she pulled on them with wrists of steel, but it was not
+necessary. The horses drooped their weary heads and gladly stood still.
+
+Then, and only then, Barbara glanced at the carriage and its occupants.
+
+It was an open four-seated carriage, and in it were Ruth Stuart, Grace
+Carter, Gladys Le Baron and a strange young man somewhat older than the
+rest of the party. The girls were leaning back, with closed eyes and
+white faces. The young man was staring straight ahead, with a blank
+expression, fear depicted on every feature.
+
+Barbara dared not leave the horses even now. “Mollie! Mollie!” she
+called.
+
+Mollie was already out of the house. From the window, terror-stricken,
+she had seen it all.
+
+“Get the girls out,” Barbara directed. “I can’t leave these brutes,
+though I guess they’re all right now.”
+
+In the meantime, Grace and Gladys had opened their eyes. Mollie now
+stood at the carriage step, her hand outstretched.
+
+As they recognized their rescuers, Grace’s pale face lit up. Even
+Gladys, for once, tried to summon a gracious and grateful smile.
+
+“We’re all right, Mollie,” spoke up Grace, “but I think Ruth has
+fainted. I’ll help you get her into the house.”
+
+Suddenly the young man started up. “I beg your pardon,” he remarked in a
+smooth, pleasantly-modulated voice, “but you really must let me help. I
+have been utterly helpless so far,” and his glance wandered admiringly
+and a trifle shamefacedly toward Barbara.
+
+In an instant, he had sprung over the wheel and gently half lifted, half
+dragged Ruth Stuart off the seat.
+
+As her feet touched the ground, she too opened her eyes, only to close
+them again with a shivering sigh. Grace was at her side in a moment.
+
+“Try to walk to the house, dear,” Grace urged. “It’s only a few steps.”
+
+Mollie took the place of the young man, and, between the two girls, Ruth
+stumbled to the gate.
+
+The young man stepped up to Barbara. “Can I help you?” he ventured,
+looking at the now quieted horses.
+
+But a cold voice sounded from the carriage, where Gladys still sat. “I
+think you might think a little about me, Harry,” she exclaimed.
+
+The young fellow bit his lip and hesitated.
+
+“Please,” broke in Barbara, “please take her to the house. I can’t get
+these horses and this carriage through the gate. It isn’t big enough.
+But I’ll hitch them to the fence and stay with them for a few minutes.
+You must need rest, all of you!”
+
+Harry Townsend bit his lip as he caught the sarcastic inflection in
+Barbara’s last sentence, but did as he was directed, and walked slowly
+toward the house with Gladys.
+
+Left to herself, Barbara led the horses, still attached to the carriage,
+toward the fence, and hitched them by the reins in a clever way all
+country girls know. “Good boys! Poor boys!” she murmured, petting them,
+for they were still shivering pitifully with fright.
+
+For several minutes she stood talking to them. Then Mollie’s anxious
+face appeared at the door, and in a moment she stood beside her sister.
+
+“What shall we do?” she asked. “Miss Stuart is feeling very ill, and
+wants to go home at once. She and all the others refuse to step foot
+into that carriage again—and I can’t blame them; but, you know, it’s two
+miles to the hotel, if it’s a step, and we haven’t a telephone. Grace
+says Ruth’s father would send the au-to-mo-bile,”—Mollie pronounced the
+word with reverent care—“but what’s the quickest way of getting the
+message to them? Mother suggests running over to Jim Trumbull’s and
+seeing if he’ll hitch up and drive to the hotel. But it’s half a mile to
+his place, and he’s very likely to be away anyhow. What do you——?”
+
+Barbara interrupted her decisively. “I’ll just drive those horses back
+to the hotel myself, Mollie Thurston,” she said calmly.
+
+“Barbara, you can’t! It’s risking your life!”
+
+“Nonsense! There isn’t an ounce of spirit left in the poor, frightened
+things. I guess I haven’t broken Jim Trumbull’s colts for him without
+knowing how to handle horses. You go tell Miss Stuart that her
+automobile will be here in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. And see,
+Mollie,” the twinkle shone in Barbara’s eyes, “of course they’ll give me
+a ride back in the auto!”
+
+Laughing at Mollie’s protests, the plucky girl untied the horses and
+turned them carefully.
+
+“Stand at their heads, just a minute,” she cheerfully directed. Then
+Barbara gathered up the reins and climbed up to the high seat.
+
+“Drop anchor, Mollie,” she called, and trotted slowly down the road
+behind the quieted blacks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II—LOST, STRAYED OR STOLEN
+
+
+“Mollie Thurston, has Barbara driven off with those awful horses?”
+
+It was Grace Carter who spoke. She had reached the doorway of the
+cottage just in time to catch a glimpse of the departing equipage.
+
+Without waiting for a reply, she turned from the open door to the group
+inside just as Mollie rejoined them, exclaiming:
+
+“Barbara is driving the runaways to the hotel for the machine!”
+
+Mrs. Thurston started. She had been downstairs for some time helping to
+make the victims of the accident comfortable. She was a slim,
+sweet-faced little woman, whose entire world lay in her two lively young
+daughters, in whom she had unlimited faith.
+
+But, in a moment, she smiled and said, “I am not afraid to trust Barbara
+with anything.”
+
+Ruth Stuart’s lately pale face was glowing. “I think that is regularly
+splendid of her!” she exclaimed, with more animation than she had shown
+since she had left the carriage.
+
+“Oh, Barbara is used to taking care of herself,” Gladys Le Baron
+interposed with a supercilious smile.
+
+Mollie looked at her cousin a moment. “Yes,” she answered steadily, “we
+think it is a pretty good thing in our family.”
+
+Gladys flushed, and had no reply ready. Ruth looked surprised and Grace
+plunged into the breach.
+
+“Oh,” she tried to murmur off-handedly, “Barbara and Mollie and Gladys
+are cousins, you know.”
+
+“And you never——” Ruth turned to Gladys, then stopped and smiled. “Well,
+it’s awfully jolly to have met you all in this nice, informal way. Grace
+has often spoken of you,” she said.
+
+The girls had to laugh at this, so Ruth continued: “I’m well enough now
+to be proper and conventional, I suppose. I believe you know I’m Ruth
+Stuart. Mrs. Thurston, Mollie, have you met Gladys’s friend, Mr.
+Townsend?”
+
+The young man came out from the corner near the window, where he had
+been seated, and bowed gayly. Ruth nodded in a satisfied fashion.
+
+“There, doesn’t that finish it?” she sighed. “The rest of you are all
+acquainted, aren’t you? Now, won’t one of you, please tell me why those
+awful horses aren’t running still? I know some horrible white hay-caps
+started them, and Jones fell off the seat, and now we are here. Who
+stopped us?”
+
+Everybody turned to Ruth at once. “Why, Barbara stopped them,” Grace
+managed to say first. “Barbara——”
+
+A gay laugh sounded in the doorway, and Barbara herself appeared before
+them.
+
+“Now I’ve caught you!” she cried merrily, her bright eyes sweeping the
+circle. Then she turned to Ruth with a mock curtsey.
+
+“Your ladyship’s chariot waits,” she declaimed, then continuing in quick
+explanation: “You see, your driver was scarcely hurt and he rushed back
+to the hotel at once and sent the automobile along the road where he had
+seen the horses disappearing. Before I’d gone a quarter of a mile, I met
+the machine with the chauffeur, and doctor and Jones himself. We sent
+Jones back with the horses, though they weren’t bothering me a bit, and
+I came back in the automobile. How are you feeling?” and the bright
+voice softened sympathetically, as she noted Ruth’s pale cheeks.
+
+For answer the girl arose quickly, and held out both hands to Barbara.
+“You’re a brick,” she said simply. “I fainted, like a goose, and they’ve
+just told me what you did. I am so glad I know you, and I guess my
+father will be glad, too—not to say thankful! Now, please won’t you and
+your sister dine with us to-morrow? No? Make it lunch; then I’ll see you
+sooner. I won’t take no for an answer, because I have a very important
+plan. Dad decides as quickly as I do. So if you’ll only say yes—but I
+can’t tell you about it now. Perhaps, if I make you curious, you’ll be
+more interested when the time comes!” Ruth laughed mischievously.
+
+“What have you up your sleeve now, Ruth Stuart?” asked Grace, curiously.
+“I never saw such a girl as you are for chain-lightning projects!”
+
+“You’ll see,” laughed Ruth. “You’re in it too, you know. You must be one
+of my lunch party to-morrow. I know you and Mr. Townsend have another
+engagement, Gladys, so you will pardon my delivering my invitation
+before you. Now, I won’t say another word.
+
+“Come,” she continued, addressing the party, “we must be off at once. If
+the news of this runaway circulates through the hotel and reaches either
+your father or mine, Gladys, they’ll be wild with fright. Good-bye, Mrs.
+Thurston, and thank you. You’ve been awfully good to us. As for you
+two”—holding out her hands to Barbara and Mollie—“wait till tomorrow at
+lunch!”
+
+Drawing the two Thurston girls with her, she stepped outside the door
+and to the gate, the rest of the party following. The machine was
+waiting in the road, and out of it hurried the hotel doctor toward Ruth.
+
+“Aren’t you hurt, Miss Stuart?” he cried. “I would have come in, but
+Miss Thurston said she would go in first and see how you were.”
+
+“I’m perfectly well, doctor,” smiled Ruth. “It’s too bad you had to come
+way out here. I hope father will not hear you have been sent for!”
+
+She patted affectionately the nearest tire-rim of the big automobile.
+“Bless the ‘bubble’s’ heart,” she murmured. “He wouldn’t run away with
+his missus. Barbara, Mollie, this is my best friend, Mr. A. Bubble. I
+think you’ll get better acquainted with him before long. I wish you
+could come with me now, but I’m afraid neither you nor ‘Bubble’ would be
+quite comfortable. And you three must get along well together from the
+start.”
+
+The doctor helped Ruth into the big red touring car and Gladys and Grace
+followed. The two men and the chauffeur crowded together in the front
+seat.
+
+“Au revoir,” chorused the autoists, and “see you tomorrow,” nodded Ruth
+emphatically to the girls. Then, in a whirl of dust, the big machine
+sped out of sight.
+
+“Isn’t she a dear?” burst forth Mollie, as the sisters turned to go back
+to the house. “How her eyes shine when she talks! I wonder if I could do
+my hair that way. I was sure she’d be nice—but what do you suppose she
+means by that plan? Barbara, for heaven’s sake, how did you happen to
+think of that umbrella stunt? It was great, but you did look so
+funny—like a sort of desperate, feminine Darius Green with his flying
+machine! No wonder you stopped the horses!”
+
+“Oh, I heard of a man who stopped a stampede of cattle that way out West
+once,” Barbara answered abstractedly. There was a puzzled look on her
+face. “Mollie,” she said abruptly, as they entered the house, “you
+didn’t take our money with you, when you went into the bedroom for
+pencil and paper?”
+
+“Why, no,” replied Mollie wonderingly. “It must be over there on the
+table now. I remember I noticed it as I came into the room. I wondered,
+for a second, why you’d gone away and left it so near the open window.
+That was before I looked through the window and saw what you were doing.
+It must be there,” and Mollie hurried over to the window.
+
+The next moment she turned an astonished face to her sister. “Barbara!”
+she exclaimed, “it isn’t here, anywhere!” Indeed, the marble top of the
+little table was absolutely bare. There was no sign of either of the
+gold pieces.
+
+“Let’s look on the floor,” said Barbara, quietly. “One of our guests may
+have unconsciously brushed them off.”
+
+Both girls stopped and began a careful survey of the carpeted floor,
+under the table, and near the window. Their search was unrewarded.
+
+“Let’s look in the grass outside,” suggested Mollie. “You might have
+brushed them off as you went through the window.”
+
+“But didn’t you say you saw them on the table, when you came back into
+the room and found me gone?” queried Barbara, thoughtfully.
+
+“I was sure I did,” Mollie replied. “But sometimes one remembers
+imaginary things. And if the money had been in the room when I came in,
+it would be there now. I’ll ask mother——”
+
+“No, don’t,” said Barbara quickly; “at least, not yet.” Mrs. Thurston
+had gone into the kitchen directly after her return from the gate, and
+had heard none of the conversation. “There’s no need to worry mother
+about it now. Of course we must find it somewhere. Money doesn’t walk
+off by itself. We’ll go out and look in the grass under the window.”
+
+On hands and knees the girls worked through the closely cropped grass
+underneath the sitting room window. Not two days before, they themselves
+had clipped this bit of lawn with big shears, and it was so close that
+there seemed no possibility of anything being hidden in it. Certainly
+nothing was to be found. The girls even looked over the short path, and
+ground near it. “Your skirts might have switched those small things a
+long way,” observed Mollie, wisely. Yet, as before, the result
+was—nothing.
+
+Giving it up, at last, the girls sat down in a little garden seat at one
+side of the tiny yard, and looked at each other ruefully.
+
+“I am so glad I feel sure Miss Stuart will invite us to her party, now,”
+commented Mollie dryly. “Our new gowns and the pink hair ribbons and the
+silk stockings will be so awfully fetching! But where, where, where, by
+all that’s mysterious, can those double-eagles have flown?”
+
+Suddenly she looked curiously at her sister. “Barbara, you are thinking
+of something!” she exclaimed. “Have you any nameable idea?”
+
+“No,” said Barbara, quickly; “it isn’t nameable.”
+
+“All right; you never would talk when you didn’t want to,” complained
+Mollie. “And I know you want that money back as badly as I do. Tell you
+what—I’ll say the fairies’ charm. Don’t you remember the one the old
+gypsy woman taught us? Wish she were here to say it for us! She promised
+to do all sorts of things for me when I found her in the field with a
+sprained ankle and helped her back to camp. Why! why! Barbara, this is
+_uncanny_—she’s coming now!”
+
+In truth, down the road a queer little bent figure was seen approaching.
+“I know her,” continued Mollie eagerly, “by that funny combination of
+red and yellow handkerchiefs she wears on her head. Do let’s go and meet
+her and tell her—it can’t do any harm.”
+
+“What nonsense, Mollie!” laughed Barbara. But she followed her younger
+sister, who had already started down the road toward the quaint, little,
+gaudily-turbaned dame.
+
+Between them, the girls brought her into the yard, Mollie meanwhile
+busily explaining their predicament. “You’ll help us, won’t you, Granny
+Ann?” she coaxed childishly. “You said, that time that I helped you
+home, you’d always be near when I wanted you.”
+
+Granny Ann sat on the garden seat, looking gravely down at the
+half-laughing, half-serious girls huddled at her feet.
+
+“I knowed,” she began in a high, cracked voice, “I knowed my little fair
+one,” lightly touching Mollie’s curls, “would need me to-day. Far away I
+was, when I heard the shadow of her voice callin’ out to me—and miles I
+have traveled to reach her. Granny Ann is thirsty, and she has had no
+food since morning.” The old woman looked reproachfully at her
+listeners.
+
+Barbara’s eyes twinkled at Mollie’s rather crestfallen face, when the
+sybil voiced this most human request. But she said cheerily: “All right,
+Granny; supper isn’t ready yet, but I know mother’ll have something.”
+Then Barbara hurried into the house, the gypsy dame waiting solemnly
+until she reappeared, a moment later, with sandwiches, doughnuts and a
+big glass of milk.
+
+Granny Ann smiled, but she didn’t speak until the lunch had quite
+disappeared. Then the old woman rose impressively. “There’s one sure
+magic for fetching back money that has gone,” she declaimed. “Because
+you have been good to me, ‘Little Fair One,’ you and your sister, I will
+say the golden spell for you.” With her hands crossed, Granny Ann began
+to croon dreamily:
+
+  Gold is gladsome, gold is gay,
+  Here to-night and gone to-day,
+  Here to-day and gone to-morrow,
+  Guest of joy and host of sorrow.
+  Gold of mine that’s flitted far,
+  Forget me not, where’er you are.
+  Mine you are, as Pluto wrought you,
+  Mine you are, whoever’s sought you,
+  Come by sea or come by land—
+  Homeward fly into my hand!
+
+Three times Granny Ann repeated this. Then, with a queer dignity, oddly
+assorting with her variegated raiment, she turned to the girls. “It will
+return,” she said; “now, I must go to my own people.”
+
+“But I thought you said you came here for us by yourself!” protested
+Mollie.
+
+The gypsy dame drew herself up. “I travel not alone!” she said, stiffly.
+“Good-bye.”
+
+“Oh, good-bye, and thanks ever so much, Granny Ann!” cried both of the
+girls.
+
+But Granny Ann did not turn her head. Barbara looked at Mollie, her eyes
+dancing. “The blessed old fraud!” she teased; “her people decided to
+camp somewhere about, and she thought she’d come over for a call and a
+lunch, and whatever else she could get! I believe she actually expected
+us to cross her palm with silver for saying that little rhyme. But I
+wish I knew really——”
+
+All at once a faint chug-chug sounded in the distance. In a moment a big
+red touring car appeared, enveloped in dust. “Why, it looks like Ruth’s
+car!” exclaimed Mollie, excitedly. “Yes, I do believe that young man
+seated beside the chauffeur is the Mr. Townsend who was with them.
+Barbara——”
+
+But Barbara was walking quickly toward the gate. A moment later the
+automobile stopped before it, and Harry Townsend stepped out.
+
+“Miss Thurston,” he began, soberly, “have you lost any money?”
+
+“Oh, yes!” burst out Mollie, who was just behind, before Barbara could
+speak; “two twenty-dollar gold-pieces! We’ve hunted and hunted. We had
+them this afternoon——”
+
+“Then these must be yours,” said the young man, extending his hand to
+Barbara. In it were two golden double-eagles. “When the young ladies
+were getting out at the hotel these were found on the seat, and Miss
+Stuart was sure you had dropped them out of your pocket, Miss Thurston,
+during the few moments you were in the machine. I am very glad to be
+able to restore them to you.”
+
+“Yes,” said Barbara, “but I——” Then she stopped. “Thank you, Mr.
+Townsend,” she said, giving him a clear, direct glance. For some unknown
+reason the young man’s eyes wavered under it, and he climbed hurriedly
+into the automobile. “I am very glad,” he murmured again.
+
+“Miss Stuart expects you to-morrow,” he added quickly, and the machine
+backed round and hurried off.
+
+Barbara stood looking at it, the money still in her hand. But Mollie was
+laughing happily. Then she saw Barbara’s face. “Barbara, what is it,
+dear?” she demanded. “You look exactly as you did before Granny Ann
+appeared, and I asked you if you were thinking of something. What is it?
+Can’t you tell me?”
+
+Barbara shook her head. “It really isn’t anything, Molliekins. I did
+have an idea in my head, but I must be mistaken somehow. You are sure
+you saw the money on the table after I left the room? It must have been
+there, then, when the crowd from the automobile came in. I thought I saw
+some one standing near the table with one hand resting on it, when I
+came back and called out: ‘Now, I’ve caught you!’ But I must not think
+anything more about it. Please don’t ask me any questions. Let us just
+be glad we have the money back. It is queer, though. Mr. Townsend says
+the money was found on the seat. I wonder who found it, and whether it
+was found on the front or back seat? Let’s ask Grace. I don’t understand
+it. But he brought the money back, and he’s Miss Stuart’s friend. Of
+course we will keep quiet, you and I, Mollie, whether the money was
+lost, strayed or stolen!”
+
+“Well, I am sure, Barbara Thurston,” Mollie answered a little
+indignantly, “I am not likely to talk of what I know nothing about. If
+there is any mystery about the disappearance of that money, I am sure
+you have left me utterly in the dark.”
+
+“Don’t be cross,” said Barbara, putting her arm in Mollie’s. “But do you
+know if Mr. Townsend is a special friend of Gladys’s?”
+
+Mollie shook her head. “How should I know?” she said. “Let’s go in, it’s
+nearly dark.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III—RUTH’S PERFECT PLAN
+
+
+Wonderment over the mystery of the money, and excited anticipation of
+Ruth Stuart’s luncheon and “plan,” kept the Thurston girls from getting
+to sleep very early that night. They awoke bright and fresh next
+morning, nevertheless. Just before eleven they started on their two-mile
+tramp to the hotel. They were hardly out of sight of the house, however,
+when what should they see but the now familiar red car speeding toward
+them. “Look—yes, it is!” cried Mollie. “Ruth herself is making it go!”
+
+The young driver waved a free hand for a second, as she neared them,
+then wheeled in a broad turn and stopped. “I was so afraid you might
+have started,” she protested tactfully, “for it is such a fine morning
+for a nice leisurely walk. I was so anxious to see you that I simply
+couldn’t wait, and I told Dad I’d take the ‘bubble’ and spin out to meet
+you. Now, won’t you please hop in, and ride back with me?”
+
+The girls “hopped” with delighted celerity, and Ruth turned back to them
+for a moment. “I have reams to talk about,” she continued, “but, to tell
+you the truth, I want my father to be with us, when I begin. So, now, if
+you don’t mind, we’ll just ride.”
+
+Neither Mollie nor Barbara will ever forget their first ride. “I felt as
+if I had chartered my own private flying machine, and I was sure the
+angels were jealous,” Mollie confessed, naïvely, at lunch.
+
+They reached the hotel very quickly, and after a cosy chat on the
+private balcony belonging to Ruth’s tiny suite of rooms, found
+themselves seated around a little table in a cool, palm-shaded corner of
+the big dining-room. Between them, opposite Ruth, sat big, blue-eyed,
+open-hearted, Robert Stuart, Ruth’s “Dad.”
+
+Robert Stuart had made his fortune out West, in the mining country. That
+was how he started, anyway. For years, now, he had lived in Chicago,
+buying and selling real estate in the vicinity. There his wife had died,
+and there his eighteen-year-old daughter Ruth had spent nearly all her
+life. During the summers she had traveled more or less, and the last few
+years had frequently gone East. Her father’s sister, Aunt Sallie Stuart,
+had brought the girl up since her mother’s death, which had occurred
+when Ruth was a little girl. Aunt Sallie was not present at the
+luncheon, because of a bad headache. “Grace Carter has come over and is
+staying with her, like a dear,” Ruth explained. Later, if Auntie felt
+better, the girls were to go up to her room.
+
+Ruth, as has appeared, was an extremely impulsive young person.
+Fortunately, most of her impulses were inspired by a natural kindliness,
+and a cheerful, youthful energy, with a stratum of good common sense at
+bottom. There was apt to be method in her madness. Her “plan,” for
+instance, had long been her desire, but before she had never seen the
+way.
+
+Ruth couldn’t wait for the cold boullion to be taken off. “Father, I
+want to tell them now!” she exclaimed. After his cheerful, “Go ahead,
+daughter,” she burst out: “Barbara, Mollie, won’t you go on an
+automobile tour to Newport with Grace Carter and me, with Aunt Sallie
+for chaperon? Won’t you, can’t you come?”
+
+While the amazed girls could only look at her and at each other, she
+hurried on: “Oh, yes, you probably think I’m crazy. But I’m not. You see
+it’s like this: all my life I have longed to travel by myself; at least,
+with the people I want, not in a train, or a big crowded boat. Dad knows
+the feeling; it’s what makes him run away from Chicago, and get out on
+the prairies and ride and ride and ride! I’m a girl, so I can’t do that
+or lots of things. But I can run an automobile. For two years I have
+just been waiting to get the right crowd. Grace is a dear, but I wanted
+two more. The other girls I know are all right to meet at dances and to
+see now and then; but they’d collapse at the thought of starting off on
+a lark like this. You two—you’re different, I knew it the minute I saw
+you. Besides,” she continued, “Grace has been telling me things about
+you. I always know right off whether I like anybody, and it doesn’t take
+long to find out how much I like them. I like both of you a whole
+lot—and I know we will have a perfectly delightful trip if you will go
+with me. If you don’t, I simply can’t go—that’s all. It would be absurd
+setting off in that great machine with only Grace and Aunt Sallie to
+rattle around like two peas in a pod. Daddie understands, and he likes
+you just the way I do—I can see it in his eyes. So it’s just up to you!
+Do you like me a little bit—well, say enough to visit me in my
+automobile for a month or so? Oh, please say you do!”
+
+She stopped, her voice catching impulsively over the last words.
+Barbara’s eyes were shining. “I don’t believe we need to tell you that,”
+she said softly; “you must just know. But there’s mother. And we haven’t
+the money.”
+
+“Now that’s not fair,” Ruth broke in. “The money is out of the question
+altogether. You are my guests. Why, it’s you who will do me the favor,”
+she pleaded, as she caught the look of dissent on Barbara’s face.
+“Remember, if you fail me, I can’t have my trip at all—and I have been
+looking forward to it for two whole years. As for your mother, if she
+will consent to it, Dad and I have a beautiful plan, to keep her and Dad
+both from being lonely. Poor Dad is sick and tired of hotel cooking and
+I told him all about your dear little cottage and the dandy tea and
+cookies your mother makes, and—and—do you suppose your mother would let
+Dad take his meals with her while we are away? Then he won’t be too
+wretched living all alone up here. Also, you wouldn’t have to worry
+about your mother, nor would I have to worry about Dad. Aunt Sallie has
+been with him so long that I don’t know what he’d do all by himself. He
+could get on very well, if only your mother would look after him at
+meals, I know that.
+
+“Now I won’t say another word about it for the rest of our lunch. Then
+we’ll run in and call on Aunt Sallie. Afterward we will take the car out
+and see your mother, and get her to say yes! Then you’ll say it, too,
+won’t you? But don’t let’s spoil this good chicken salad, through
+worrying about it.”
+
+In a more or less complete, yet altogether happy silence, the luncheon
+was finished. Ruth and her father did not try to force their guests to
+talk, realizing that the girls would want to think. From the smiling
+glances the two Stuarts exchanged now and then it was evident they hoped
+the thinking would have a happy outcome.
+
+After the last course had been served, and the finger bowls, a sprig of
+rose geranium floating in each, had been pushed aside, Ruth said
+quietly: “Now we will go to see Aunt Sallie for a few minutes. Daddie,
+you’ll have the machine at the door?”
+
+The girls filed into the elevator, and soon were speeding down a long
+hall to Aunt Sallie’s suite, just across from Ruth’s. The latter knocked
+softly, and Grace Carter came to the door. “Yes, ever so much better,”
+Grace murmured, in reply to Ruth’s whispered inquiry. “She wants you to
+be sure to come in with your friends before they go. Yes; I am sure she
+would be glad to see them now.”
+
+As the girls entered the vestibule of the apartment, Grace gave
+Barbara’s hand a furtive squeeze, and whispered: “I’ll just never
+recover if you don’t come.” There was no chance for a reply, for a
+precise, though rather kindly voice called from the room beyond: “Ruth,
+please bring your friends in here.”
+
+With some trepidation the girls advanced toward “Aunt Sallie.” She was a
+somewhat stout woman, who reclined on a couch in a handsome violet
+negligée. She scanned the girls sharply for a moment, then in her
+carefully enunciated syllables, which contrasted oddly with her smooth,
+plump face, she said: “So you’re the young ladies who stop runaway
+horses! Well, I never could have done it when I was young. But I’m sure
+I am indebted to you, and I am happy to know you, my dears. I hope and
+trust, since my madcap niece is bound to take her trip, that you will
+come along to keep her company.”
+
+The girls smiled, and Ruth murmured to them: “You see, you really must
+come for the sake of my family!” Then Aunt Sallie stretched out two
+plump, jeweled hands and remarked: “I am sure I shall see a great deal
+of you very soon, my dears, and you will see all you want to of me. So,
+if you don’t mind, I’ll ask you to excuse me now, my head is so tired.”
+
+“She likes to take a cat-nap pretty often,” explained irreverent Ruth,
+as soon as they were safely outside the door. “But Aunt Sallie is a good
+sort, just the same, and the best possible dragon for our trip. Your
+mother needn’t be in the least afraid to trust you to her. Now for your
+mother,” Ruth added as the girls entered the elevator.
+
+In front of the broad piazza, the automobile waited on the driveway,
+with Mr. Stuart as chauffeur. “Pile in,” he smiled, and, in a trice, the
+girls were whirled homeward once more.
+
+There a mighty conference was held. At first, Mrs. Thurston simply
+gasped. Then she dumbly shook her head. Barbara and Mollie both
+protested that nothing would persuade them to leave their mother against
+her wishes. As Ruth said afterwards, “Daddie did the whole thing.” He
+explained to the girls, and to their mother, how brief the separation
+would be. To the mother he expatiated on the delights and educational
+value of such a trip. To the girls he hinted, delicately, that perhaps
+the little mother would get a bit of a rest, all by herself, for a few
+weeks, even with him to take care of. To all present Mr. Stuart enlarged
+upon the duty of charity toward him, a homeless vacation visitor,
+starving from eating only hotel food, and toward his daughter, a
+sisterless girl with a longing for friends. Though the Thurstons shook
+their heads, between smiles and tears, at the absurdity of these
+arguments, they finally said a grateful “yes.”
+
+“One really doesn’t need any clothes except veils and dusters for an
+automobile trip, and I have a big extra stock of those,” concluded Ruth.
+“I want to run up here for you people—let me see—to-day is Friday—next
+Monday morning. That’s such a nice day to start.”
+
+“Yes,” again cried Mollie and Barbara.
+
+The girls joined hands and made a low curtsey to Mrs. Thurston and Mr.
+Stuart. “Allow me to introduce you,” said Ruth in her most impressive
+voice, “to ‘The Automobile Girls’ on their way to Newport.”
+
+“Long may they flourish!” concluded Mr. Stuart, turning to the girls’
+mother. “I’ll come up with Ruth and help you start them off, Mrs.
+Thurston. Then, if I may, I will come back and have lunch with you later
+in the day.”
+
+“Till Monday!” called Ruth, and the machine whirled off.
+
+Barbara and Mollie watched it from the gate. “I wish—I wish I could do
+something for them,” mused Barbara, her chin sunk in her hand, her brown
+eyes showing that soft brightness that only came to them when she was
+greatly moved.
+
+How well she was to repay the Stuart kith and kin she could not then
+guess.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV—MOTHER’S SECRET
+
+
+Mollie danced into the kitchen, waving the feather duster. “I’m so
+happy, I can’t keep still!” she declared, waltzing in a circle around
+her mother and Barbara, who were in the kitchen washing the breakfast
+dishes.
+
+“It is just as well you don’t have to,” Mrs. Thurston laughed. “But,
+children, do be sensible a minute,” she urged, as Barbara joined in the
+dance, still polishing a breakfast tumbler. “I’ve been thinking, that
+going to Newport, if only to stay a few days, _does_ mean more clothes
+than automobile coats and motor veils.”
+
+“Now, you are not to worry, mother dearest,” interrupted Barbara, “or we
+won’t go a single step. Beside, have you forgotten the twenty-dollar
+gold-pieces? They are a fortune, two fortunes really.” Barbara had been
+doing some pretty deep thinking herself, on the clothes question, but it
+would never do to let her thoughts be known. As elder daughter she tried
+to save her mother from all the worries she could. “While there are no
+men around in the family, you’ll just have to pretend I’m older son
+instead of daughter,” she used to say. “When Mollie marries I’ll
+resign.”
+
+“I’m through dusting,” Mollie called from the dining-room. “This time I
+am surely going to get paper and pencil to put down what clothes we most
+need, if Barbara won’t stop any runaway horses while I am away.”
+
+Mollie’s golden head and Barbara’s tawny one bent anxiously over the
+paper.
+
+“Ruth’s such an impetuous dear! Starting off on our trip Monday does not
+give us time to get anything new. Mother, will you go in to town
+shopping for us, and then send the clothes on later? I suppose we shall
+be on the road some time. Ruth says we are to stop in any of the places
+we like, and see all the sights along the way,” continued Barbara.
+
+Gloves, ribbons, stockings, hair ribbons, and—oh, dear, yes! A pink sash
+for Bab and a blue one for Mollie. Forty dollars wasn’t such a fortune
+after all. Where was the money left over for the party dresses? Both
+girls looked a little crestfallen, but Barbara shook her head at Mollie
+as a signal not to say anything aloud.
+
+Mother had come into the open dining-room door and was watching the
+girls’ faces.
+
+“I’ve a secret,” Mrs. Thurston said, after a minute. “A beautiful secret
+that I have been keeping to myself for over a year, now. But I think
+to-day is the best time I can find to tell it.” Mrs. Thurston was
+fragile and blond, like Mollie, with a delicate color in her cheeks, and
+the sweetest smile in the world.
+
+“It’s a nice secret, mother, I can tell by your face.” Mollie put her
+arm around her mother and pulled her down in a chair, while she and Bab
+sat on either side of her. “Now, out with it!” they both cried.
+
+“Daughters,” Mrs. Thurston lowered her voice and spoke in a whisper,
+“upstairs, in my room in the back part of my desk is an old bank book.
+What do you think is pressed between the pages?” She paused a minute,
+and Mollie gave her arm a little shake. “In that book,” the mother
+continued, “are two fifty-dollar bills; one is labeled ‘Bab’ and the
+other is labeled ‘Baby.’” Mrs. Thurston still called her big,
+fourteen-year-old daughter “baby” when no one was near.
+
+Mollie and Barbara could only stare at each other, and at their mother
+in surprise.
+
+“Please, and where did they come from?” queried Barbara.
+
+“They came from nickels and dimes, and sometimes pennies,” Mrs. Thurston
+replied, as pleased and excited as the girls. “Only a week ago, I went
+to the bank and had the money changed into the two big bills. Oh, I’ve
+been saving some time. I saw my girls were growing up, and I imagined
+that, some day, something nice would happen—not just this, perhaps, but
+something equally exciting. So I wanted to be ready, and I am. I will
+get the prettiest clothes I can buy for the money, and I’ll have Miss
+Mattie, the seamstress, in to help me. When you arrive in the
+fashionable world of Newport, new outfits will be awaiting my two
+girls.”
+
+Mrs. Thurston’s face was radiant over the joys in store for her
+daughters, but Barbara’s eyes were full of tears. She knew what pinching
+and saving, what sacrifices the two banknotes meant.
+
+Soon Bab asked: “You don’t need me any more, do you, mother? Because, if
+you don’t, I am going up to look in the treasure chest. I want to find
+something to re-trim Mollie’s hat. The roses are so faded, on the one
+she is wearing, it will never do to wear with her nice spring suit.”
+
+There was a little attic over the cottage, and it almost belonged to
+Barbara. Up there she used to study her lessons, write poetry, and dream
+of the wonderful things she hoped to do in order to make mother and
+Mollie rich.
+
+Barbara skipped over to the trunk, where they kept odds and ends of
+faded finery, gifts from rich cousins who sent their cast-off clothes to
+the little girls. “This is like Pandora’s chest,” laughed Barbara to
+herself. “It looks as if everything, now, has gone out of it, except
+Hope.”
+
+Bump! bang! crash! the chandelier shivered over Mrs. Thurston and
+Mollie’s heads. Both started up with the one word, “Bab,” on their lips.
+It was impossible to know what she would attempt, or what would happen
+to her next.
+
+Just as they reached the foot of the attic steps an apologetic head
+appeared over the railing. “I am not hurt,” Bab’s voice explained. “I
+just tried to move the old bureau so I could see better, and I knocked
+over a trunk. I am so sorry, mother, but the trunk has broken open. It
+is that old one of yours. I know it made an awful racket!”
+
+“It does not matter, child,” Mrs. Thurston said in a relieved tone, when
+she saw what had actually happened. “Nothing matters, since you have not
+killed yourself.”
+
+She bent over her trunk. The old lock had been loosened by the fall, and
+the top had tumbled off. On the floor were a yellow roll of papers, and
+a quaint carved fan. Mrs. Thurston picked them up. The papers she
+dropped in the tray of the trunk, but the fan she kept in her hand.
+“This little fan,” she said, “I used at the last party your father and I
+attended together the week before we were married. I have kept it a long
+time, and I think it very beautiful.” She opened, with loving fingers, a
+fan of delicately-carved ivory, mounted in silver, and hung on a curious
+silver chain. “Your great-uncle brought it to me from China, when I was
+just your age, Mollie! It was given him by a viceroy, in recognition of
+a service rendered. Which of my daughters would like to take this fan to
+Newport?”
+
+Barbara shook her head, while Mollie looked at it with longing eyes. “I
+don’t believe either of us had better take it,” protested Bab, “you have
+kept it so carefully all this time.”
+
+But her mother said decidedly: “I saved it only for you girls. Here,
+Mollie, suppose you take it; we will find something else for Bab.”
+
+As Mollie and her mother lifted out the tray of the old trunk, Bab’s
+eyes caught sight of the roll of papers, and she picked them up.
+
+“Hello, hello!” a cheerful voice sounded from downstairs.
+
+“It’s Grace Carter,” said Mollie. “You don’t mind her coming up, do you,
+mother?”
+
+Grace was almost a third daughter at the little Thurston cottage. Her
+own home was big and dull! her mother was a stern, cold woman, and her
+two brothers were much older than Grace.
+
+“No,” said Mrs. Thurston, going on with her search.
+
+“I couldn’t keep away, chilluns,” apologized Grace as she came upstairs.
+“Mother told me I’d be dreadfully in the way, but I just had to talk
+about our trip. Isn’t it too splendid! You are not having secrets, are
+you?”
+
+“Not from you,” Mrs. Thurston said. “See what I have found for Bab.”
+Mrs. Thurston held out an open jewel-case. In it was a beautiful spray
+of pink coral, and a round coral pin.
+
+“I think, Bab, dear,” she said, “you are old enough, now, for such
+simple jewelry. I will buy you a white muslin, and you can wear this pin
+at your throat and the spray in your hair. Then, with a coral ribbon
+sash, who knows but you may be one of the belles of a Newport party?”
+
+Barbara flushed with pleasure over the gifts, but she looked so
+embarrassed at her mother’s compliment that Mollie and Grace both
+laughed.
+
+“I declare,” Grace said, “you have less vanity than any girl in the
+world. Oh, wasn’t it fortunate I discovered your money yesterday? Just
+as we all jumped out of the car I heard something clink, and picked up
+one of your twenty dollars. Harry Townsend said he found the other
+tucked away in the leather of the front seat.”
+
+“And I sat in the back seat all the time I was in the car,” reflected
+Barbara, under her breath.
+
+When a turquoise blue heart on a string of tiny beads had been added to
+Mollie’s “going-away” treasures, she and Grace went down stairs.
+
+Barbara still held the roll of papers in her hand and kept turning them
+over and over, trying to read the faded writing. She caught sight of her
+father’s signature. “Are these papers valuable?” she asked her mother.
+
+Mrs. Thurston sighed deeply as she answered: “They are old papers of
+your father’s. Put them away again. I never like to look at them. I
+found them in his business suit after he was dead. He had sent it to the
+tailor, and had forgotten all about it.” Mrs. Thurston took the papers
+from Barbara’s hand and put them back into her trunk.
+
+“Do you think they are valuable, mother?” persisted Barbara.
+
+“I don’t think so,” her mother concluded. “Your uncle told me he looked
+over all your father’s papers that were of any value.”
+
+After the two had mended the lock of the old trunk, and turned to leave
+the attic, Barbara was still thinking. “Dearest,” she said thoughtfully,
+“would you mind my going through those papers some time?” To herself Bab
+added: “I’d like to ask a clever business man, like Mr. Stuart, to
+explain them to me.”
+
+But Mrs. Thurston sighed as she said: “Oh, yes, you may look them over,
+some day, if you like. It won’t make any difference.”
+
+What difference it might make neither Mrs. Thurston or Barbara could
+then know.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V—THE GLORIOUS START
+
+
+Before daylight, on the great day, Mollie’s two arms encircled a sleepy
+Barbara, and a soft voice whispered in her ear: “It isn’t true, is it,
+Bab, that you and I, two insignificant little girls, who never could
+have conceived of anything so glorious, are off to-day for Newport,
+escorted by Ruth’s distinguished friend, ‘Mr. A. Bubble’?”
+
+Barbara was wide awake in a minute.
+
+“I suppose it’s true,” she said, “because it was last night, before we
+went to bed. Otherwise I would think we had both dreamed it.”
+
+The two girls talked in excited whispers. It wouldn’t do to waken mother
+any earlier than they must, for she was tired with their preparations,
+though her daughters had persuaded her to have a little country girl in
+to help with the work, now that she was to have so important a person as
+Mr. Stuart for “boarder.”
+
+But at seven o’clock it was mother who called:
+
+“Get up, girls. It is time for coffee and clothes, if you are to start
+off at ten as you promised. It will not do to keep Miss Stuart and the
+girls waiting. As for Mr. A. Bubble, I don’t believe he can stand still,
+even if he tries.”
+
+Aunt Sallie having called on Sunday afternoon, had waived ceremony and
+stayed to tea in the tiny cottage, so impressed was she with Mrs.
+Thurston’s quiet charm and gentle manners.
+
+The two girls hurried into their kimonos. Mother had suggested these
+garments for this morning, since they were to dress so soon afterwards
+in their “going away” clothes.
+
+By the time that Barbara and Mollie had put on their pretty brown and
+blue serge suits, with their dust coats over them, they heard strange
+noises on the front porch, mingled with giggles and whispers. Barbara
+was putting the sixth hat pin into her hat, and tying the motor veil so
+tightly under her chin that it choked her, when Mollie peeped out the
+front window.
+
+“It’s a surprise party, I do believe,” she whispered. “There’s Harold
+Smith, with a big bunch of pink roses. I know they are for you. The
+girls have little bundles in their hands. What fun! I didn’t know they
+had heard of our trip. How fast news _does_ fly around this village.”
+
+While Mollie and Barbara were saying their good-byes on their little
+veranda there was equal excitement at the big hotel.
+
+Before breakfast Ruth had gone out to the garage with her arm in her
+father’s.
+
+“I want to see with my own eyes, Dad,” she said, “that the machine is
+all right. Isn’t it well that I have a taste for mechanics, even though
+I am a girl? Suppose I hadn’t studied all those automobile books with
+you until I could say them backwards, and hadn’t helped you over all the
+accidents—you never would have let me go on this heavenly trip, would
+you? I am going to be as careful as can be, just to show you did right
+to trust me, also not to give Aunt Sallie a chance to say, ‘I told you
+so.’”
+
+Ruth had pretty, sunny, red-gold hair and big, gray-blue eyes. Though
+she wasn’t exactly a beauty, her face was so frank, and her coloring so
+fresh and lovely, many people thought her very good-looking.
+
+Mr. Stuart smiled at his daughter’s enthusiasm. “She’s ‘a chip of the
+old block,’” he said to himself. “She loves fun and adventure and
+‘getting there,’ like a man. I am not going to stand in her way.”
+
+Mr. Stuart was feeling rather nervous about the trip this morning, but
+he didn’t intend Ruth to know.
+
+To judge by the looks of the automobile, the chauffeur must have been up
+all night. The machinery was cleaned and oiled. The extra tires, in
+their dark red leather cases, were strapped to the sides of the car. A
+great box of extra rugs and wraps, rubber covers for the machine and
+mackintoshes in case of rain, was tied on the back. Between the seats
+was an open hamper for lunch, with an English tea service in one
+compartment, and cups, saucers, a teapot and a hot-water jug and alcohol
+lamp, all complete. The luncheon was to be sent down later from the
+hotel.
+
+“You are to take your meals at the inns along the way, when you prefer,”
+Mr. Stuart had explained, “but I don’t mean to have you run the risk of
+starving in case you are delayed, or an accident occurs. Be sure to take
+your picnic lunch along with you, when you start out each day. What you
+don’t eat, feed to the small boys along the road, who will insist on
+playing guide.”
+
+Aunt Sallie was the only one of the hotel party who enjoyed breakfast.
+Grace had driven over early, and was breakfasting with Ruth in order to
+save delay. Both the girls and Mr. Stuart were too excited to take much
+interest in their bacon and eggs, but Aunt Sallie ate with a resigned
+expression that seemed to say: “Perhaps this is my last meal on earth.”
+Yet, secretly, she was almost as delighted as were the girls in the
+prospect of the trip.
+
+“Now, Sallie, you are not to go if you don’t wish to,” Mr. Stuart had
+protested. “You must not let Ruth drag you into this trip against your
+will.”
+
+But all he could persuade his sister to answer was: “If Ruth is going on
+such an extraordinary excursion, then, at least, I shall be along to see
+that nothing worse happens to her.”
+
+Gladys Le Baron came into the dining-room, stopping in front of Ruth’s
+table. “You dear things,” she drawled in her most careful society
+manner, “how can you look so fresh so early in the morning? I hope you
+appreciate my getting up to see you off.” Gladys wore a lingerie frock
+more appropriate for a party than for the breakfast room.
+
+But Ruth answered good naturedly. “I do appreciate it, if it is such an
+effort for you. Did you know Mr. Townsend is going to ride over to the
+Thurston’s with us to see us start? He tells me you and he are both to
+be in Newport while we are there.”
+
+“Yes,” Gladys declared with more airs than before. “Mrs. Erwin has asked
+me to be one of the house-party she’s to have for her ball. She told me
+I could bring a friend along, and I have asked Mr. Townsend.”
+
+“Wonderful! We won’t expect you to associate with us!” laughed Grace.
+
+“Gladys,” Ruth asked, “would you like to drive over to Mrs. Thurston’s
+with us? Father is going, and the carriage will be there to bring him
+back.”
+
+“I would like to go,” murmured Gladys, “if I didn’t have on this old
+frock. I don’t know Mollie and Barbara very well, but I suppose I shall
+have to see a great deal of them, now you have taken them up. I wonder
+how they will behave at Newport? They have hardly been out of
+Kingsbridge before.”
+
+Grace and Ruth both looked angry, and Mr. Stuart broke in, quite curtly:
+“I am sure we can depend on their behaving becomingly, which is all that
+is necessary at Newport or any other place.” Ruth’s father was a
+business acquaintance of Gladys’s father, and had known her mother when
+the latter was a girl, but the airs of Mrs. Le Baron and her society
+daughter were too much for his western common sense. Only Aunt Sallie
+was impressed by their imposing manner.
+
+Ruth was very popular at the big summer hotel, and a number of the
+guests had assembled to see her off. But Ruth let her father run the car
+and sat quietly by his side. “You’ll turn over the command to me,
+captain, won’t you, when the trip really commences?” and she squeezed
+his arm with a little movement of affection.
+
+“Yes, lieutenant,” Mr. Stuart said quietly.
+
+“Oh, Miss Ruth,” called Mr. Townsend from the back seat, “do show all
+these people how you can handle your car!” But she only shook her head.
+
+“Goodness me, what are all those people doing on Mrs. Thurston’s porch?”
+Ruth asked, in alarm. “I hope nothing has happened.” But, as the car
+neared the quiet little house, which stood midway between the hotel and
+the New York high road, she saw the party of young people gathered on
+the front lawn.
+
+“It’s only their friends, come to say good-bye to them,” Harry
+volunteered. In answer to “What a bore!” from Gladys, he continued: “I
+don’t know why you should think it a bore. Miss Stuart enjoys her
+friends’s popularity.” Mr. Townsend had been trying, for several weeks,
+to make himself equally agreeable to Ruth and Gladys. They were both
+very wealthy, and it seemed wise to him to associate with rich people.
+But as Ruth was not easily impressed with what she called “just
+foolishness,” he had become very intimate with Gladys Le Baron.
+
+When Mr. Stuart tooted the horn to announce their approach to the
+cottage a chorus of tin horns answered him from Mrs. Thurston’s front
+garden. As the car drew up to the gate, the boys and girls began to
+sing, “See the Conquering Hero Comes,” while Barbara ran down to the car
+and Mollie urged her friends to be quieter. “I just don’t know what Miss
+Stuart and Mr. Stuart will think of us!” she blushingly remonstrated.
+
+But Aunt Sallie and Mr. Stuart were in for all the fun going this
+morning. Barbara was invited to call her seven friends who had come to
+give the girls a send-off, down to meet the occupants of the car. Even
+Gladys, as she was forced to get out of the automobile to let the other
+travelers in, was condescending enough to permit Harold Smith to assist
+her. Harold was an old friend of Barbara’s, and one of the cleverest
+boys in the village.
+
+Mr. Stuart went into the house for the suit cases and satchels, which
+were all the girls were to take with them, as they were to manage with
+as few clothes as possible. It had been arranged that extra luggage was
+to be expressed to them along the way.
+
+Barbara had caught Mollie storing away a sample package of cold cream
+among her most treasured possessions.
+
+“I am sure I don’t see why you should laugh so,” Mollie urged quite
+seriously. “It reads on the label ‘especially adapted for automobile
+travelers to remove dust and tan from the face after the drive.’ Aren’t
+we going to be automobile travelers?”
+
+“Sure and we a’ire,” said Bab, imitating the old Irish washerwoman, “and
+it shall put grease on its nose if it likes.”
+
+“Come, daughter,” said Mr. Stuart finally, as Ruth was trying to explain
+to a group of admiring boys the first principles of running an
+automobile. She talked as familiarly of an emergency brake and a
+steering wheel, of horse power and speed-transmission, as most girls
+talk of frills and furbelows.
+
+“It’s ten-thirty,” Mr. Stuart continued, “and, if this party is to be a
+strictly on time affair, you must be off! You couldn’t have a more
+wonderful day.”
+
+It was late in the month of June. The summer clouds were sailing
+overhead, great bubbles of white foam thrown up into the blue depth of
+the sky. The sun shone brightly and the whole atmosphere was perfumed
+with the bloom of the honeysuckle, that hung in yellow clusters from
+Mrs. Thurston’s porch.
+
+Barbara and Mollie flung their arms around their mother until she was
+completely enveloped in their embrace. Ruth kissed her father, and put
+her hand to her trim leather cap with a military salute. “It’s all
+right, captain,” she said; “I’ll bring my crew and good ship ‘Bubble’
+safely into port.”
+
+Aunt Sallie was anxious to be off. She could see that Mrs. Thurston was
+on the verge of tears at the thought of parting with her daughters.
+Still the young people were laughing and talking, and storing their
+little gifts under the seats in the car, as though they had all day
+before them.
+
+“Hurry, child,” Aunt Sallie urged, reaching out a hand to Mollie. “Jump
+up on the back seat with Grace and me. We will let Mistress Barbara sit
+with Ruth for the first of the journey.” Aunt Sallie was very imposing
+in a violet silk traveling coat, with a veil and hat of the same shade;
+indeed, Miss Sallie had a fancy for a “touch of lavender” in everything
+she wore. With her snow-white hair, and commanding appearance, she would
+add prestige to the party, Mollie thought, no matter how dusty and
+wind-blown the rest of them might appear.
+
+The girls hopped gayly in. Toot, toot, toot! the horn blew three times.
+Chug-chug-chug! and the great machine began to breathe with deep,
+muffled roars. Mr. Stuart gave the starting crank a strong turn, and the
+car slid gracefully along the road, red, blue, pink and violet motor
+veils floating behind in the breeze.
+
+“Here’s good luck to you!” shouted Harold Smith, and roses and flowers
+of every kind were flung after them. Mollie and Grace picked up those
+that fell into their laps, and turned to wave their hands and throw
+kisses for good-bye.
+
+“They look like a rainbow,” said Mr. Stuart, turning to Mrs. Thurston,
+who was no longer trying to hide her tears. Then he smiled at her
+gently. She was such a tiny, girlish-looking little woman, it was hard
+to think of her as the mother of two nearly grown-up daughters. “I
+expect,” he continued, “that that rainbow holds most of our promise of
+sunshine.”
+
+They were still watching the car!
+
+Down to the gate, at the furthest end of the road, a baby boy, chubby
+and fat, had crawled on two round, turned-in legs. There was something
+unusual going on down the street. He could hear strange noises, but,
+though he stuck his small nose through the fence, he was still unable to
+see. Just as Ruth’s car was almost in front of the house, open flew the
+stubborn old gate, and the child flung himself out in the middle of the
+road, just in front of the wonderful red thing he could see flying
+toward him. The baby was too young to understand the danger.
+
+From the watchers at Mrs. Thurston’s came a cry of horror. A thrill of
+terror passed through the occupants of the car. Ruth’s face turned
+white. Like a flash, she slowed a little, turned her steering wheel and
+with a wide sweep drove her motor to the far side of the road, then
+straight on out of the path of the wondering baby.
+
+Mr. Stuart’s, “Bravo, daughter!” was lost in his throat. But the little
+group of waiting friends gave three cheers for the girl chauffeur, which
+Ruth heard even at such a distance. Truly “The Automobile Girls” were
+fairly started on their adventures.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI—WHAT HAPPENED THE FIRST DAY
+
+
+The car flew along by sunny meadows and farms. New York was the first
+day’s goal.
+
+“Barbara,” Ruth said to her next-door neighbor, “you are hereby
+appointed royal geographer and guide-extraordinary to this party! Here
+is the route-book. It will be up to you to show us which roads we are to
+take. It is a pretty hard job, as I well know from experience; but then,
+honors come hard. You don’t need to worry to-day. I know this coast trip
+into New York as well as I know my A.B.C.‘s. I have often come along
+this way with father. Let’s have a perfectly beautiful time in New York.
+We’ll make Aunt Sallie chaperon us while we do the town, or, at least, a
+part of it. Have you ever been to a roof garden?”
+
+Barbara’s eyes danced. It didn’t sound quite right somehow—a roof
+garden—but then they were out for experiences, and Miss Sallie wouldn’t
+let them do anything really wrong.
+
+Ruth glanced out of the corner of her eye at Barbara. Miss Stuart was a
+good little chauffeur who never allowed her attention to be distracted
+from running her car, no matter what was being talked of around her, nor
+how much she was interested, but she couldn’t help laughing at Barbara’s
+expression; it told so plainly all that was going on inside her head.
+
+“I do assure you, Miss Barbara Thurston, that a roof garden may be a
+fairly respectable thing, quite well suited to entertaining, without
+shocking either Miss Sallie Stuart or her four charming protégées.” Ruth
+called back: “Aunt Sallie, will you take us up on the Waldorf roof
+to-night? You know we are going to stay at the Waldorf Hotel, girls.
+Father said we might enjoy the experience, and it would be all right
+with Aunt Sallie for chaperon.”
+
+Grace pinched Mollie’s arm to express her rapture, and that little
+maiden simply gasped with delight. It was Mollie, not Barbara, of the
+two sisters, who had the greatest yearning for wealth and society, and
+the beautiful clothes and wonderful people that she believed went along
+with it. Barbara was an out-door girl, who loved tennis and all the
+sports, and could swim like a fish. An artist who spent his summers at
+Kingsbridge, once called her a brown sea-gull, when he saw her lithe
+brown body dart off the great pier to dive deep into the water.
+
+Aunt Sallie had been taking a brief cat-nap, before Ruth’s question, and
+awakened in high good humor. “Why, yes, children,” she answered, “it
+will be very pleasant to go up on the roof to-night, after we have had
+our baths and our dinners. I am quite disposed to let you do just what
+you like, so long as you behave yourselves.”
+
+Grace Carter pressed Aunt Sallie’s fat hand, as a message of thanks.
+Grace was Aunt Sallie’s favorite among Ruth’s friends. “She is a quiet,
+lady-like girl, who does not do unexpected things that get on one’s
+nerves,” Miss Sallie had once explained to Ruth. “Now, Aunt Sallie,”
+Ruth had protested, “I know I do get on your nerves sometimes, but you
+know you need me to stir you up. Think how dull you would be without
+me!” And Aunt Sallie had answered, with unexpected feeling: “I would be
+very dull, indeed, my dear.”
+
+The girls were full of their plans for the evening.
+
+“That is why Ruth told us each to put a muslin dress in our suit cases!
+Ruth, are you going to think up a fresh surprise every day! It’s just
+too splendid!” Mollie spoke in a tone of such fervent emotion that
+everyone in the car laughed.
+
+“I don’t suppose I can manage a surprise every day, Molliekins,” Ruth
+called back over her shoulder, “but I mean to think up as many as I
+possibly can. We are going to have the time of our lives, you know, and
+something must happen to make it.”
+
+All this time the car had been flying faster than the girls could talk.
+“This is ‘going some,’” commented Ruth, laughing.
+
+When they came into Lakewood Ruth slowed up, as she had promised her
+father not to go any faster than the law allowed. “I cross my heart and
+body, Dad,” she had said. “Think of four lovely maidens and their
+handsome duenna languishing in jail instead of flying along the road to
+Newport. Honest Injun! father, I’ll read every automobile sign from here
+to Jehosaphat, if we ever decide to travel that way.”
+
+In Lakewood, Ruth drove her car around the wonderful pine shaded lake.
+
+“It’s a winter resort,” she explained to her companions. “Nearly all the
+cottages and hotels are closed in the summer, but I wanted you to have a
+smell of the pines. It will give you strength for the rest of the trip.”
+
+Silence fell on the party as they skimmed out of Lakewood. After so much
+excitement it was pleasant to look at things without having to talk.
+
+Mollie had begun, once in a while, to tap the lunch basket with her
+foot. The fresh air and the long ride had made her desperately hungry.
+She really couldn’t remember having eaten any breakfast in the
+excitement of getting off. But nobody said f-o-o-d! She felt she was the
+youngest member of the party and should not make suggestions before Miss
+Sallie.
+
+Ruth turned into a narrow lane; a sign post pointed the way to a
+deserted village.
+
+“Oh, dear me!” sighed Mollie to herself. “Why are we going to a deserted
+village, just as we are dying of hunger!”
+
+Ruth said never a word. She passed some tumble-down old cottages of a
+century ago, then an old iron foundry, and drew up with a great flourish
+before an old stone house, green with moss and ivy and fragrant with a
+“lovely” odor of cooking! There were little tables set out on the lawn
+and on the old-fashioned veranda, and soon the party was reveling in
+lunch.
+
+“I didn’t know food could be so heavenly,” whispered Mollie in Bab’s
+ear, when they were back in the car, for Grace had begged for a seat by
+the chauffeur for the afternoon trip.
+
+Soon Ruth left the country behind, and came out on the sea-coast road
+that ran through Long Branch, Deal Beach, Monmouth and Seabright.
+
+From carriages and other automobiles, and along the promenades, everyone
+smiled at the crimson car full of happy, laughing girls.
+
+Ruth was driving in her best fashion, making all the speed she could,
+with the thought of town fifty miles or more ahead. “It is a sight to
+see,” quoth Barbara, “the way the fairy princess handles her chariot of
+fire.”
+
+It was a little after four o’clock when the car boarded the Staten
+Island ferry and finally crossed to the New York shore.
+
+“You see, Bab,” Mollie said, trying to stuff her curls under her motor
+cap and to rub the dust from her rosy cheeks with a tiny pocket
+handkerchief as they sped up Broadway, “I might be dreadfully
+embarrassed arriving at the Waldorf looking the way I do, if I were not
+in a motor car, but riding in an automobile makes one feel so awfully
+swell that nothing matters. Isn’t it lovely just to feel important for
+once? You know it is, Bab, and you needn’t say no! It’s silly to
+pretend.”
+
+Miss Sallie was again on the border of slumberland, so that Mollie and
+Barbara could have their low-voiced talk.
+
+“Does Ruth know I have never even been to New York before?” asked
+Mollie. “I hope I won’t seem very green about things. You must tell me
+if I do, Bab.”
+
+But Bab only laughed and shook her head. “You are a foolish baby,” she
+said.
+
+Two respectful porters at the Waldorf helped a dusty, crumpled party out
+of the big red touring car.
+
+The girls, a little dazed, followed Miss Sallie through a maze of palms
+and servants in livery, with handsomely dressed people strolling through
+the halls, until their suite of rooms, which Mr. Stuart had engaged by
+telegraph a few days before, was reached.
+
+The three rooms adjoined, only separated by white tile bathrooms. Miss
+Sallie, naturally, had a room to herself, and it was decided that Ruth
+and Grace were to sleep together, leaving the sisters to themselves.
+
+“Isn’t it too beautiful!” sighed Mollie, standing in the midst of their
+luxurious chamber, gazing around at the single brass beds, with their
+rose-colored draperies, and the ivory-striped satin wall paper,
+garlanded in pink flowers. Ruth and Grace were equally fine in a room
+decorated in blue, and, even in the Waldorf, Miss Sallie’s taste seemed
+to have been consulted, as her room was in her favorite violet shade.
+
+In some mysterious way the crumpled muslin dresses were taken downstairs
+by a maid, and came back smooth and fresh. Even Miss Sallie’s elaborate
+chiffon gown looked as though it had just come home from the modiste’s.
+
+“O Ruth! Ruth!” Mollie exclaimed, as the four girls made their way to
+the dining-room, Miss Sallie in the lead, “I didn’t know there could be
+such a magnificent place in the world as this. I don’t know what I can
+ever do to repay you, except to love you and be grateful my whole life
+long.”
+
+“Well, I am sure that is all the gratitude I should ever want, Mollie,”
+laughed Ruth. “But wait until you see the houses at Newport.”
+
+All eyes near the door turned to see the little automobile party enter
+the “palm room.” Miss Sallie swept ahead in her black lace and chiffon,
+looking very handsome and impressive. Barbara and Grace came next;
+Barbara with her red-brown hair breaking into willful curves and waves,
+her big brown eyes glowing with pleasure, and the deep red showing in
+her olive cheeks; Grace with her look of refinement and gentle dignity.
+The blond maidens came in last. Ruth’s bright gold hair and fresh
+coloring showed to best advantage in a dainty white muslin and lace
+frock. She was half a head taller than dainty Mollie, who looked like a
+flower with her yellow curls gathered in a soft cluster at the back of
+her neck and tied with a black velvet ribbon.
+
+On the Waldorf roof, Miss Stuart and the girls sat under an orange tree,
+hung in some mysterious way with golden oranges. The whole place was
+decorated with palms and evergreens and beautiful flowers. The soft,
+shaded yellow lights rivaled the moonlight that glowed above.
+
+“It’s like the enchanted garden in the French fairy story, isn’t it,
+Miss Sallie? Where the flowers and fruits bloomed all the year round?”
+whispered Barbara, who sat next their chaperon.
+
+Miss Sallie smiled very kindly at her enthusiasm.
+
+“I expect it is, but I am afraid I have forgotten the story. It has been
+a long time, remember, Barbara, since fairies and I have had much to say
+to each other.”
+
+Barbara blushed. “Oh, I am not so young as all that, Miss Sallie; but I
+have never forgotten the fairy tales I read when I was a little girl.
+Though I must confess I liked boys’ stories better. I just love
+adventures!” And Barbara’s eyes shone. In a little while the music
+commenced, and she forgot everything but that.
+
+Mollie was differently occupied. What she liked best was to gaze around
+her at the women in their jewels and wonderful gowns.
+
+Just across from her on the other side of the aisle was a rarely
+beautiful woman in a white lace gown, with a string of pearls round her
+throat, and a pearl and diamond butterfly that glowed and sparkled in
+her hair.
+
+Mollie was so fascinated by her beauty that she couldn’t help watching
+this stranger, and even overhearing a little of her conversation. “It
+isn’t exactly eavesdropping,” Mollie apologized to herself, “because I
+don’t know them and they can never possibly know me.” So nobody noticed,
+but Mollie, that when the woman gave a laughing toss of her head in
+answer to some question from her husband, who sat back of her, that the
+beautiful, jeweled butterfly slipped softly out of her hair, fell into
+the softer lace folds of her gown and then down—down—to the floor!
+
+The little girl waited half a minute. No one else had noticed the loss.
+At any time an usher might come down the aisle and crush the exquisite
+jewel. Mollie forgot herself and her shyness. If it had been Barbara she
+would not have minded, but Mollie was timid before strangers. She
+slipped quietly across the aisle and picked up the butterfly.
+
+“I beg your pardon,” her soft voice explained, “but I saw this fall from
+your hair, and, as you did not notice it, I was afraid it might be
+crushed.”
+
+The lovely woman turned in surprise. It is just as well to call her “the
+lovely lady,” now, for that was Mollie’s name for her ever afterwards.
+
+“My dear,” she said, “I am very grateful to you. How could I have failed
+to see it? I am especially obliged to you, because I am very fond of
+this ornament.”
+
+Mollie blushed rosy-red, as the people close to them had observed what
+had happened and were watching her. As she tried to slip over to her
+seat, the lady reached out and gave the child’s hand a gentle squeeze of
+thanks, glancing across as she did so to see what friends the little
+girl was with, and so caught Ruth Stuart’s eye.
+
+The intermission came at this minute.
+
+“Why, Ruth Stuart!” Mollie, to her surprise, heard her friend’s name
+called in a low voice, and Ruth came across to them.
+
+“It’s Mrs. Cartwright,” she said. “I am so pleased! I didn’t suppose you
+would remember me.”
+
+“Of course I remember you, Ruth,” Mrs. Cartwright protested. “It has
+been only two years since I saw you at my own wedding in Chicago. My
+memory is surely longer than that. Isn’t that your aunt, Miss Stuart?”
+Mrs. Cartwright moved across the aisle to speak to Miss Sallie and to
+introduce her husband. When they had shaken hands, Mrs. Cartwright
+asked: “May I know what you are doing in this part of the world at this
+season?”
+
+“I am playing chaperon to my madcap niece and her three friends, who are
+doing an automobile trip to Newport without a man. Ruth is her own
+chauffeur,” Miss Sallie explained, laughing.
+
+“How jolly of you, Ruth, and how clever! I am so glad you are going to
+Newport. Did you know my summer place is down there? I am only in town
+for a day or two. My husband had to come on business and I am with him.
+We shall be motoring home, soon, and may pass you if you are to take
+things slowly. Why not join me at New Haven? My husband’s brother is a
+junior at Yale, and we’ve promised to stop there for a day. There is a
+dance on at Alumni Hall. I’d be too popular for words if I could take
+you four pretty girls along with me!”
+
+Ruth turned to her aunt with glowing eyes. “We did want to see the
+college dreadfully,” she said. “I have never seen a big Eastern
+university. We didn’t dream of knowing anybody who would show us around.
+Wouldn’t it be too much for you to have us all on your hands?”
+
+“Certainly not,” said Mrs. Cartwright, “but a most decided pleasure. I
+shall meet you in New Haven, say, day after to-morrow, and I’ll
+telegraph to-night to my brother, whose name is Donald Cartwright, by
+the way, to expect us.”
+
+The music was about to begin again, but, before Mrs. Cartwright went
+over to her seat, she put her hand on Mollie’s curls. “I must see this
+little girl often at Newport. Then I can thank her better for saving my
+lovely butterfly for me. I hope to make all of you have a beautiful
+time.” She put the jewel into her hair again, and Mollie looked at it
+thoughtfully. She was to know it again some day, under stranger
+circumstances.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII—SHOWING THEIR METTLE
+
+
+“Girls!” Aunt Sallie said solemnly next morning, as Mr. Cartwright and
+two footmen helped her into the motor car, while Barbara, Grace and
+Mollie stood around holding her extra veils, her magazines and
+pocketbook. “I feel, in my bones, that it is going to rain to-day. I
+think we had better stay in town.”
+
+“Oh, Aunt Sallie!” Ruth’s hand was already on the spark of her steering
+wheel, and she was bouncing up and down on her seat in her impatience to
+be off. “It’s simply a splendid day! Look at the sun!” She leaned over
+to Mr. Cartwright. “Do say something to cheer Aunt Sallie up. If she
+loses her nerve now, we’ll never have our trip.”
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright both reassured her. “The paper says clear
+weather and light winds, Miss Stuart. You’ll have a beautiful day of it.
+Remember we shall meet you in New Haven to-morrow, and you have promised
+to wait for us.”
+
+Aunt Sallie settled herself resignedly into her violet cushions, holding
+her smelling bottle to her nose. “Very well, young people, have it your
+own way,” she relented. “But, mark my words, it will rain before night.
+I have a shoulderblade that is a better weather prophet than all your
+bureaus.”
+
+“You’re much too handsome a woman,” laughed Ruth, the other girls
+joining her, “to talk like Katisha, in the ‘Mikado,’ who had the famous
+shoulderblade that people came miles to see.”
+
+Ruth was steering her car through Fifth Avenue, so Aunt Sallie merely
+smiled at her own expense, adding: “You’re a very disrespectful niece,
+Ruth.”
+
+“I’d get on my knees to apologize, Auntie,” declared Ruth, “only there
+isn’t room, and we’d certainly be run into, if I did.”
+
+Barbara was poring over the route book. Her duty as guide to the
+automobile party really began to-day, and she was studying every inch of
+the road map. What would she do if they were lost?
+
+“You may look up from that book just once in every fifteen minutes,
+Guide Thurston,” Ruth said, pretending to be serious over Barbara’s
+worried look. “We promise not to eat you if you do get us a little out
+of our way. The roads are well posted. What shall we do if we meet some
+bandits?”
+
+“Leave them to me,” boasted Barbara. “I suppose it’s my fate to play man
+of the party.”
+
+“And what of the chauffeur?” Ruth protested. “I wonder what any of us
+could do if we got into danger.”
+
+The day was apparently lovely. The girls were in the wildest spirits.
+
+“I never believed until this minute,” announced Mollie, “that we were
+actually going on the trip to Newport. I felt every moment something
+would happen to stop us. I even dreamed, last night, that we met a great
+giant in the road, and he roared at us, ‘I never allow red motor cars
+with brass trimmings to pass along this road!’ Ruth wouldn’t pay the
+least attention to him, but kept straight ahead, until he picked up the
+car and started to pitch us over in a ditch. Then Ruth cried: ‘Hold on
+there! If you won’t let a red car pass, I’ll go back to town and have
+mine painted green. I must have my trip.’ Just as she turned around and
+started back, I woke up. Wasn’t it awful?”
+
+“You are a goose,” said Grace, rather nervously. “It isn’t a sign of
+anything, is it? You ought not to tell your dreams after breakfast. You
+may make them come true.”
+
+Barbara and Ruth both shouted with laughter, for Mollie answered just as
+seriously: “You’re wrong, Grace; it’s telling dreams before breakfast
+that makes them come true. I was particularly careful to wait.”
+
+The car passed swiftly through the town in the early morning. Soon the
+spires and towers of the city were no longer visible.
+
+“Hurrah for the Boston Post Road!” sang Barbara, as the car swung into
+the famous old highway.
+
+“And hurrah for Barbara for discovering it!” teased Ruth. “Now, clear
+the track, fellow autoists and slow coach drivers! We know where we’re
+going, and we’re on the way!”
+
+It had been decided to make a straight trip through to New Haven, and to
+wait there for Mrs. Cartwright. Miss Sallie had insisted on some rest,
+and the girls were wild to see the college—and the college men.
+
+“It will be sure enough sport,” Ruth confided, “to have one dance with
+all the partners needed to go round.” Men were as scarce at the
+Kingsbridge Hotel as they were in other summer resorts, and Ruth was
+tired of Harry Townsend and his kind, who liked to stay around the
+hotel, making eyes at all the girls they saw.
+
+“Yes,” said Barbara thoughtfully, “it will be fun. Yet, Ruth, suppose we
+are sticks and no one dances with us?” Barbara didn’t like the thought
+of being a wall-flower. Ruth laughed and quickly replied, “Oh, Mrs.
+Cartwright is awfully jolly and popular, so we will have plenty of
+invitations to dance.”
+
+“Ruth,” said Miss Sallie, a little after noon, when they had passed,
+without a hitch, through a number of beautiful Connecticut towns, and
+were speeding along an open road, with a view of the waters of Long
+Island Sound to the right of them, “I have not looked at my watch
+lately, but I’ve an impression I am hungry. As long as we have made up
+our minds to eat the luncheon the hotel has put up for us, why not stop
+along the road here, and have a picnic?”
+
+“Good for you, Aunt Sallie!” said Grace, emphatically. “This is a beauty
+place. Ruth can leave the car right here, and we can go up under that
+elm and make tea. What larks!”
+
+The girls all piled out, carrying the big lunch hamper between them. On
+the stump of an old tree the alcohol lamp was set up and tea was quickly
+brewed. Then the girls formed a circle on the ground, while Miss Sallie,
+from her throne of violet silk pillows, gave directions about setting
+the lunch table.
+
+No one noticed how the time passed. No one could notice, all were having
+such a jolly time; even Miss Sallie was now in excellent spirits. She
+had been in Newport several times before, and the girls were full of
+questions.
+
+Mollie leaned her head against Miss Sallie’s knee, so intimate had she
+grown in a day and a half with that awe-inspiring person. “Is it true,”
+she inquired in a voice of reverence, “that every person who lives in
+Newport is a millionaire?”
+
+“And are the streets paved with gold, Miss Sallie?” queried Grace. She
+was Mollie’s special friend, and fond of teasing her. “I read that the
+water at Bailey’s Beach is perfumed every morning before the ladies go
+in bathing, and that all the fish that come from near there taste like
+cologne.”
+
+Miss Sallie laughed. “There are some people at Newport who are not
+summer people,” she explained. “You must remember that it is an old New
+England town, and there are thousands of people who live there the year
+around. My brother has persuaded some old friends of ours, who used to
+be very wealthy when I was a girl, to take us to board with them. There
+are very few hotels.”
+
+Several times during their talk Ruth’s eyes had wandered a little
+anxiously to the sky above them. Every now and then the shadows darkened
+under the old elm where they were eating their luncheon, bringing a
+sudden coolness to the summer atmosphere.
+
+“Aunt Sallie made me nervous about the weather with that story of her
+shoulderblade,” Ruth argued with herself. So she was the first to say:
+“Come, we had better be off. What a lot of time we’ve wasted!”
+
+“No hurry, Ruth,” Aunt Sallie answered, placidly. “New Haven is no great
+distance. We shall be there before dark.”
+
+It was fully half after two before the automobile girls had gathered up
+their belongings and were again comfortably disposed in the car.
+
+“It certainly is great, Ruth, the way you crank up your own car,” Grace
+declared. “It must take an awful lot of strength, doesn’t it?”
+
+“Yes,” admitted Ruth, as she jumped back into her automobile and the car
+plunged on ahead. “But I’ve a strong right arm. I don’t row and play
+tennis for nothing. Father says it takes skill and courage, as well as
+strength, to drive a car. I hope I’m not boasting; it’s only that father
+believes girls should attempt to do things as well as boys. Girls could
+do a lot more if they tried harder. ‘Sometimes,’ Dad says, ‘gumption
+counts for more than brute force.’”
+
+“Whew, Ruth! You talk like a suffragette,” objected Grace.
+
+“Well, maybe I am one,” said Ruth. “I’m from the West, where they raise
+strong-minded women. What do you say, Barbara?”
+
+“I don’t know,” replied Barbara. “I would not like to go to war, and I’m
+awfully afraid I’d run from a burglar in the dark.”
+
+“Who’d have thought Barbara would confess to being a coward?” Grace
+broke in, just to see what Bab would say. But Bab wouldn’t answer. “I
+don’t know what I would do,” she ended.
+
+“Anyhow,” said Miss Ruth, from her position of dignity on the
+chauffeur’s seat, “I should be allowed to vote on laws for motor cars,
+as long as I can run a machine without a man.”
+
+“My dear Ruth,” interposed Miss Sallie at last, “I beg of you, don’t
+vote in my lifetime. Girls, in my day, would never have dreamed of such
+a thing.”
+
+“Oh, well, Auntie,” answered Ruth, “I wouldn’t worry about it now. Who
+knows when I may have a chance to vote?”
+
+Ruth was worried by the clouds overhead, so she ran her machine at full
+speed. It took some time and ingenuity to make their way through
+Bridgeport, a big, bustling town with crowded streets. By this time the
+clouds had lifted, and, for the next hour, Ruth forgot the rain. She and
+Barbara were having a serious talk on the front seat. Mollie and Grace,
+with their arms around each other, were almost as quiet as Aunt Sallie;
+indeed, they were more so, for that good soul was gently snoring.
+
+“If we should have any adventures, Bab,” said Ruth, “I wonder if we’d be
+equal to them? I’ll wager you would be. Father says that when people are
+not too sure of themselves before a thing happens, they are likely to be
+brave at the critical minute.”
+
+The car was going down a hill with a steep incline. Ruth’s hand was on
+the brake. Biff! Biff! Bang! Bang! A cannon ball seemed to have exploded
+under them. Miss Sallie sat up very straight, with an expression of
+great dignity; Grace and Mollie gave little screams, and Barbara looked
+as though she were willing to be defended if anything very dreadful had
+happened.
+
+Only Ruth dared laugh. “You’re not killed, girls,” she said. “You might
+as well get used to that racket; it happens to the best regulated motor
+cars. It is only a bursted tire; but it might have been kind enough to
+have happened in town, instead of on this deserted country road. Oh,
+dear me!” she next ejaculated, for, before she could stop her car, it
+had skidded, and the front wheel was imbedded in a deep hole in the
+road.
+
+“Get out, please,” Ruth ordered. “Grace, will you find a stone for me? I
+must try to brace this wheel. Did I say something about skill, instead
+of strength, and not needing a man?” Ruth had taken off her coat and
+rolled up her sleeves in a business-like fashion.
+
+“I have helped father with a punctured tire before.” She tugged at the
+old tire, which hung limp and useless by this time. She was talking very
+cheerfully, though Aunt Sallie’s woeful expression would have made any
+girl nervous. At the same time dark clouds had begun to appear overhead.
+
+“You’d better get out the rain things,” Ruth conceded. “I can’t get this
+fixed very soon. Queer no one passes along this way. It’s a lonesome
+kind of road. I wonder if we are off the main track?”
+
+“It is a country lane, not a main road. I saw that at once,” said Miss
+Sallie.
+
+“Then why didn’t you tell us, Aunt Sallie?”
+
+“My eyes were closed to avoid the dust,” replied Aunt Sallie firmly.
+
+Poor Ruth had a task on her hands. If only the car had not skidded into
+that ugly hole, she could have managed; but it was impossible for her,
+with the help of all the girls, to lift the car enough to slip the new
+tire over the rim.
+
+Mollie and Grace were taking Miss Sallie a little walk through the woods
+at the side of the road to try to make the time pass and to give Ruth a
+chance. Grace had winked at her slyly as they departed.
+
+“Barbara,” Ruth said finally, in tragic tones, “I’m in a fix and I might
+as well confess it. I know it all comes of my boasting that I didn’t
+need a man. My kingdom for one just for a few minutes! Do you suppose
+there is a farmhouse near where we could find some one to help me get
+this wheel out of the rut? I’d surrender this job to a man with
+pleasure.”
+
+“I don’t believe we are on the right road, Ruth, dear.” Barbara felt so
+responsible that she was almost in tears. Ominous thunder clouds were
+rolling overhead, and Bab tried not to notice the large splash of rain
+that had fallen on her nose.
+
+“Don’t worry Bab, dear,” urged Ruth. “I should have looked out for the
+road, too. It can’t be helped.”
+
+“But I am going to help. You can just rely on that,” announced Barbara,
+shaking her brown curls defiantly. She had taken off her hat in the
+exertion of trying to help Ruth. “We passed a sleepy-looking old farm a
+little way back, but I am going to wake it up!”
+
+She heard Miss Sallie and the girls returning to the shelter of the car,
+for the rain had suddenly come down in torrents. Down the road sped Bab,
+shaking her head like a little brown Shetland pony.
+
+Miss Sallie was in the depths of despair.
+
+“Child,” she said sternly to Ruth, “get into the car out of that mud. We
+will remain here, under the shelter of the covers until morning. Then,
+if we are alive, I myself will walk to the nearest town and telegraph
+your father. We will take the next train back to New York.” Miss Sallie
+spoke with the extreme severity due to a rheumatic shoulder that had
+been disregarded.
+
+“Please let me keep on trying, Aunt Sallie,” pleaded Ruth. “I’ll get the
+tire on, or some one will come along to help me. I am so sorry, for I
+know it is all my fault.”
+
+“Never mind, Ruth; but you are to come into this car.” And Ruth, covered
+with mud, was obliged to give in.
+
+“Where, I should like to know,” demanded Miss Sallie, “is Barbara?”
+
+Through the rain they could hear the patter, patter of a horse’s hoofs.
+
+[Illustration: On Came Barbara, Riding Bareback.]
+
+“Cheer up, Ruth, dear,” whispered Grace. “What difference does a little
+rain make? Here is some one coming along the road!”
+
+Ruth’s eyes were full of tears; Aunt Sallie’s threat to stop their trip
+was more than she could bear; but she was soon smiling.
+
+“Why, Barbara Thurston,” the girls called out together, “it can’t be
+you!” On came Barbara, riding bareback astride an old horse, the
+animal’s big feet clattering, its mane and tail soaked with rain.
+
+“Great heavens!” said Miss Sallie, and closed her eyes.
+
+Barbara rode up to the automobile, her hand clasped tightly in the
+horse’s mane.
+
+“I’m as right as can be, Miss Sallie. I went back to that sleepy old
+farm, knocked and knocked for help, and called and called, but nobody
+would answer. Just as I gave up all hope, old Dobbin came to the porch
+and neighed, as if inquiring what I was doing on his premises. Like a
+flash I put out my hand, as though to pat him, grabbed him by the mane,
+hopped up here, and now you see the best lady bareback rider from
+Rinkhem’s Circus. I led you into this mess; now I’m going to get you
+out. I shall ride old Dobbin into town and come back with help.” Bab
+declaimed this, ending out of breath.
+
+“Never mind, Miss Sallie,” Mollie explained, seeing her consternation.
+“Bab never rode any other way than bareback when she was a little girl.
+Do let her go!”
+
+“Very well; but she may be arrested as a horse thief. That is all I have
+to say in the matter.” Miss Sallie sank back on her cushions, but
+Barbara had clattered off before she could be forbidden to go. She
+caught the words, “horse thief,” as she rode as fast as old Dobbin would
+carry her.
+
+“It’s Barbara to the rescue again!” Ruth shouted after her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII—“FOR WE ARE JOLLY GOOD FELLOWS!”
+
+
+“Suppose I should be arrested!” thought Barbara uncomfortably. “It would
+be distinctly unpleasant to be hauled off to jail, while Aunt Sallie and
+the girls remain stuck in the mud, not knowing my fate, and helpless to
+save me! I may meet old Dobbin’s owner at any minute!”
+
+It was after six o’clock, and, because of the heavy storm, was almost
+dusk. Barbara had decided to go to the end of the lane and find the main
+road to New Haven, hoping to sooner discover help in that direction.
+
+Before long she came to a fork in the road. By riding close to the
+sign-post she found a hand pointing: “Nine Miles to New Haven.” On she
+sped through the mud and rain, slipping and sliding on the horse’s back,
+but still holding tight to his mane.
+
+“Stop! Hello, there! Why, Mirandy, if that ain’t my own hoss, and that
+girl astride it running off as fast as she can! Hello! Stop!” The farmer
+lashed the horse hitched to his rickety old buggy, and dashed after
+Barbara, who had ridden past without noticing them. “Stop, thief!”
+
+Down to her wet toes sank Barbara’s heart. The worst she had feared had
+happened. If only she had seen their buggy in time to stop first and ask
+their help. Now, rushing by them, how could she explain? Horse thief,
+indeed.
+
+“Oh, please,” she said, her voice not quite steady, “I am not exactly
+running away with your horse; I am only going for help! My friends——”
+
+The farmer grabbed the horse savagely by the mane. “Come on,” he said.
+“You can tell your story at the nearest police station. I ain’t got time
+fer sech foolishness. What I see, I see with my own eyes. You’re plain
+running away with my hoss!”
+
+“John,” pleaded the farmer’s wife, “you might listen to the young lady.”
+
+But Barbara’s looks were against her. The rain had beaten her hair down
+over her eyes. Her clothes were wet and covered with mud from trying to
+help Ruth. What could she do? Barbara was frightened, but she kept a
+cool head. “I’ll just let the old man haul me before the nearest
+magistrate. I expect _he’ll_ listen to me!” She was shivering, but she
+knew that to think bravely helped to keep up one’s courage. “If only it
+were not so awful for Aunt Sallie and the girls to be waiting there, I
+could stand my part,” murmured Bab.
+
+For fifteen minutes captors and girl jogged on. Only the old man talked,
+savagely, under his breath. He wanted to get home to his farmhouse and
+supper, but this made him only the more determined to punish Barbara.
+
+“I suppose we’ll take all night to get to town at this rate,” she
+thought miserably.
+
+  For we are jolly good fellows, For we are jolly good fellows!
+
+Barbara could hear the ring of the gay song and the distant whirr of a
+motor car coming down the road. If only she could attract someone’s
+attention and make them listen to her! She could now see the lights of
+the automobile bearing down upon them.
+
+Like a flash, before the farmer could guess what she was doing, Barbara
+whirled around on old Dobbin’s back, and sat backwards. She put one hand
+to her lips. “Oh, stop! Stop, please!” she cried, looking like a gypsy,
+with her rain-blown hair and brown cheeks, which were crimson with
+blushes at her awkward position.
+
+On account of the rain, and the oncoming darkness, the car was going
+slowly. At the end of one of the choruses the song stopped half a
+second. One of the young fellows in the car caught sight of Barbara,
+evidently being dragged along by the irate farmer and his wife.
+
+“Hark! Stop! Look! Listen! Methinks, I see a female in distress,” the
+young man called out.
+
+The car stopped almost beside the buggy, and one of the boys in the car
+roared with laughter at Barbara’s appearance, but the friend nearest him
+gave a warning prod.
+
+“Hold on there!” called the first young man. “Where are you dragging
+this young lady against her will?”
+
+“She’s a hoss thief!” said the old man sullenly.
+
+“I am no such thing,” answered Barbara indignantly. Then, without any
+warning, Barbara threw back her head and laughed until the tears ran
+down her cheeks, mingling with the rain. It was absurdly funny, she
+sitting backwards on an old horse, one hand in his mane, and the farmer
+pulling them along with a rope. What must she look like to these boys?
+Barbara saw they were gentlemen, and knew she had nothing more to fear.
+
+“Do please listen, while I tell my story. I am not a horse thief! I’ve
+some friends up the road, stuck in the mud with a broken tire in their
+automobile. I saw this old horse in the farm-yard, and I borrowed or
+rented him, and started for help. The old man wouldn’t let me explain.
+Won’t you,” she looked appealingly at the four boys in their motor car,
+“please go back and help my friends?”
+
+“Every man of us!” uttered one of the young fellows, springing up in his
+car. “And we’ll drag this old tartar behind us with his own rope! We’ll
+buy your old horse from you, if this young lady wants him as a
+souvenir.”
+
+It was the farmer’s turn to be frightened.
+
+“I am sure I beg your pardon, miss,” he said, humbly enough now. His
+wife was in tears.
+
+“Oh, never mind him,” urged Barbara. “Please go on back as fast as you
+can to my friends. You’ll find them up the lane to the left. I’ll ride
+the old horse back to the farm, and settle things and join you later.”
+
+“Excuse me, Miss Paul Revere,” disputed a tall, dark boy with a pair of
+laughing blue eyes that made him oddly handsome, “you’ll do no such
+thing. Kindly turn over that fiery steed to me, take my seat in the car
+and show these knights-errant the way to the ladies in distress. I want
+to prove to you that a fellow can ride bareback as well as a girl can.”
+
+But the farmer was anxious to get out of trouble.
+
+“I’ll just lead the hoss back myself,” he said. “No charge at all,
+miss.” Evidently afraid of trouble, the farmer made a hurried start
+homeward, and was soon lost to view, while Barbara rode back to her
+friends with help.
+
+In ten minutes two motor cars were making their way into New Haven. The
+passengers had changed places. Ruth sat contentedly with her hands
+folded in her lap, by the side of a masculine chauffeur, who had
+introduced himself as Hugh Post, and turned out to be the roommate, at
+college, of Mrs. Cartwright’s brother, Donald. Barbara, wrapped in
+steamer rugs, sat beside the boy with the dark hair and blue eyes, whom
+Miss Sallie had recognized as Ralph Ewing, son of the friends with whom
+they expected to board at Newport.
+
+It was arranged that Barbara and Ruth were to sleep together the first
+night at New Haven. The truth was, they wanted to talk things over, and
+there were no connecting doors between the three rooms. The hotel was an
+old one, and the rooms were big and dreary. They were connected by a
+narrow private hall, opening into the main hall by a single door, just
+opposite Ruth’s and Barbara’s room. The automobile girls were in a
+distant wing of the hotel, but the accommodations were the best that
+could be found.
+
+Miss Sallie bade their rescuers a prompt farewell on arrival at the
+hotel. “We shall be delighted to see you again in the morning,” she
+said, “but we are too used up for anything more to-night.”
+
+Barbara was promptly put to bed. She was not even allowed to go down to
+supper with the other girls, but lay snuggled in heavy covers, eating
+from a tray by her bed. Once or twice she thought she heard light
+footfalls outside in the main hall, but she had noticed a window that
+opened on a fire escape, and supposed that one of the hotel guests had
+walked down the corridor to look out of this window.
+
+In a short time Ruth came back and reported that the automobile girls,
+including Miss Sallie, were ready for bed.
+
+“I am not a bit sleepy. Are you?” Ruth asked Barbara. “I will just jump
+in here with you, so we can talk better. We’ve certainly had enough
+adventures for one day!”
+
+“Oh, no!” replied Barbara; “I feel quite wide awake.” Five minutes later
+both girls were fast asleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX—ONLY GIRLS
+
+
+Barbara and Ruth both awoke with a feeling that a light had flashed over
+their faces, but neither of them spoke nor moved. How long they had
+slept they could not know. It seemed almost morning, but not a ray of
+daylight came through the closed blinds.
+
+Across the room the flash shone for an instant, then darted on like a
+will-o’-the-wisp. Both girls dimly saw the outline of a man crouching in
+the shadow along the wall. His hand slid cautiously up the sides of the
+bureau, fingering, for a moment, the toilet articles on the dresser.
+Then the search-light for an instant darted along the mantel and turned
+to the bed again. The girls were nearly fainting with terror. Ruth
+remembered that, for once, she had locked her money and her jewels in
+her trunk.
+
+The man stood absolutely still and listened. Not a sound!
+
+So quiet lay both girls that neither one knew the other had wakened.
+
+The man continued his search, but plainly this was not the room he
+sought. Still moving, his feet making absolutely no sound, the dark
+figure with the lantern crept out of the girls’ room, to the front of
+the corridor, and turned down the narrow, private hallway.
+
+“Aunt Sallie!” Ruth thought with a gasp. She had said she would leave
+her door open, so she might hear if the girls called her in the night.
+And Aunt Sallie carried a large sum of money for the expenses of the
+trip, and her own jewelry as well.
+
+It may be that Ruth made a sound, anyway Barbara knew that her roommate
+was awake. Both had the same thought at just the same instant.
+
+Noiselessly, without a word, on bare feet, both girls sped down the hall
+to Miss Sallie’s open door. What they would do when they got there
+neither of them knew. It was time for action, not for thought! At the
+open door they paused and knelt in the shadow. Black darkness was about
+them, save in Aunt Sallie’s room, where a dark lantern flashed its
+uncanny light. The girls were alert in every faculty. Now they could see
+more distinctly the form of the man who carried the lantern. He was of
+medium height and slender. Over his face he wore a black mask through
+which gleamed his eyes, narrowed to two fine points of steel.
+
+Should the girls cry out? The man was armed and it might mean death to
+Aunt Sallie or themselves.
+
+Evidently the burglar meant to make a thorough search of the room before
+he went to the bed, where, he guessed, the valuables were probably kept;
+but he must know first. The room was bare of treasure. He walked
+cautiously to where Miss Sallie still slept in complete unconsciousness,
+this time holding his lantern down, that its light should not waken the
+sleeping woman.
+
+As he drew near her Ruth could bear the suspense no longer. She saw him
+drag out a bag from under Miss Sallie’s head and could not refrain from
+uttering a low cry. It was enough. The man dashed the lantern to the
+ground and made a rush for the door.
+
+There was no time for Ruth and Barbara to plan. They were only girls;
+but as the man ran toward them in the darkness, striking out fiercely,
+Barbara seized one of his legs, Ruth the other. Together, the three of
+them went down in the blackness. The girls had not the robber’s
+strength, but they had taken him by surprise and they meant to fight it
+out.
+
+He kicked violently to free himself, then turned and tore at Barbara’s
+hands, but she clung to him. He raised the butt end of his pistol and
+struck with all his force. As the blow fell with a terrific thud,
+Barbara relaxed her hold, and tumbled over in the darkness.
+
+By this time Miss Sallie realized what was happening. Yet, in the
+darkness, she could only cry for help, and moan: “Let him alone, girls!
+Let him go!”
+
+With one leg free it seemed a simple task to get away. The noises were
+arousing the sleeping hotel guests. Another minute, and the burglar knew
+that he would be lost! With a violent wrench he tore himself away, and
+started down the hall, Ruth after him. If she could delay him a few
+seconds help would come!
+
+The outside door leading from their private hall into the main one was
+nearly closed; in reaching to open it there was a second’s delay. Ruth
+flung herself forward, caught the man’s coat and clung desperately, but
+the burglar was too clever for her. In less than a second he slipped out
+of his coat, ran quickly to the window leading to the fire escape, and
+was gone! When assistance arrived, Ruth was standing in the front hall
+holding a man’s coat in her hand.
+
+“Oh, come!” she said in horror. “A light, please! Aunt Sallie has been
+robbed, and I am afraid Barbara has been killed!”
+
+Ten or twelve people came running down the hall. The hotel proprietor
+and several servants made for the fire escape. Grace and Mollie, clad in
+kimonos, had joined Ruth in the hall, and were shaking with terror.
+Neither of them had spoken a word, but Grace silently handed Ruth her
+bath robe.
+
+They turned and the three girls followed the rescuers, who were
+hastening toward Aunt Sallie’s room. That elderly woman had already
+risen, struck a light and was in her kimono.
+
+Barbara was leaning against a chair, white as a sheet, but unhurt!
+
+“O Bab!” said Ruth, flying toward her, forgetting everything else in her
+relief, “I thought you were killed!”
+
+“I thought so, too,” nodded Barbara, calmly smiling, as she reached for
+one of the blankets and wrapped herself in its folds, “but I wasn’t.
+When the burglar raised the end of his pistol to strike me, I knew what
+was coming and ducked. He struck the side of the chair, and I tumbled
+over under it.”
+
+The hotel proprietor came into the room carrying a chamois bag.
+
+“Madam,” he asked, “is this your property? I found it outside here.
+Evidently the man dropped it in trying to make his escape. I cannot
+understand what has happened. The hotel is securely locked. The fire
+escape goes down into a closed court. The man could not have made his
+way down five stories, without being seen when we reached the window. It
+is incredible!”
+
+By this time the halls were swarming with frightened visitors.
+
+Grace had gone out to speak to them, and came in holding the burglar’s
+coat in her hand. “How curious!” she said, handing the garment to the
+proprietor. “This is a gentleman’s coat. I can tell by the lining and
+the whole appearance of it. It was not worn by a common thief!”
+
+“Ruth, my child, and Barbara,” said Aunt Sallie, when everyone had left
+their apartments, “I shall never forgive you!”
+
+“Why not, Aunt Sallie?” both girls exclaimed, at once.
+
+“Because, my dears, you didn’t just scream and let the wretch escape at
+once. In my day girls would never have behaved as you did!”
+
+“But, Aunt Sallie,” protested Ruth, “the jewels and money are both safe,
+and neither Barbara nor I am hurt. I don’t see how we could have done
+any better, even in your day.”
+
+“Kiss me,” said Aunt Sallie, “and go back to bed at once. It is nearly
+morning.”
+
+When Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright drew up in front of the New Haven hotel, at
+a little after two o’clock next day, they found Miss Sallie and the four
+girls surrounded by a circle of college boys. With them stood a
+policeman.
+
+“What has happened?” said Mrs. Cartwright in astonishment, jumping out
+of her car, as Donald Cartwright, Hugh Post and Ralph Ewing came down to
+meet her. “Are those my girls, to whom I am to introduce you to-day?”
+
+“Goodness!” demanded Hugh. “Did you think we would wait twelve hours for
+an introduction! Do come and hear all that has happened.”
+
+Miss Stuart, looking a good deal shaken by her adventures, came forward
+to meet Mrs. Cartwright. “Listen!” she said dramatically, for Barbara
+was talking to the policeman.
+
+“No, we would neither of us know him, because neither my friend nor I
+ever saw him before. It was dark and he was masked. But he was
+slight—not a big, rough kind of man—and his hands were soft, but strong
+as steel. I don’t believe,” she leaned over and whispered, “he could
+have been a servant, or an ordinary burglar.”
+
+“We have discovered, miss, that no entrance was made from the outside.
+Any guests who left the hotel this morning will be followed and
+examined. The chief will report to you later,” the policeman said, with
+a low bow to Miss Sallie.
+
+“Well, is this the way you see a nice, quiet, old college town?” Mrs.
+Cartwright inquired. “I suppose you mean to take the next train for
+home.”
+
+“No such thing!” retorted Ruth, smiling, and looking as bright and fresh
+as ever. “We don’t mind a few weeny adventures, do we, Aunt Sallie?”
+
+Miss Sallie held up her hands in horror. “Weeny adventures! What shall
+we expect next! However, I’ve promised the girls to go on. I think we
+need the trip, now, more than ever, and I want to ask Mr. Cartwright to
+keep the matter as quiet as possible. I do not wish my brother to know.”
+
+“Do please come on,” said Hugh Post, turning to Ruth. “We are going,” he
+explained, “out to the athletic grounds in our motor cars. The girls
+came to see the university, and we haven’t shown them a blooming thing.”
+
+“We are going to the dance to-night, just the same,” announced Mollie to
+Mrs. Cartwright. “Aunt Sallie is to rest this afternoon, so she will be
+equal to it. We wouldn’t miss it for anything.”
+
+Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright joined the party, and, in a few minutes, the two
+motor cars had covered the two miles between the college campus and the
+thirty acres Yale devotes to college sports. The visitors saw the
+athletic grounds thoroughly; here the football champions of the world
+had been trained, and there was the baseball diamond.
+
+“Ralph’s the crack oarsman of the lot,” said Donald Cartwright;
+“but—great Scott! We can’t show these girls anything, after the way they
+tackled the burglar last night.”
+
+“We’ll get up a regatta in your honor, if you’ll come again next year,
+Miss Thurston,” said Ralph.
+
+Barbara only laughed at him. “Look out,” she warned. “I may make you
+keep your promise.”
+
+“Barbara,” said Mollie that night, as they were getting ready for the
+dance which was to take place in the Old Alumni Hall, “are you sure you
+feel well enough for the ball to-night?”
+
+“Nonsense, child, why shouldn’t I? I feel as fine as a fiddle. It isn’t
+doing things that uses one up, even tackling a burglar; it is thinking
+about them. Ruth and I didn’t have any time to think about our burglar.”
+
+“Well,” said Mollie, a little wistfully, smoothing the folds of her
+muslin dress, “I don’t believe I am as anxious to go to the dance as I
+thought I was. Does this dress look _very_ shabby? I wouldn’t go, now,
+only it seems kind of hateful of me to refuse Mrs. Cartwright’s
+invitation.”
+
+“Now, Molliekins,” Barbara answered quite seriously, “it’s your dress,
+isn’t it? Of course, I have thought about mine, too. These are just
+simple muslins that we have worn before; but, when we left home, we
+neither of us dreamed we would go to a party in them. Let’s just make
+the best of things. Anyhow, I’ve made up my mind to one thing, and I
+wish you would, too. You and I must not worry about being poor while we
+are on this trip. Let us not pretend that we are rich, because everybody
+we meet seems to be. Ruth knows we are poor, knows about our little
+cottage and not keeping a servant, and she doesn’t mind. I don’t believe
+really nice people care whether young girls are rich or poor, if they
+happen to like them. I don’t mean to preach.” Barbara put her arm around
+Mollie and waltzed her around the room. “Let us pretend we are both
+Cinderellas before the arrival of the fairy godmother.”
+
+Mollie didn’t answer; but she tucked some pink roses in her belt. “It
+doesn’t really matter about me, anyway,” she decided. “I can’t expect
+these grown-up boys to dance with me. I will just stay by Miss Sallie.”
+
+“All right, little Miss Wall-flower,” laughed Bab, as she pinned on a
+knot of blue that Ralph Ewing had asked her to wear, as a tribute to the
+Yale colors.
+
+It was Mollie, after all, who was the belle of the party. Perhaps this
+was because the other girls whispered to their partners that Mollie was
+afraid nobody would dance with her; or, perhaps, because she was the
+youngest, and the best dancer among them all.
+
+“I am going to take this little lady under my special protection at
+Newport,” Mrs. Cartwright said to Miss Stuart, late that evening. “I
+don’t mean my ‘butterfly girl’ to be losing her beauty sleep.”
+
+Mollie looked at her “lovely lady” with eyes as blue as myrtle blossoms.
+Mrs. Cartwright was so exquisite, so young and so wealthy, she seemed to
+Mollie to have stepped out of a book.
+
+Miss Sallie was vainly trying to collect her four charges all at once,
+in order to take them home.
+
+“Aunt Sallie,” Hugh Post said roguishly, as that lady made a last
+determined stand, and gathered her girls together, “you know, from your
+experience yesterday, that Miss Ruth can’t handle a motor car, even
+though she can tackle a burglar. So we are going to follow you in my
+automobile to-morrow and see that you get to New London all right.”
+
+“Oh, no, you’re not,” protested Ruth. “This I will have you know is an
+automobile girls’ excursion and nary a man allowed.”
+
+“This one time, kindly permit us to follow you at a respectful distance,
+won’t you?” Hugh urged. “It’s only a short trip to New London. To tell
+you the truth, the governor’s yacht is over there and I hope to be able
+to persuade you to go aboard. It is not disrespectful of me, Miss
+Stuart, to speak so of my father; he was once governor of the state, and
+he rather likes to be reminded of it. Mother has a number of friends on
+board the yacht, and we shall be cruising up to Newport in a few days. I
+think it would be jolly for father and mother to know you.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X—ENTER GLADYS AND MR. TOWNSEND
+
+
+“Why, Gladys Le Baron, this is a surprise!” gayly said Grace Carter next
+afternoon, when the two parties of girls and men had left their
+automobiles and had come aboard Governor Post’s yacht, the “Penguin,”
+that lay just outside the New London harbor.
+
+Grace was awaiting her turn to be introduced to her host and hostess,
+when she spied Gladys, in a pale blue flannel suit and a cream felt hat,
+strolling down the deck, looking very much at home.
+
+“How ever did _you_ get here?” queried Grace, smiling.
+
+Gladys gave Grace’s cheek an affected peck with her lips.
+
+“I have a better right to ask that question of you,” Gladys pouted,
+“only I am not surprised. Harry Townsend came over from New London,
+yesterday, and told me you had arrived the night before. He went over
+with Hugh for the dance, but I didn’t feel like going, so he came back
+early yesterday morning. I am amazed Hugh did not speak of it to you.”
+
+“Oh, Mr. Post didn’t know we had ever heard of Harry Townsend, or you
+either. We met most unexpectedly, and we had plenty of excitement of our
+own. I must tell you about it.”
+
+At this moment, Hugh came over for Grace to introduce her to his mother.
+
+“This is Miss Carter, mother,” he said. “Will you introduce her to Mrs.
+Erwin and father? She seems to know Gladys already.”
+
+Harry Townsend had seen the newcomers, and came forward to speak to them
+with his most charming manner.
+
+“Say, Townsend,” challenged Hugh, “what made you run away from us? We
+thought, of course, you’d stay over for the dance. Thought that was your
+plan in going over to New Haven.”
+
+Harry turned to Miss Stuart. “I heard of your arrival in New Haven, the
+other evening,” he said. “The fellows told me of your experiences; but I
+got away from the hotel too early next morning to pay my respects.”
+
+“Then you didn’t hear of the burglar, did you?” queried Hugh.
+
+In spite of Miss Sallie’s protestations the whole story had to be gone
+over again.
+
+Barbara was talking to Ralph Ewing and had not looked at Harry Townsend
+during the conversation, until he came over to speak to her.
+
+“I have half an idea, Miss Thurston,” he said, “that you do not like me,
+and I am sorry. I was looking forward to our having good times together
+at Newport, as I am to be Mrs. Erwin’s guest, with your cousin Miss Le
+Baron. Mrs. Post asked us on for the yacht trip a day or two sooner than
+we expected. We are all going up to Newport together.”
+
+“Mr. Townsend,” said Barbara, her usually laughing, brown eyes now
+steadfast and serious, “I wonder why you think I do not like you?”
+
+“Miss Stuart,” begged Mrs. Post, after the governor had conducted the
+party over his trim little craft, “you must stay and dine with us on
+board the yacht to-night. I refuse to take no for an answer. I wish I
+could keep you over until morning, but unfortunately the yacht is too
+small.”
+
+Miss Sallie protested. No; they couldn’t think of it. They had come
+aboard only for a call, and must get back to their hotel before night.
+But Hugh swept all her arguments aside. He was an adored only son, and
+accustomed to having his own way. To tell the truth, Miss Sallie was not
+averse to the idea of staying; it was pleasant to be meeting Newporters
+in advance. Miss Stuart was a woman who thought much of appearances, and
+of this world’s goods, and their new acquaintances seemed to have plenty
+of both.
+
+“It’s an ill wind,” she thought to herself, “and I must say, for my
+young niece, that she has a habit of falling on her feet.”
+
+But aloud Miss Sallie accepted the invitation with much decorum.
+
+On the deck aft, where the young people had gathered, there was much
+laughter.
+
+Gladys was really pleased to see Ruth. As for her cousins, they were a
+bore, but she had no idea of being openly rude to them. She simply meant
+to ignore them.
+
+It was not easy to disregard two such popular girls. Barbara and Mollie
+seemed to be well able to get on without her patronage. Barbara was
+already smiling and chattering with Governor Post, while the boys
+described her mad ride of two days before.
+
+“Father,” said Hugh, “I forgot to introduce you to Miss Thurston by her
+proper title, ‘Miss Paul Revere.’”
+
+“Harry,” asked Gladys, as they stood on the outside of the circle,
+“don’t you think it is disgusting the way that forward cousin of mine
+always manages to put herself before the public?”
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Townsend—was there a little admiration in his
+tone?—“she seems to have plenty of grit.”
+
+It was really Mollie, not Barbara, who saw through Gladys’s treatment of
+them. Barbara was too open-hearted and boyish to notice a slight, unless
+it was very marked.
+
+Gladys had asked Ruth and Grace to her stateroom, and Mrs. Post had put
+the other two girls into her unoccupied guest chamber. It was a little
+gem of a stateroom, upholstered in pale green to relieve the glare from
+the water.
+
+“Bab,” Mollie chuckled, rubbing her cheeks until they were pink, “do you
+remember the story of ‘The Water Baby’?”
+
+“Yes,” Bab answered absently; “I do, after a fashion. But why do you
+ask? You haven’t turned into a water baby, have you, just because you
+are on board a yacht for the first time in your life?”
+
+“No,” laughed Mollie. “I was thinking of the story in it of the salmon
+and the trout. Have you forgotten it?”
+
+“Of course I have,” admitted Barbara.
+
+Mollie chuckled gleefully. “Our high and mighty cousin, Gladys, reminds
+me very much of the salmon, who thought the trout a very common fish,
+and disliked him all the more because he was a relation. Feel like a
+trout, Bab?”
+
+“Not at all, Mollie; but do hurry and go out on deck. That young
+freshman, who came down in the automobile with us to amuse you, is
+wandering around outside, looking frightened to death. You must go and
+talk to him.”
+
+As Barbara stepped into the big salon, which was fitted up like a
+library, she saw one of the young men disappear quickly through the open
+door. Bab went over to their wraps, which they had dropped in a heap on
+a couch when they boarded the yacht, and selected her own jacket. Ruth’s
+pocketbook was in full view among their belongings, and Bab covered it
+over before she went on deck.
+
+Before dinner ended the moon had risen, the pale crescent hanging like a
+slender jewel in the sky.
+
+Barbara was standing alone, for a second, when Mrs. Erwin approached
+her.
+
+“Pardon me, dear,” she said, “but did you or your sister see a small pin
+on the dressing table of the guest room, when you went in there before
+dinner? I have misplaced a ruby and diamond circle of no great value. I
+went into the guest chamber this morning, while the maid was cleaning my
+room, and I thought perhaps I had laid it down in there.”
+
+“No,” said Bab, frowning. It did seem curious how losses were following
+them! “I didn’t look, although it was probably there. I am most
+unobservant. I will ask my sister.”
+
+“No, no,” said Mrs. Erwin, hastily; “please don’t. I shall probably find
+it again. I don’t want Mrs. Post to hear.”
+
+The next morning, when Grace and Ruth were donning their best motor
+veils and coats, Ruth suddenly looked surprised and began to search
+hurriedly through her pocketbook.
+
+“Grace,” she said, “I can’t find fifty dollars. I am sure I had it
+yesterday, because I looked carefully after that wretched burglar had
+gone, though I knew all my money was safe in my trunk. Now it’s gone!”
+
+Ruth turned her pocketbook upside down. “Don’t tell Aunt Sallie,
+please,” she begged. “I don’t know what she would say to have this item
+added to our adventures.”
+
+Miss Sallie’s voice was heard calling from the next room.
+
+“Girls, are we or are we not, going to Newport to-day? I, for my part,
+wish to spend no more time on the way!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI—NEWPORT AT LAST!
+
+
+The automobile girls were in a flutter of excitement. Another half hour,
+and they would arrive in Newport!
+
+“Ruth,” said Miss Sallie, “slow up this car a little! Before we enter
+Newport, I must see to my appearance. To think of all I have gone
+through since I left Kingsbridge!” Miss Sallie took out a small hand
+mirror, thoughtfully surveying her own unwrinkled face. “What will you
+children get me into before we are through with this trip?”
+
+Ruth slowed down obediently.
+
+“Open my bag, Mollie,” said Miss Sallie, decidedly, “and you, Grace,
+look under the seat for my other hat. We shall probably arrive in
+Newport at five o’clock, the hour for the fashionable parade. I, at
+least, shall do what I can to give our car an appearance of gentility. I
+advise you children to do the same.”
+
+“Would you like a little cold cream, Miss Sallie, to wipe off your
+face?” Mollie spoke timidly, remembering how Barbara had laughed at her.
+
+“Certainly I should, my child, and very intelligent of you to have
+brought it along.”
+
+“Well,” said Ruth, “if you must ‘fix up,’ and I am to take a party of
+belles and beauties into Newport, instead of true lovers of sport, there
+are lots of new veils under my seat. Bab, take them out and pass them
+around. Only the chauffeur shall be dusty and dilapidated enough to look
+the part.”
+
+Behold their dream had come true! The automobile girls were at last in
+Newport, watching the summer parade!
+
+Ruth, at the expected hour, turned her car, with a great flourish, into
+Bellevue Avenue, Newport’s most fashionable thoroughfare. For a few
+minutes the girls beheld a long procession of carriages and automobiles;
+a little later, they swung round a corner and stopped in front of a
+beautiful old Colonial house, with a wide veranda running around three
+sides of it, and a hospitably open front door.
+
+Miss Sallie descended first, to be greeted by Ralph’s mother, who was
+expecting them.
+
+“I don’t like her. She’s not a bit like Ralph,” thought Barbara. Then
+she gave herself an inward shake. “There, Barbara, you know what mother
+would say to you about your sudden prejudices!”
+
+Mrs. Ewing, who had been a great beauty in her day, looked as though
+life had disagreed with her.
+
+Barbara had wondered how a private home could accommodate so many
+people, never having seen a handsome old New England house, but their
+three rooms occupied only half of one side of the long hall on the
+second floor. “And they think they are poor!” smiled Bab, to herself, as
+she looked admiringly at the handsome furniture. “I wonder what they
+would think of our little five-room cottage.”
+
+“I want some clean clothes before anything else,” sighed dainty Mollie,
+standing before a mirror, gazing with disdain at her own appearance. “I
+believe I have one clean shirtwaist left, but I must still wear this
+dusty old skirt.”
+
+But Ruth was staggering into the room under an immense box.
+
+“Fifteen dollars express charges, mum; not a cent less! Them’s my
+orders. And extry for carrying the box upstairs. It ain’t my business.
+I’m too accommodating I am! Where shall I put it down, mum?”
+
+Ruth dropped the heavy bundle on the bed; she couldn’t carry it a moment
+longer.
+
+“Why, Ruth Stuart!” said Mollie, dancing with glee. “It’s some clothes
+for us! How did mother get them here in such a hurry? Oh, joy! oh,
+rapture! I was just fussing about having to wear this old suit
+to-night.”
+
+Bab was tugging at the heavy cords.
+
+“Foolish Bab!” scoffed Ruth. “You’ll never get it open that way,” and
+she cut the cord in a business-like fashion with a little knife she
+always carried.
+
+“Now I’ll run away and leave you,” Ruth continued. “Grace is calling
+that it is time for my bath. Your turn next. I’ll see the pretty things
+when I come back.”
+
+Ruth would like to have stayed to see the girls open the box, but she
+had an instinctive feeling that they would prefer to be alone.
+
+“Here’s a letter from mother. Let’s read that first,” said Bab.
+
+Inside the letter lay two crisp ten-dollar bills!
+
+“I have had a windfall, children,” the letter read, “through the
+kindness of Mr. Stuart. He told me that some of my old stock that I
+thought of no value was paying a dividend again. Curiously, your Uncle
+Ralph had not mentioned it to me; but, when I wrote and told him of Mr.
+Stuart’s advice, he sent it to me at once. So here’s a little spending
+money. And oh, my darlings, I hope you will like your new clothes! Mr.
+Stuart is so kind to me, I am not lonely,” the letter ended, “so have
+the best time you possibly can. I shall send your trunk to-morrow with
+your summer muslins and underwear.”
+
+“Mollie mine, don’t tear the paper in that fashion,” remonstrated
+Barbara. “Let me open the box. Behold and see!” She held up two dainty
+organdie frocks, delicate and airy. Mollie’s gown was white, with little
+butterfly medallions of embroidery and lace sprinkled over it.
+
+“Mollie, Mollie! How could mother have guessed your new name was ‘the
+butterfly girl’? Isn’t it too lovely!” Bab almost forgot to look at her
+own frock, so enraptured was she with her sister’s.
+
+But Barbara’s frock was just as charming, and as well suited to her. A
+circle of pink wild roses outlined the hem and encircled the yoke, which
+was of delicate pink tulle.
+
+Mollie was rummaging with impatient fingers. “Party capes, I do
+declare—the very newest style! I never reached the point of expecting
+capes even in my wildest dreams. See, yours is all white, and mine has a
+pale blue lining with a dear little ‘blue riding hood cap.’ Oh, won’t I
+be charming?” murmured Mollie, putting the cape over her shoulders and
+pirouetting before the mirror. “Surely no sensible wolf would want to
+eat me up!”
+
+Two light flannel suits, one of cream color for Bab, and a pin-stripe of
+blue and white for Mollie, completed the glories of the box.
+
+“Now,” said Bab, “what more can we want, for tennis, for rowing, for
+yachting, for driving? Are there any more entertainments that the rich
+enjoy, Mollie? Because, if there are, I should like to mention them.”
+
+  Oh, the girls will all declare,
+  When they see me on the square—
+  Here comes a millionaire,
+  Mollie darling!
+
+“What do you think of that for poetry made while you wait? You don’t
+half appreciate my talents, Miss Mollie Thurston,” ended Bab, with a
+final hug.
+
+“Hurry, children,” called Miss Sallie, appearing at their door. “You
+know we are to meet Mrs. Cartwright at the Casino to-night. She wants to
+introduce us to the place where a large part of Newport’s gayety
+occurs.”
+
+“What is the ‘Casino’?” whispered Mollie, when Miss Sallie had
+disappeared.
+
+“Oh, it’s only a big club, where you play tennis and have dances, and
+any sort of entertainments. Nearly all the nicest people in Newport
+belong to it. Mrs. Cartwright says we’ll have most of our fun over
+there.”
+
+Bab put her arm round her sister, as they walked downstairs.
+
+“Mollie,” she said, “I have the queerest feeling. I am so happy, it
+frightens me. I never had such a good time before. I wonder how it will
+all turn out?”
+
+Barbara could not guess that there were to be tears for her, as well as
+joys, at Newport. It was as well she did not know, or her pleasure would
+have been marred.
+
+The girls finished dinner as quickly as possible.
+
+“There’s time for a stroll on the cliffs, isn’t there, before eight?”
+inquired Ruth. “Do you feel equal to exercise, Aunt Sallie? Everyone
+takes the cliff walk the first thing after arrival in Newport.”
+
+“Certainly,” Miss Sallie agreed. “I suppose I can manage it, though I
+have ridden so far that I may have lost the use of my limbs. However, I
+can sit down if I grow tired, and you children can go on without me.
+It’s perfectly safe, isn’t it, Mrs. Ewing?”
+
+“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Ewing replied; “though it looks fairly dangerous, the
+cliffs are so high, the highest on the Atlantic Coast from Cape Ann to
+Yucatan. But very few accidents have occurred there—so far.”
+
+Ruth and Barbara led the way. They could hear the sea booming and
+pounding below them. From the edge of the cliff they looked down a
+hundred feet at the sea, washing in on the level stretch of beach.
+
+Ruth shivered and turned pale. “Oh,” she shuddered, “it makes me
+horribly nervous! I am ashamed of it, so I don’t often mention it, but I
+simply can’t look down from great heights. It even makes me a little
+sick to look out of a high window, and I’m a miserable climber, I get so
+dizzy. Let us go back. Do you mind, Bab?”
+
+“No, Ruth,” Bab answered. “I suppose I am a tomboy; I used to play hare
+and hounds with the boys at school, and I learned to climb like a goat
+over the rocks at Kingsbridge; but these Newport cliffs are a different
+matter.”
+
+Barbara’s powers were to be tested, but neither she nor Ruth thought
+anything more of their talk. Miss Sallie and the other two girls had
+joined them, and they made their way along the narrow, winding path that
+dipped in hollows and curves, and stretched for two miles ahead of them.
+
+“How hard it is,” said Miss Sallie, “to tell which view is the more
+beautiful!”
+
+On the inland side of the cliffs, beautiful, shaded lawns, luxuriant
+with flowers, ran down to the edge of the path. Set in their midst were
+the marble palaces of Newport’s millionaires. Toward the sea, great
+points of land jutted out into the harbor, where the water was violet
+with the shadows of the closing day.
+
+“Miss Stuart! Miss Stuart!” Aunt Sallie heard a gay voice calling her.
+
+Running across the lawn, and waving her scarf at them, came Mrs.
+Cartwright.
+
+“Were you coming to see me first?” she asked.
+
+Miss Stuart confessed that she had not the shadow of an idea which house
+belonged to Mrs. Cartwright.
+
+“You must see it for a minute, since you are already here,” urged Mrs.
+Cartwright, and led the way up the graveled path to her veranda.
+
+“Mollie,” she said, addressing the young girl, “I think it is peculiarly
+appropriate for my butterfly girl to be introduced to my piazza. It is
+made to look like a Japanese teahouse,” she explained to Miss Sallie.
+
+The sides of Mrs. Cartwright’s veranda were of heavy Japanese paper
+stretched on bamboo poles which opened and closed at will. The paper had
+been painted by a famous Japanese artist to represent springtime in
+Japan. There were whole rows of cherry trees in full blossom, with
+little Japanese children playing beneath them. Opposite this scene was
+another painting—a marshy lake, surrounded by queer Japanese birds.
+
+The veranda was lighted by a hundred tiny shaded lamps. Japanese matting
+covered the floor, while the tea tables were set with tea services
+bought in old Japan. The girls had never seen anything so lovely.
+
+“You are officially invited to have tea with me here, any or every
+afternoon you are in Newport. Now I will run and get Mr. Cartwright,”
+added their hostess, “and we will go over to the Casino.”
+
+Outside, the Casino looked like a rambling, old Dutch mansion, with
+peaked gables and overhanging eaves.
+
+“We’ve a Dutch house, English lawns and a French chef,” Mr. Cartwright
+laughingly explained to Miss Sallie as they entered.
+
+“And we’ve dozens of tennis courts,” added Mrs. Cartwright. “We are
+working dreadfully hard, now, for the tournament that is to take place
+in a few weeks. It is really the social event of the whole year at
+Newport. Is there a star player among you girls? Why not enter the
+tournament and compete for the championship? We are to have a special
+match game, this year, played by the young people. Let us keep these
+tennis courts busy for a while. You’ll come over, too, Miss Stuart,
+won’t you, and play bridge while we work. Or you’ll work at bridge,
+while we play tennis. Perhaps you think that is the way I should have
+put it.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII—A WEEK LATER
+
+
+“Barbara, I wouldn’t play tennis with Gladys and Harry Townsend, if I
+were you,” said Mollie to her sister, one morning a week later. “They
+were horrid to you yesterday. Didn’t you notice, when you called to Hugh
+and Ruth that their last ball had gone over the line, Gladys just
+shrugged her shoulders, and gave a sneery kind of smile to that Townsend
+fellow, and he lifted his eyebrows! Is your score the best, or Ruth’s? I
+know you’re both ahead of Gladys and Grace. I am sure Gladys doesn’t
+play a bit better than I do; so she needn’t have been so high and
+mighty.”
+
+Mollie shrugged her dainty shoulders. “You see, she told me, the first
+day she arrived, that, of course, I didn’t play in the class with the
+others, so you had just the right eight for the two courts—four girls
+and four men.”
+
+“Why, Mollie!” Bab looked surprised. “I thought you said you didn’t want
+to play. You can take my place any time.”
+
+Mollie smiled. “No,” she answered; “I don’t want to play. It’s not that.
+But it annoys me when you let Gladys Le Baron, cousin or no cousin, snub
+us all the time, and you not notice it. Ralph certainly wouldn’t like to
+have me play with him now, when you’re in for a match game.”
+
+“Mollie,” said Bab, tying her tennis shoe, “I _do_ notice how rude
+Gladys is. She left me standing all alone the other afternoon, when Ruth
+and Grace had gone into the club house to speak to Aunt Sallie. Friends
+of Gladys’s came up, and she deliberately turned her back on me and
+didn’t introduce me. I felt so out of it! Mrs. Post and Mrs. Erwin soon
+joined them, and they shook hands with me. I found the other people were
+some guests who had come down for Mrs. Erwin’s ball, next week, and were
+staying at her house.
+
+“I know,” she continued, “Gladys is furious that we are invited to the
+dance. Mrs. Erwin was so cordial and nice. She said, right before me,
+that though the ball was a grown-up affair, she knew Gladys would want
+her cousins and friends, and she had invited us on her account. Wasn’t
+it funny? Miss Gladys couldn’t say a word. Goodness knows, _she_ doesn’t
+want us. She has been lording it over us, for days, because she and
+Harry were to be the only very young people invited. Gladys imagines
+herself a woman of society, and is in reality merely a foolish little
+girl,” said Barbara. Then she added reflectively: “Miss Sallie says we
+are all too young to ‘go out,’ and she doubts the propriety of allowing
+us to attend Mrs. Erwin’s ball. Last night she told Ruth she had almost
+decided against our going. Ruth championed our cause on the strength of
+the shortness of our stay in Newport, also that we should be permitted
+to go as a special favor to our hostess. You know Miss Sallie hates to
+refuse Ruth anything. Consequently we will be ‘among those present’ at
+Mrs. Erwin’s ball whether Miss Gladys approves or not.”
+
+“I just wish I could tell my lovely Mrs. Cartwright how mean Gladys is,”
+said Mollie. “She would not ask her to her charity fair.”
+
+“Please don’t say anything, Mollie,” pleaded Barbara, taking her tennis
+racquet from the bed. She had already answered Ralph’s impatient whistle
+from the garden below. “It won’t do any good for us to be horrid to
+Gladys in return; it will only make us seem as hateful as she is. Things
+will come around, somehow. I don’t mind her—so very much.”
+
+“Well, I do,” answered Mollie. “But you haven’t told me how your score
+and Ruth’s stand.”
+
+“Oh, I think we are pretty nearly even.” Barbara was half way out the
+door. “Be careful, Molliekins,” she urged, “if you go rowing with that
+freshman this afternoon. Why do you want to know about Ruth’s score and
+mine? It’s a week before the game, and anything may happen before then.
+We all play pretty evenly; Hugh Post and Ralph Ewing, too.”
+
+“Oh, I didn’t mean anything, Bab,” Mollie said, thoughtfully. “Only
+Ruth’s awfully anxious to play in the tournament. She’s just crazy about
+it.”
+
+“Of course she is, child. So are we all, for that matter,” answered Bab.
+“You don’t mean——”
+
+“I don’t mean a single thing, Bab Thurston!” said Mollie, a little
+indignantly.
+
+“Yes, I am coming, at last, Ralph,” Barbara sang softly over the
+banisters. She had not overcome her awe of Mrs. Ewing. Ralph’s mother
+was by no means pleased with the idea that her adored Ralph preferred
+Barbara to any of the other girls.
+
+“It’s like Ralph,” she complained to his father, “to pick out the
+poorest girl of the lot, when the rich ones are so much more charming. A
+great way for him to retrieve the family fortunes!”
+
+“We will hope,” said Ralph’s father quietly, “that Ralph will not try to
+restore our fortunes by marrying for money.”
+
+As Barbara walked down to meet Ralph she looked grave, and her face was
+flushed. Ruth _did_ want to play in the tournament, but so did she, for
+that matter! Could she resign in Ruth’s favor? Then Barbara laughed to
+herself. “Catch a girl like Ruth letting me give up to her! I wonder if
+it would be fair of me to disappoint Ralph?”
+
+“Come on, Miss Day-dreamer,” ordered Ralph, hurrying her along. “The
+others have been waiting for us for fifteen minutes down at the Casino
+courts. Do you know that there is a party on for the afternoon? Ruth and
+Hugh are to pile as many of us as they can into their motor cars, and
+take us ten miles out the Ocean Drive. We are to stop at Mrs. Duffy’s
+English tea place on our way back.”
+
+Bab was certainly not playing in good form today. She even missed one of
+Gladys’s serves, which were usually too soft to count. When the
+morning’s practice was over, Ruth’s and Hugh’s score was two points
+ahead.
+
+“Who is going to play in the tournament from these courts?” asked Mrs.
+Cartwright, crossing the lawn, her tennis racquet swinging in her hand.
+Mollie was close beside her, also “that freshman,” who followed Mollie
+wherever she went.
+
+“Bab,” answered Ruth, coming up to smile at Mrs. Cartwright, who was
+looking prettier than usual in her tennis blouse of pale pink madras
+with a linen skirt of the same shade.
+
+“What a funny Gladys!” Mrs. Cartwright laughed as the other girls joined
+her. “You are following our latest Newport fad, are you not, of having
+your head wrapped in a chiffon veil while you play tennis. You look like
+a Turkish girl, with only your eyes peeping out.”
+
+Gladys had tied up her head in a pale blue chiffon veil, with a fetching
+bow just over the ear. The other women who were playing on the courts,
+with the exception of Mrs. Cartwright and the automobile girls, were
+draped in the same fashion.
+
+“That suggests a game to me,” continued Mrs. Cartwright. “You must come
+to my veranda some night and we will play it. It is called ‘eyeology.’ I
+won’t tell you anything more about it now. Just you wait! But to go back
+to my first question. Then I am to enter Barbara for the tournament?”
+
+“I should say not, Mrs. Cartwright,” said Barbara, who was standing
+near. This time she would not let Ruth speak.
+
+“Ruth is certainly the best player among us,” drawled Gladys; “she and
+Mr. Post; but,” she went on in insinuating tones, “you know there are
+strange things that can happen in tennis!”
+
+“If you mean, Gladys, that I cheated the other day,” broke out Barbara
+fiercely, “I simply won’t bear it! I know it is horrid of me to make a
+scene,” she turned to Ruth with her eyes full of tears, “but this is the
+second time.”
+
+“Please don’t get excited, Miss Thurston,” cried Gladys scornfully. “I
+have not said you cheated. It looks a little bit like a case of guilty
+conscience.”
+
+Harry Townsend smiled knowingly.
+
+Bab, nearly in tears, couldn’t answer, but Ralph and Hugh Post both
+protested indignantly.
+
+“Please don’t discuss a thing of this kind here,” said Mrs. Cartwright,
+angrily. “We don’t allow quarreling on the Casino courts. I am surprised
+at you, Barbara. You were accused of nothing.”
+
+Mollie’s eyes were black, instead of their usual lovely blue. She was
+very indignant, but she was always more of a diplomat than Barbara.
+
+“Lovely lady,” she said, putting her hand in Mrs. Cartwright’s as they
+moved away, “Gladys did mean that Bab cheated. This is the second time
+she has said it. Wouldn’t you answer back if you were accused of not
+playing fair with your very best friend?”
+
+Mrs. Cartwright gave Mollie’s hand a squeeze. “Tell Barbara I am sorry
+if I was too hard on her, but I don’t like scenes!”
+
+“I wish I could get an excuse to pummel that Harry Townsend!” muttered
+Ralph indignantly to Hugh, when the girls had gone home. “I can’t take
+it out on Gladys, for she’s a girl. That Townsend fellow’s nothing but a
+sneak. He just stands round and smiles and says nothing, until he puts
+me in a rage!”
+
+“Oh, don’t fight, Ralph,” Hugh protested. “I hate that Townsend man,
+though, as much as you do. He is too infernally polite, for one thing,
+and he walks on his tiptoes. He comes right up behind you, and you never
+know where he is until he speaks. I believe he wears rubber soles on his
+shoes!”
+
+That afternoon, when the automobile parties had finished drinking their
+tea, Barbara asked Ralph to take a little walk with her in the woods.
+She wanted to ask him something.
+
+“Ralph,” she began, “if I should fall down in my tennis, in the next few
+days, would you and Hugh play a test game to see which of you is the
+better man to help Ruth out in the tournament?”
+
+Ralph shook his head. “No,” he answered. “You are not losing your nerve,
+are you, Bab? Ruth and Hugh are wonderfully good players, but we are as
+good as the rest of ’em. I’ll take my chances with you.”
+
+“Would you be very, very much disappointed if we lost?”
+
+“Oh, yes,” said Ralph, cheerily, “but I could bear it all right.” He
+looked hard at Barbara for a minute. Then he said: “Go ahead, Barbara; I
+think I understand. I am game. And I’ll never breathe it to a soul. Hugh
+and Ruth would never forgive us, if they found out!”
+
+“Well, Ralph,” said Barbara, “I don’t think there’s going to be any
+reason for my trying to let Ruth win; she’s a better player than I am,
+and she will win anyhow, but, in case she shouldn’t, Ruth has been a
+perfect dear to Mollie and me!”
+
+“Gladys,” said Ruth that night, when the young people were having an
+informal dance at the Casino, “I shall never forgive you for accusing
+Barbara of cheating, as you did today. Barbara is perfectly incapable of
+cheating. I can’t understand why you don’t like her.”
+
+Ruth’s frank face clouded. She was incapable of understanding the petty
+meannesses in Gladys’s nature.
+
+“Mr. Townsend and I thought differently concerning Miss Thurston,”
+Gladys replied, “but I have made no accusations, and will make none. You
+will find things out for yourself, though, when it is too late!”
+
+Mollie was very sympathetic with Barbara that night. Things had not been
+going well with Bab for several days; she had an unfortunate habit of
+speaking her mind without thinking, and this trait had gotten her into
+trouble with Miss Sallie several times. That lady had a profound respect
+for the rich, while Barbara had been heard to say that some of the most
+fashionable ideas of Newport were “just nonsense.”
+
+“Bab,” comforted Mollie, “Mrs. Cartwright told me to say she was sorry
+she had been cross to you. She wants you to be the gypsy fortune-teller
+at her bazaar. She says you are very clever, and would do it better than
+anyone else; besides, she thinks no one would know you. She has lots of
+gypsy things to dress up in.”
+
+“I would much rather be a waitress, like you girls,” Bab declared.
+
+“But you will do what Mrs. Cartwright wants you to, won’t you?” urged
+Mollie.
+
+“I’ll see,” said Bab.
+
+The automobile girls were seeing Newport indeed! Mrs. Erwin and Mrs.
+Cartwright were both leaders in society. The girls had not only been
+invited to Mrs. Erwin’s ball, but to the big dance which took place
+after the tennis tournament, and Mrs. Cartwright was arranging for a
+Charity Fair, which was to be the most original entertainment of the
+Newport season.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII—THE NIGHT OF THE BALL
+
+
+“Yes, Hugh,” Barbara said, as the last strains of the Merry Widow waltz
+died away, “I should like to rest here a minute.” Barbara sank down on
+the low, rose-colored divan shaded by magnificent palms in Mrs. Erwin’s
+conservatory. “I would love an ice, too,” she added.
+
+It was the night of Mrs. Erwin’s famous white and gold ball, long
+remembered in the history of splendid entertainments in Newport.
+
+Barbara truly wanted a minute to think. She had come to the ball under
+Miss Sallie’s excellent chaperonage, early in the evening, and had been
+dancing hard ever since. The little girl from Kingsbridge, who had never
+before seen anything finer than a village entertainment, felt almost
+overcome by the splendor and magnificence of everything about her.
+
+Mrs. Erwin’s ballroom was built out from the side of her handsome villa
+like a Greek portico. The conservatory joined it at one end, forming an
+inner triangular court. This court was filled with rare trees which
+threw their branches out over a miniature artificial lake. The guests
+could pass from the ballroom into this open garden, or they could enter
+it through the conservatory.
+
+The walls of the wonderful ballroom were covered with a white silk
+brocade, and on this night Mrs. Erwin had allowed only yellow flowers to
+be used as decorations. Great bowls of yellow roses perfumed the air,
+and golden orchids looked like troops of butterflies just poising before
+they took flight.
+
+“Now I know,” said Mollie, with a catch in her breath, as she first came
+into the magnificent ballroom, “what King Midas’s garden must have
+looked like, when he went round and caressed all the flowers in it with
+the golden touch.”
+
+“Clever Mollie!” laughed Ruth. “I expect it is the golden touch that has
+been round this ballroom, or the touch of golden dollars, anyway.”
+
+Mollie blushed. “I didn’t mean that,” she said.
+
+Barbara leaned her head against the rose-colored cushion, just the color
+of the jeweled spray in her hair; she was wearing the coral jewelry her
+mother had given her. Fortunately the two girls had saved their best
+party dresses for this ball, having been content to wear their summer
+muslins at the informal dances at the Casino.
+
+Barbara, in her dainty pink flowered organdie, with her cheeks flushed
+to match it in color, resembled a lovely wild rose.
+
+Curiously enough, amid all this elegance, Bab felt a little homesick.
+She kept thinking of her mother and the little cottage.
+
+“It’s a wonderful experience for Mollie and me,” she said to herself. “I
+hope I can tell mother exactly what it looks like. I am sure fairyland
+can’t be half so gorgeous; fairies wear only dewdrops for jewels; but
+here, I believe, there must be nearly all the jewels in the world.”
+
+Barbara did not know how big the world really is, nor how many people
+and jewels, both real and paste, there are in it. After all, artificial
+people are no better than paste jewels!
+
+Earlier in the evening Mollie and Barbara had stood with their hands
+tight together, watching the men and women enter the great reception
+room to speak to their host and hostess.
+
+“Diamonds,” whispered Mollie to Bab, “seem as plentiful as the
+strawberries we gathered for the hotel people this summer. We didn’t
+dream, then, that we were coming to Newport! Isn’t my Mrs. Cartwright
+the most beautiful of them all?” wound up the loyal child.
+
+Mrs. Cartwright wore a white satin gown, with a diamond star in the
+tulle of her bodice. In her hair was a spray of diamonds, mounted to
+look like a single stalk of lilies of the valley, each jewel hanging
+from the slender stem like a tiny floweret.
+
+The conservatory was almost empty while Bab rested and waited.
+
+During the intermission in the dance nearly all the guests had wandered
+into the dining-room or into the moonlit garden.
+
+Barbara realized that she was almost completely hidden by the great palm
+trees that formed an arch over her head and drooped their long arms down
+over her. She had crept into this seat in order that she might see
+without being seen.
+
+Yet in spite of the quiet, Barbara was not resting. Her heart was
+beating fast with the excitement of this wonderful evening, and her tiny
+feet in the pink silk slippers still kept time to the last waltz she had
+danced with Hugh.
+
+The conservatory door, leading into the garden, was open. Barbara saw
+Mrs. Post, Governor Post, Harry Townsend and a woman in a gold-colored
+brocade enter the conservatory and stop to talk for a few minutes. They
+had not noticed Barbara nor did she feel it was quite proper to
+interrupt them, as she did not know the strange woman who was with them.
+
+Governor Post bowed in military fashion to the ladies.
+
+“Now,” he said, “I’ll go, and leave the young man to do the
+entertaining. We old fellows must make ourselves useful when our
+ornamental days are over. Mr. Townsend will look after you here, and I
+shall find a waiter and have him bring you something to eat.”
+
+Barbara saw Harry Townsend talking in his most impressive manner to the
+two women.
+
+“It is curious,” Bab thought, to herself, “what a society man Harry
+Townsend is. Gladys says he is only twenty-two. I wonder where he comes
+from. Nobody seems to know. Oh, yes; Gladys said he was educated in
+Paris. She met him on shipboard.”
+
+The little girl from her green bower was an interested watcher. It was
+fascinating to be able to see all that was going on, without being seen.
+Bab sat as quiet as a mouse, taking no part in the conversation.
+
+Mrs. Post was a handsome woman of about fifty, who looked rather stern
+to the girls; but Hugh assured them that she was “dead easy,” once you
+got on the right side of her. Her husband was a prominent lawyer in
+Washington, and their winters were usually spent in the capital.
+
+Mrs. Post’s gown was nearly covered by a long, light-colored chiffon
+wrap, with a high collar lined with a curious ornamental embroidery.
+
+“Harry,” she said, turning to the young man with her, “it is warm in
+here with these tropical plants; will you be kind enough to remove my
+wrap?”
+
+The conservatory was dimly lighted. Barbara sat in the shadow. Between
+her and the party she was watching was a central row of flowers and
+evergreens, dividing the long room into two aisles.
+
+She saw Harry rise and lean over Mrs. Post, who only half rose from her
+chair. Deftly and with wonderful ease and swiftness, Townsend undid the
+clasp at her throat; but, for a moment, the embroidery from the collar
+seemed to have caught in her hair.
+
+Barbara’s eyes grew wide and staring with surprise. As the coat slipped
+back from Mrs. Post’s shoulders, she saw a string like a tiny green
+serpent glide with magic smoothness and swiftness from her throat, and
+drop into the shrubbery back of her, or—into Harry Townsend’s hand?
+
+What should she do? Announce that she had seen her string of emeralds
+disappear? Mrs. Post was talking and laughing gayly with her friend in
+the gold-colored dress. Harry was smiling quietly by them. Barbara
+rubbed her eyes. Surely she was mistaken. She had been dazzled by the
+wonderful sights she had seen that night. While she hesitated her
+opportunity passed.
+
+Governor Post returned, saying to his wife: “Come, my dear, I have found
+Miss Stuart and a friend. They have a table out in the garden, and want
+us to join them.”
+
+Mrs. Post again drew her wrap over her shoulders and turned to leave the
+conservatory. As she rose she saw Barbara.
+
+“You there, my child?” she said in a friendly way. “Why didn’t you speak
+to me?”
+
+Barbara could only answer her stupidly. “I was waiting for Hugh.”
+
+When Hugh returned he found Barbara looking as pale as though she had
+just seen a ghost.
+
+“What’s the matter?” he asked at once. “Are you ill?”
+
+But Bab shook her head. “I’ll go find Miss Stuart,” the young man
+suggested.
+
+“You’ll do no such thing, Hugh!” Barbara had recovered her breath.
+“There’s nothing much the matter with me—at least, I am not sure whether
+I ought to tell you.”
+
+“Bab and Hugh! Well, I like this!” Grace’s voice sounded from the
+doorway, as she and Donald Cartwright came in, followed by Ruth and
+Ralph. “Here you two have run away by yourselves, when we promised to
+stick together this evening, in order to keep up each other’s courage.
+You ought to see Gladys! She’s as angry as can he, and is wandering
+round with Mollie and the freshman. Harry has been gone somewhere for a
+long time, and she has no partner for the next dance.”
+
+“Are you sick, Bab?” inquired Ruth. She, too, noticed that Bab was
+unusually pale. Before she received an answer, Governor and Mrs. Post
+came into the conservatory, followed by Harry Townsend, Miss Stuart and
+the woman in yellow.
+
+“You are just the fellow I want to see, Hugh,” said his father, so
+quietly that no one except those near him could hear. “Your mother has
+lost her emerald necklace, and she thought she had it on when she was
+last in here. We don’t want to create any excitement, or to let Mrs.
+Erwin or the servants know until we have made a thorough search. She
+very probably dropped it among these flowers. Lock the door out there,
+will you? Miss Carter, you and Donald, please keep guard at the other
+door while these young people help me look.”
+
+“I thought——” said Barbara.
+
+“Why, you were in here, child, when we were. You were on the other side
+of these evergreens,” said Mrs. Post. “What did you say?”
+
+“I thought it might be in these evergreens,” Barbara finished, lamely,
+getting down on her knees to assist in the search. Dared she speak of
+what she thought she had seen? Dared she speak with no evidence but her
+own word? Could she have been in error? First, she would look with the
+others.
+
+Every palm, every flower, every inch of space was carefully gone over.
+No sign of the missing emeralds!
+
+“Did anyone enter the conservatory after I left, Miss Thurston?”
+inquired Mrs. Post coldly. She was worried by the loss of her jewels,
+which were of great value, as well as annoyed by the excitement she was
+causing.
+
+“Nobody came in,” Bab said, “only Hugh.”
+
+“I am exceedingly sorry,” the governor said at last, “but Mrs. Erwin
+will have to be notified. The jewels were either lost or stolen, and
+must be found. If the servants find the necklace a liberal reward will
+induce them to return it.”
+
+The older people left the conservatory.
+
+Just as the younger ones turned to leave, Barbara, whose strange
+expression had not escaped the sharp eyes of Ruth, laid her hand on
+Hugh’s arm.
+
+“Ask Harry Townsend to stay here a minute with us, won’t you please,
+Hugh?” said Barbara hoarsely.
+
+“Say, Townsend,” Hugh called, “come back a moment. I want to speak to
+you. Or, rather, Miss Thurston does.”
+
+“Mr. Townsend,” said Barbara, her face pale as death, “did you not see
+Mrs. Post’s necklace when you took off her wrap in here?”
+
+“No,” said Harry quietly. “Did you?”
+
+“Ask him, Hugh,” said Barbara, desperately, “to show you what he has in
+his pockets!”
+
+“Oh, say, Barbara!” Hugh answered. “I can’t do that. It’s a little too
+much.”
+
+But Ralph stepped forward. “We don’t know what Miss Thurston means, but
+she most certainly doesn’t mean to insult Mr. Townsend unnecessarily.
+Why, then, should he mind turning out his pockets? Here Hugh,” Ralph
+turned, “search me first. Then Mr. Townsend won’t object to the selfsame
+process.”
+
+Hugh’s face was crimson, but he looked through Ralph’s pockets in a
+gingerly fashion.
+
+When he finished Harry Townsend turned quietly to Barbara. “I don’t know
+why you wish to insult me,” he said to her, “but I am perfectly willing
+to have Mr. Post search me. You were the only person in the conservatory
+after the jewels were lost!”
+
+Hugh started his search.
+
+Barbara leaned sick and faint against her chair, expecting every moment
+to see Hugh draw the jewels forth. She kept her eyes averted while Harry
+turned his pockets wrong side out and finally opened his vest.
+
+“Barbara,” said Hugh, coldly, and Bab turned around. “We owe Mr.
+Townsend an apology. He is certainly no thief!”
+
+The jewels were nowhere to be found.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV—BARBARA’S SECRET
+
+
+“Bab, Bab! What is the matter with you!” cried Mollie, for Barbara had
+thrown herself on the bed after their return from the ball, bursting
+into a torrent of tears.
+
+“Oh, I don’t know,” sobbed Bab. “I must be wrong, or crazy, or
+something. Yet how can people doubt their own eyes?”
+
+Mollie stopped spreading out her butterfly dress, in which she had
+looked so pretty at the party, and flung her arms round her sister.
+
+“Just tell me what is the matter, dear! Has anyone hurt your feelings?
+If it’s that Gladys Le Baron I’ll certainly get even with her!”
+
+But Bab didn’t answer.
+
+“I’m going to call Ruth,” said Mollie. “I don’t want to waken Aunt
+Sallie, but you seemed queer all the way home from the ball.”
+
+Bab sat up, when Ruth came in, and dried her eyes.
+
+“I am so sorry you feel so badly, Barbara, dear,” said Ruth, “but, of
+course, it was a wretched mistake for you to have made. Let’s try to
+forget that horrid scene. Some servant will pick up the necklace in the
+morning, and return it to Mrs. Post. Hugh and I have decided that it
+will be wise for those of us who were in the conservatory just at the
+last not to speak of what happened. You will forgive us, Mollie, dear,
+won’t you, if we don’t tell even you?”
+
+“No, I won’t!” cried Mollie, stamping her little slippered foot. “Bab
+can’t have secrets that make her cry—not from her own sister. And I
+don’t see, anyway, what Bab has to do with Mrs. Post having lost her
+emerald necklace. If you think the loss is a secret, you’re wrong,
+because everybody in the ballroom was whispering it about half an hour
+afterwards. I heard of it from a perfect stranger!”
+
+“Mollie,” said Ruth quietly, “will you please do me a favor? Don’t ask
+Barbara to tell you what happened that has worried her. It was nothing
+but an unfortunate mistake, and will all blow over in the morning.”
+
+“Very well, Ruth,” agreed Mollie. “I won’t ask. But I am not a baby, and
+I am very sure it would be better if I were told.”
+
+Thus poor Bab had no one in whom to confide, and had to bear her ugly
+secret all alone.
+
+Ruth kissed her good night, saying: “Cheer up, silly girl, and sleep
+late as you can in the morning. You know, it’s to be the last day of our
+tennis practice, and you are going to beat me tomorrow!”
+
+Ruth tiptoed over to Mollie, who was undressing in silence. “Mistress
+Mollie,” she said, “forgive me; do, please, like a dear. Talking about
+horrid things only makes them _horrider_!”
+
+Ruth, in the depths of her heart, thought that Barbara had been most
+unwise in her hinted accusation of Harry Townsend. For Bab’s sake she
+thought it best for everyone to forget what had happened. It was a fault
+in Ruth’s nature that she loved only pleasant things, and would often
+give up, even when she knew she was right, in order not to make trouble.
+
+The next morning a Barbara of heavy eyes and white cheeks joined the
+players on the tennis court.
+
+Plainly Harry had confided what had happened to Gladys, for she did not
+speak to Bab as she came up to her, but tossed her head and bit her
+lips. Gladys said nothing, however, for Harry had made her promise she
+would not breathe what he had told her.
+
+As for Mr. Townsend, he treated Barbara with cold politeness. But
+Barbara was beginning to have her eyes opened. “If I am right about
+him,” she thought to herself, “then I shall have to be very careful. I
+believe he is more clever than any of us dream!”
+
+It was Hugh whose manner was most constrained. He could not forgive the
+scene of the night before, in which he had been forced to take an
+unwilling part. Not until Ruth called him over to her, and gave him a
+lecture, did he beg Bab’s pardon, and ask that they all forget the
+experience of the night before.
+
+“Come on!” he called, cheerily, to the group of tennis players. “It’s do
+or die to-day—the last test day for us. It will show us who is to
+represent our crowd at the tournament. The girl and the fellow who can
+beat all the rest of us stand a good chance of winning the silver cup.
+Mrs. Cartwright says she has been closely following the game of the star
+players and she thinks we have them beaten to a finish. Come on, Ruth,
+let’s show ’em that we’re out for blood!”
+
+Swish! Barbara’s ball flew over the net and curved toward the ground at
+Hugh’s left. Not too swiftly for that young gentleman; while Ruth’s
+heart gave a jump of apprehension, Hugh made a left-hand swing with his
+racquet and sent the ball whizzing back.
+
+“Fifteen!” Ralph called out, in a bored tone. He had failed in his
+return.
+
+The battle raged all morning.
+
+Grace and Donald Cartwright, Gladys and Mr. Townsend were soon out of
+the running. When they had finished they sank gratefully on the ground,
+to watch the others play.
+
+The field was thus left to Barbara and Ralph, to Ruth and Hugh. The sets
+stood even, and two more games would decide.
+
+A small crowd of visitors stood around the court. Mrs. Cartwright,
+having finished her own game, came over to look on. Miss Sallie was
+trying to be impartial, but she was really deeply interested in Ruth’s
+success. Mrs. Erwin, Mrs. Post, the governor, all their friends, were
+lined up to behold the battle.
+
+A subdued discussion of the lost emeralds had been going on at the
+Casino all morning. After a thorough search of every inch of Mrs.
+Erwin’s house and grounds, there was still no sign of the jewels; but
+Governor Post and Mrs. Erwin had made every effort to have the scandal
+of the necklace hushed up. They had seen the Newport detectives, and had
+telegraphed to New York for two experts to be sent down to handle the
+case. In the meantime they had been advised not to talk.
+
+Now the only upright person, who could have given them any information
+had, for just a little while, forgotten all about it. Whatever Barbara
+did she did with her whole heart. Today she played tennis.
+
+“Ralph,” Hugh called, “remember, now, it’s two straight games to finish
+the way we stand!”
+
+There was no more conversation. Even the watchers held their breath. The
+referee sat on the ground, rapidly calling out the
+score—“forty—thirty—deuce!”
+
+“Is this game to go on forever?” Miss Sallie inquired, plaintively. “My
+girls will be wholly worn out.”
+
+“Advantage in!” shouted the referee.
+
+Ralph sprang forward for his ball; his foot slipped. Barbara, who had
+been expecting him to return it, was not ready.
+
+“Game!”
+
+Ruth and Hugh shook hands with each other. But Hugh called over: “Say,
+Ralph, was this game all right? You turned your ankle, didn’t you?”
+
+“Surely I did,” said Ralph. “I was an idiot, but it is your game just
+the same. I’ll make it up next time, Barbara—see if I don’t!”
+
+“My dear Ruth,” said Miss Sallie, “I cannot permit it. You will be
+exhausted.”
+
+“Here, Barbara,” said Mollie, “do try to get your breath, and let me fix
+up your hair.”
+
+“No prinking!” Ralph called out. “This is business, ladies!”
+
+The good old Casino courts never saw a finer tennis battle. Ralph and
+Bab played as though they had forgotten their talk in the woods that day
+when they had tea at Mrs. Duffy’s. Ruth and Hugh were foeman worthy of
+their best steel.
+
+The game stood forty-all, and it was Bab’s serve. Bab’s serves were what
+made her tennis remarkable. They were as swift and straight and true as
+a boy’s.
+
+Hugh stood ready waiting. Barbara caught a look in Ruth’s face, on the
+other side of the net. Her big blue eyes, frank and clear as a baby’s,
+were glowing with interest, with hope, with ambition! Like a flash the
+thought of all Ruth had done for them came into Bab’s mind. Did it
+weaken the force of her drive? Or was it because her mind was
+distracted? The ball fell just inside the net on her own side.
+
+“Try again, partner mine!” shouted Ralph, “show ’em what you’re made
+of!”
+
+This time Barbara was plainly nervous. She felt that nearly all the
+friends around them wanted Ruth to win. They would be delighted, of
+course, with her success and kind to her, but open-hearted and
+open-handed Ruth was the favorite with them all; at least, Bab thought
+so.
+
+With returning courage, Bab hit her last ball a hard blow. It rose high
+in the air! Hugh sprang on his tiptoes to receive it and gave a mighty
+shout. The ball had fallen outside the line.
+
+Ralph and Barbara were the first to congratulate the victors. Barbara
+cleared the net with a bound, forgetting both her age and her audience.
+
+“There, Ruth, you and Hugh are the best players that ever happened!”
+Barbara spoke with a glowing face. Then she turned to Ralph: “I lost the
+game for you,” she said. “I am so sorry.”
+
+“Oh, no, you didn’t, my lady,” said Ralph. “I lost the game before this
+one, so we’re even.”
+
+An admiring circle had formed around Ruth and Hugh.
+
+“Your father will be delighted, I know, child,” said Miss Sallie.
+
+“I haven’t won the cup yet, Auntie,” protested Ruth.
+
+“But you must, child,” said Mrs. Cartwright, smiling. “I am betting on
+you and Hugh in the tournament, and you mustn’t make me lose my box of
+candy.”
+
+“Barbara,” said Ralph, shyly, as they walked off toward home a little
+later, “I don’t like to ask you, but did you mean to miss those last
+serves?”
+
+Barbara shook her head. “No,” she said, “I don’t think I meant to. I
+don’t know. But they were the best players, weren’t they, Ralph?”
+
+“Certainly,” Ralph answered.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV—RUTH IN DANGER
+
+
+Hugh, looking much embarrassed, came up early next morning to see Ruth.
+
+“I have an invitation to deliver to you, Ruth, but I am rather ashamed
+to do it, for I am afraid you will be angry. Mother told me to come over
+and ask Miss Stuart and yourself and the girls—except Barbara—to come
+out with us for the day on the yacht.”
+
+“Why, Hugh Post!” cried Ruth. “What do you mean?”
+
+“Well, it’s like this,” Hugh said, desperately; “mother told me to
+explain to you exactly how things stand, so you will not think her rude.
+You see, mother is visiting Mrs. Erwin, and of course Mrs. Erwin,
+Gladys, and her devoted Harry Townsend have to go along on the yacht
+with us. Well, Gladys told mother that neither she nor Mr. Townsend
+could go if Barbara went. Gladys would not tell mother why, and, as you
+told me to keep that scene in the conservatory a secret, I didn’t know
+what it was wisest for me to do.”
+
+“Thank you,” Ruth answered; “but tell your mother that none of us can
+accept.”
+
+“O Ruth!” exclaimed Hugh. “I am fearfully disappointed, and mother I
+know will be angry.”
+
+“I am afraid I don’t care, Hugh,” was Ruth’s reply. “I don’t like your
+mother’s inviting any of us, if she had to leave Bab out.”
+
+As Hugh turned to leave the front porch, where he had found Ruth alone,
+she called after him: “Wait a minute, please. I don’t know what to tell
+Aunt Sallie. Your mother will be sure to speak to her of her invitation,
+and Auntie will think I should have let her refuse for herself. Oh, I
+know!”
+
+Ruth’s face cleared. “I will go tell Aunt Sallie that she and Grace and
+Mollie are asked. I’ll stay with my dear Bab,” she finished a little
+defiantly. “If I am also left out of the party, no one will think
+anything of it.”
+
+“Oh, I say, Ruth,” Hugh urged, “please come.”
+
+“Sorry,” she said, shaking her head decidedly.
+
+“I expect you’re right,” Hugh replied.
+
+Miss Sallie, Mollie and Grace accepted Mrs. Post’s invitation with
+pleasure. As Mrs. Post’s yacht was small, they did not think it strange
+that the other two girls were left out.
+
+How angry Mollie would have been, had she guessed the truth. Not a step
+would she have gone. As it was, she begged Barbara to go in her place.
+
+But Bab was too clever. She understood what had happened, and was glad
+to be left out of the party. She put her arm around Ruth’s waist,
+whispering coaxingly: “Do go along with the others, old story-teller.
+You know you were asked.”
+
+Ruth shook her head decidedly. “Not on your life,” she slangily
+retorted. Fortunately, Miss Sallie did not hear her.
+
+“What shall we do this afternoon, Bab?” inquired Ruth after luncheon.
+“Suppose you and I go for a long walk?”
+
+“Don’t think I am a lazy good-for-nothing, Ruth,” Barbara begged, “but I
+have a little headache, and I must write to mother. Mollie and I have
+been neglecting her shamefully of late. I haven’t even written her about
+the wonderful ball.”
+
+“Are you going to tell her what happened, Bab?” Ruth inquired.
+
+“I suppose so,” sighed Bab. She was half inclined to discuss the
+unfortunate affair with Ruth, but changed her mind.
+
+“Well, Bab,” Ruth declared, “I shall go for the walk ‘all by my
+lonesomes.’ I’ll be back in time for dinner. The others are to dine on
+the yacht, so we need not look for them until bedtime. I think I’ll take
+the cliff walk, for the sea is so splendid to-day.”
+
+Left alone, Barbara got out her writing materials and sat down by the
+window, but she did not begin to write.
+
+“I wonder,” she asked herself, “why we have been mixed up in burglaries
+ever since Ruth began talking about our trip to Newport? First, our poor
+little twenty-dollar gold-pieces disappear; then we have that dreadful
+robber at New Haven. Now Mrs. Post’s emerald necklace is stolen! It
+could not all have been Mr. Townsend!” Barbara sat with her hands
+clenched.
+
+“If it is true,” she went on, “and I saw the necklace disappear with my
+own eyes, then we have another Raffles to deal with. Mr. Raffles, the
+second! I believe I am the only person that suspects him. Well, Mr.
+Harry Townsend!” Barbara’s red lips tightened, “you are successful now,
+but we shall see whose wits are better, yours or mine!”
+
+Barbara’s face turned a deep crimson. “I understood. He wanted to
+suggest I was the thief. Only he didn’t dare to accuse me openly the
+other night. I won’t tell mother,” Barbara at last decided. “I’ll just
+watch—and wait!”
+
+Barbara wrote her mother a long, happy letter, without a hint of the
+troubles she began to feel closing in on her. Then she straightened her
+own and Mollie’s bureau drawers and arranged their clothes in the two
+closets. Still Ruth did not come.
+
+Twice Barbara went into her room. It was half past five—six—Mrs. Ewing’s
+early dinner was served at half after six.
+
+“Mrs. Ewing,” Barbara said, knocking timidly at her door. “Have you seen
+anything of Ruth? She has been gone such a long time that I am worried
+about her.”
+
+But Mrs. Ewing knew nothing of her.
+
+“I believe I’ll go to meet her,” said Barbara, “and hurry her along. She
+must be on her way home.” Ralph was on the yacht with Hugh, or Barbara
+would have asked him to accompany her.
+
+For the first half mile along the cliff walk Barbara strolled slowly,
+expecting every moment to see Ruth hurrying along. As the walk dipped
+down into hollows and rose again in the high places, it was difficult to
+see any distance ahead.
+
+The walk was entirely deserted, and Bab’s heart commenced to beat faster
+as the darkness began to gather.
+
+“I suppose,” thought Barbara, “Ruth has gone somewhere to make a visit,
+and has stayed late without thinking. She’s probably at home, now,
+waiting for me, so I’ll get the scolding from Mrs. Ewing for being late
+to dinner. I believe I’ll go on back home.” Barbara actually turned and
+started in the opposite direction.
+
+Something within her seemed to call: “Bab! Bab!” The voice was so urgent
+she was frightened. “Ruth needs you,” it seemed to say.
+
+Bab began calling aloud, “Ruth! Ruth!” Her voice sounded high and shrill
+in her own ears; but only the echo answered her, and the noise of the
+waves pounding against the shore. She could see the distant lights in
+the houses along the way, but Barbara dared not stop to ask for help
+while that inner voice urged her on.
+
+Barbara was running, now, along the narrow, difficult path. “O Ruth,
+dear Ruth!” she cried. “Why don’t you answer me? Are you anywhere,
+needing me?” She heard a low sound and stopped. Nothing but her own
+imagination! There were always queer noises along the cliff shore, where
+the water swirled into little eddies and gurgled out again.
+
+Barbara waited. She heard nothing more, so she plunged on. Suddenly she
+drew back with a gasp of horror. Part of the cliff walk had disappeared!
+Where a bridge of stone had spanned a narrow chasm there was a terrible,
+yawning hole. Jutting out their vicious arms were rocks, rocks, forming
+a sheer drop of seventy feet to the beach below.
+
+Involuntarily, Barbara had flung herself down on her hands and knees to
+keep from falling over into the abyss.
+
+“Ruth couldn’t have,” she thought. “No, no!” But hark! Was that again
+the low moaning sound of the waters? Barbara lay flat on the rocks,
+stretching her head over the embankment. There, in a cleft between two
+great rocks, fifteen feet below her, a dark object hung!
+
+“Ruth! Ruth!” Bab called, her voice coming from her throat in a hoarse
+cry. Again she heard the faint moan. This time she knew the sound. It
+was Ruth! What could she do? Run for help? Any second, Bab realized,
+Ruth’s strength might fail, and she would let go her grasp. Barbara
+could not bear to think of the horrible end.
+
+As far as she could see, Ruth’s feet rested on a narrow ledge of rock,
+while she clung with her hands to a cliff that jutted out overhead.
+“Ruth! Ruth!” Barbara called again, but this time her voice was clear
+and strong. “It is Bab! Do you understand? Hold on a little longer. I am
+coming.”
+
+Swiftly a prayer came into Barbara’s mind: “Lord, show me the way.” Yet
+even while she prayed she acted. “Help, help!” Bab called out.
+
+[Illustration: Barbara Lay Flat on the Rocks.]
+
+She tore off the long woolen shawl which she had wrapped round her when
+she came out to seek Ruth. With hands that seemed to gain a superhuman
+strength Bab tore it into three, four strips. She dared not make the
+strips narrower for fear they would not hold. Then she took off her
+skirt of light wool and wrenched it into broad bands. How, Barbara never
+knew. She felt that the power was given her.
+
+Growing out from a rock between Bab and the moaning figure on the cliff
+below was a small tree, its roots deeply imbedded in the hard soil. Ruth
+had evidently reached out to grasp this tree as the cliff bridge gave
+way beneath her feet; but, missing it, her feet had touched a ledge of
+rock and she had flung out her arms and clasped the stone above her. How
+much longer would her failing strength serve her?
+
+Bab again lay down and measured the length of her queer rope. She found
+that by reaching the tree she could tie the rope to it and it would then
+be long enough to extend to Ruth. Removing her shoes, Barbara slowly,
+and with infinite caution, crawled down the jagged rocks, clinging with
+her hands and toes. Finally she arrived at the tree, and fastened her
+rope securely around it, only to find it dangled just above Ruth’s head.
+Yet what was the use? If Ruth for an instant let go the rock to which
+she clung her feet would slip from the ledge, and Bab’s poor woolen
+strings could never hold her.
+
+But Barbara understood this. She was face to face with the great moment
+of her life, and, though she was only a simple country girl, neither her
+brains nor her strength failed her.
+
+Did she stop at the tree after the rope was tied? No! Still clinging,
+sliding, her hands bruised and bleeding, Barbara was making her way to
+where Ruth hung. Bab had said truly that she could climb. Never had a
+girl a better opportunity to prove her boast! There were moments when
+she believed she could not go on. Then the thought of Ruth renewed her
+courage.
+
+Just above Ruth’s head, on the left side of her, was a great boulder
+with a curved, smooth surface. It was to this rock Bab made her way. She
+was so close to Ruth now that she could lean over and touch her.
+“Courage, dear,” she whispered, and she thought she saw Ruth’s pale lips
+smile. She had not fainted; for this, Barbara was grateful.
+
+When Barbara was a little girl her mother had been ashamed of her tomboy
+ways; but she had given in, with a gentle sigh, when Bab grew and
+flourished by playing boys’ games, by learning various boyish arts;
+among them was the knack of tying a sailor knot.
+
+Edging closer and closer to Ruth she managed to reach out and catch hold
+of the rope she had fastened to the tree. With one hand on her own rock,
+with the other she drew the cord about Ruth, fastening it firmly under
+her arms. The rope was not strong enough to draw Ruth up to safety, but
+it would steady her should her hands give way.
+
+Somehow, in some way, Barbara must get further help.
+
+Now that her first duty was over, she began to call loudly: “Help,
+help!” Her shouts roused Ruth, who joined feebly in the cry. No sound
+answered them. Only the seagulls swept over them, uttering their hoarse
+call.
+
+Barbara felt her own strength going. She tried to crawl up the slippery
+rock again, but her power was gone. She, too, felt herself—slipping,
+slipping! With one wild cry she caught at her rock, and all was still!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI—HELP ARRIVES
+
+
+Mr. Cartwright was dining alone on his Japanese veranda, as his wife was
+with the yachting party, and was not expected to dinner.
+
+Jones, the butler, came in softly, placing the soup in front of his
+master. As he put down the plate his hand shook. Surely he heard a cry!
+
+At the same moment Mr. Cartwright started up. “Jones, what was that?”
+They both stood still. There was no further sound.
+
+“Must ’ave been children playing, sir,” suggested Jones, and Mr.
+Cartwright continued his dinner.
+
+“Help, help!” The sound came from afar off, loud and shrill. This time
+there was no mistake.
+
+“Coming!” Mr. Cartwright shouted. “Coming!” As he ran across the lawn,
+closely followed by Jones, he snatched a heavy coil of rope left by the
+workmen who had been swinging hammocks and arranging for Mrs.
+Cartwright’s outdoor bazaar.
+
+“Call again, if you can,” Mr. Cartwright yelled. Faintly, a voice seemed
+to come up out of the earth. “Help, help! Oh, please!”
+
+Mr. Cartwright caught the direction of the voice, and ran along the
+cliffs. In a moment he espied the fallen bridge and guessed what had
+happened; then he and Jones saw the two girls in their perilous
+position.
+
+Leaning over, he called: “Can you hear me?”
+
+Bab answered, “Yes.”
+
+“Then keep still,” shouted Mr. Cartwright, “and I’ll have you up here in
+a moment.”
+
+Quickly he knotted the rope around Jones’s waist; then, some yards
+farther on, he tied it round his own. “Go back,” he said to his butler,
+“and lie down.” Jones was large and heavy; Mr. Cartwright was a tall
+man, thin, but strong.
+
+Slowly he lowered himself to the tree where Bab had tied her poor rope,
+and flung an improvised lasso over to Bab. “Not me,” said Barbara,
+forgetting her grammar. “Ruth first.”
+
+“Can she climb with the help of the rope?” asked their rescuer.
+
+Ruth had not spoken, but she opened her eyes, gave a shudder and
+fainted.
+
+Like a flash Bab had thrown the lasso over her shoulders, and Ruth hung
+swaying in the air! Fortunately her feet were still on the ledge of the
+rock. Mr. Cartwright caught his rope round the tree, at the same time
+calling to Jones, “Throw me another coil!” He then clambered down and
+half carried, half dragged the fainting Ruth to the top of the cliff.
+
+Once above, he dropped his burden, and again flung the lasso over the
+edge of the rocks to Barbara, who, crawling and being pulled by turns,
+came up in safety. When she had reached the top, and stood by the side
+of the fainting Ruth, Bab’s courage deserted her, and she burst into
+tears.
+
+“Get the young ladies to the house at once,” ordered Mr. Cartwright, far
+more frightened than he had been while playing rescuer.
+
+How fared the yachting party? They did not have a good day. Hugh was in
+a bad humor because Ruth had not come; Ralph missed Barbara, and, try as
+they might to avoid it, the conversation would drift back to the lost
+emeralds.
+
+“I shall never understand it,” said Mrs. Erwin to Aunt Sallie, in
+subdued tones. “The detectives say they have made a thorough search of
+my servants’ quarters, have watched their movements ever since the night
+of the theft, and they can find none of them of whom they are even
+suspicious. They do say”—this time Mrs. Erwin dropped her voice to a
+whisper, for the woman who was with Mrs. Post at the time of the robbery
+was approaching them—“they say that the burglar was probably—one of the
+guests!”
+
+This woman, who had worn a gold-colored brocade, was an American, who
+had married a Frenchman, but her husband was supposed to have been dead
+several years. She had come to Newport, this season, with letters of
+introduction, and was already very popular.
+
+“Do you know,” she inquired, “where Miss Le Baron and Mr. Townsend are?
+No one has seen them recently.”
+
+“Oh,” laughed Mrs. Erwin, “we leave those two young people alone. I
+believe they have an affair of their own. Have you known Mr. Townsend
+before this meeting?”
+
+“Oh, no,” replied the woman, in a curious tone; “at least, I have met
+him once or twice. I can’t say I know him.”
+
+“Ladies,” Governor Post said, coming up to them, “I believe I will cheat
+you of part of your sail today. There are ugly clouds gathering, and I
+think it better to put into harbor. We can go ashore, or not, as we feel
+inclined.”
+
+As the yacht neared the shore, Miss Sallie grew restless. It was the
+first time since the beginning of their trip that she had been separated
+from any of her girls. As soon as dinner was over she begged Governor
+Post to put herself, Grace and Mollie ashore. Immediately the rest of
+the party agreed to disembark with her.
+
+Ralph and the two girls followed Aunt Sallie home. For once, she hurried
+on before them, urged by a kind of foreboding.
+
+She found Mrs. Ewing, white and frightened, walking up and down in front
+of her gate. Mr. Ewing and the maids had left the house, half an hour
+before, to search for the lost girls.
+
+Thoughtlessly Mrs. Ewing rushed up to Miss Stuart. “Have Ruth and
+Barbara joined you?” she asked.
+
+“Why, no,” replied the two girls in amazement. Ralph stared in surprise;
+but Miss Sallie spoke firmly. “Tell me, at once, what has happened.” In
+the midst of real danger Miss Stuart was a different woman, as Mr.
+Stuart well knew when he allowed her to chaperon the automobile girls.
+
+Mrs. Ewing had nothing to tell. All she knew was that the girls had gone
+out for a long walk, and, at eight o’clock, had not come back.
+
+“Come with me, Ralph,” Miss Sallie demanded. Grace and Mollie followed
+them.
+
+“Don’t be frightened, Mollie,” Grace begged, trying to talk cheerfully,
+though she was trembling violently. “Rely upon Ruth and Bab to get
+safely out of a scrape.”
+
+Just as they reached the end of the street that turned into the cliff
+walk, Miss Sallie espied a servant of the Cartwrights running in their
+direction. “Stop him!” she commanded Ralph.
+
+“Sure, mum, I am to tell you,” the gardener’s boy said, “the young
+ladies was not killed.”
+
+“Not killed!” the girls cried, in horror. Ralph took hold of Mollie’s
+hand.
+
+“That is what I was to say, mum,” said the boy, evidently much excited.
+“They is not much hurt and will be home soon.”
+
+“Take me to them, at once,” ordered Miss Sallie, asking no further
+questions. The gardener’s boy led the way.
+
+When the party arrived, Mrs. Cartwright, still in her yachting suit, ran
+out to meet them. Ruth came to the door, walking a little stiffly.
+Barbara followed her, and straightway begged Mollie not to cry.
+
+“It’s all over, silly little Mollie,” she whispered, “and neither Ruth
+nor I am hurt. We are just a little scratched, and very dirty, and we
+want to go to bed.”
+
+“Mr. Cartwright has already had the doctor in to see us, Auntie,” said
+Ruth. “He is in the drawing room now. We have no broken bones or
+strains, though my shoulders ache rather badly.”
+
+Mollie and Grace were both crying, just because there was nothing, now,
+for them to cry about.
+
+Miss Sallie made Ruth sit down again, as her niece was almost too weak
+to stand. After listening in silence to Ruth’s story, Aunt Sallie held
+out her hand to Mr. Cartwright. “My brother and I can never thank you,
+and I shall not attempt it. Ruth means all our world.” Then she turned
+to Barbara, and gathered her in her arms. “My child,” she said, “you are
+the bravest girl I ever knew.” Miss Stuart choked, and could say no
+more.
+
+“Do you remember, Bab,” asked Mollie, when Barbara was safe in her own
+bed, “how once you said you would one day repay Ruth and Mr. Stuart for
+their kindness to us? Well, I think, and I know they will think, that
+you have kept your promise. Yes; I’m going to let her go to sleep, Miss
+Sallie,” Mollie called back, in answer to Miss Stuart’s remonstrance.
+
+Ruth and Barbara were utterly worn out, and had been put into warm baths
+and rubbed down with alcohol. “I am not even going to give two such
+sensible girls doses of aromatic spirits of ammonia,” declared the
+doctor, who had driven over from Mrs. Cartwright’s with them and had
+seen the girls safely in bed. “They will be all right in a day or two,”
+he assured Miss Sallie, “as soon as they get over the nervous shock.”
+
+It took six telegrams to Mr. Stuart and Mrs. Thurston to persuade them
+the girls were unhurt and able to remain in Newport.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII—THE FORTUNE-TELLERS
+
+
+“My dears,” said Mrs. Cartwright, two days after the accident, coming
+into the sitting-room, where Ruth and Bab were idling, “I suppose you
+know that you are the heroines of Newport. No one is talking about
+anything but your accident. You have almost put the jewel robbery out of
+our minds. How do you feel this morning?”
+
+“Oh, as fit as anything,” smiled Ruth, though she still looked a little
+pale. “I have just written a long letter to father, to assure him that I
+shall be well enough to play in the tournament next week.”
+
+“That is fine,” declared Mrs. Cartwright. “And you, Bab?”
+
+“There never was much the matter with me,” Bab answered.
+
+“Then you are just the girls I am looking for,” said Mrs. Cartwright,
+clapping her hands. “You know, I asked you, Bab, to play gypsy
+fortune-teller at my bazaar; now I want to ask Ruth to join you.
+Everyone thinks you are both laid up from your accident, and no one will
+suspect who you are. The plans for the bazaar are going splendidly. I
+think I shall make lots of money for my poor sailors. I shall have it as
+simple and attractive as I can—a real country fair, with booths and
+lemonade stands. I am going to give these jaded Newport people a taste
+of the simple life. Do say you will help me.”
+
+Both girls shook their heads. “We do not know how to tell fortunes,”
+they protested.
+
+“Oh, it’s only fun,” argued Mrs. Cartwright. “You can make up any
+foolishness you like as you go along. I’ll show you how to run the
+cards, as they call it. Has either of you ever seen anyone do it?”
+
+Bab confessed she had watched “Granny Ann.” Suddenly she left her chair,
+and came hobbling over to Mrs. Cartwright, saying, in Granny Ann’s own
+high-pitched, whining voice: “Lovely lady, would you know the future,
+grave or gay, cross my hand with a silver piece and list to what I say.”
+
+Gravely, Mrs. Cartwright extracted a dollar from her silver purse, and
+made the gypsy sign on Bab’s outstretched hand. Barbara immediately told
+her such a nonsensical fortune, in a perfectly grave voice, that she and
+Ruth both screamed with laughter.
+
+“You’ll do, Bab,” said Mrs. Cartwright. “Won’t you join her, Ruth?”
+
+“Well,” said Ruth, “I never desert Mrs. Micawber these days, or, to put
+it plainly, Miss Bab Thurston. So I’m game.”
+
+“Thursday, then, remember, and this is Tuesday,” said Mrs. Cartwright.
+“I am the busiest woman in Newport, so I must run away now. You should
+see my house and lawn. They are full of workmen. The fair is to begin
+promptly at four, and will last until midnight. We shall have dancing on
+the lawn, but I want you girls and a few friends to come into the house
+after supper. When you finish playing fortune-tellers you can slip up to
+my room and dress. Nobody must guess, when you come down, that you have
+not just arrived. Now, I positively must be off. Tell Mollie and Grace I
+am depending on them to act as waitresses. Gladys isn’t willing to help.
+She wants all her time for Harry Townsend.”
+
+“Ruth,” said Aunt Sallie, the afternoon of the bazaar, “I really cannot
+permit you to go anywhere, looking as you do, even if you are wearing a
+disguise. You are too horrible!”
+
+“Come and see Barbara,” Grace called from the next room. “I am sure she
+must look worse. Why,” she asked, laughing, “do you and Ruth want to
+disguise yourselves as such dreadful-looking gypsies. You might just as
+easily have arranged to look like young and charming ones.”
+
+“Oh, no,” said Bab. “We want to look like the real thing, not like stage
+gypsies.” Barbara had arranged to appear as much like “Granny Ann” as
+she possibly could. A red and yellow handkerchief was bound around her
+head almost to her eyebrows, her face was stained to a deep brown, with
+lines and heavy seams drawn over it; even her hands were made up to look
+old and weather beaten.
+
+“Remember, you have never seen nor heard of these extraordinary
+fortune-tellers before,” warned Ruth. “And don’t forget, Barbara and
+Ruth are at home at Mrs. Ewing’s, but they may feel well enough to come
+to the fair in the evening.” Ruth caught Bab’s arm, and together they
+made a low curtsey.
+
+“Beautiful ones,” Ruth went on, pointing to Miss Sallie, who was looking
+handsome in a gown of pale gray crêpe, with a violet hat and sunshade,
+and to Mollie and Grace, who were dressed like Swiss peasant girls,
+“your fortunes I would like to tell before you go to the Fair. Easy it
+is for my wise eyes to perceive that you will be the belles and beauties
+of the entertainment. Now, farewell!”
+
+The “gypsies” were to drive over early to Mrs. Cartwright’s in a closed
+carriage. Ralph was to take Miss Sallie, Grace and Mollie in the motor
+car later on.
+
+“Granny Ann” and “old Meg” slipped inside the gypsy tent before any of
+the guests had arrived at the bazaar. They had gazed in wonder at Mrs.
+Cartwright’s beautiful lawn, changed to look like a country fair. It was
+hung with bunting and flags, and had small tables and chairs under the
+trees; also a May-pole strung with long streamers of different colored
+ribbons. Mrs. Cartwright had planned a May-pole dance as one of the
+chief features of the afternoon, and Mollie and Grace were both to take
+part.
+
+For the gypsies, life was a serious matter. The tent was divided by a
+red curtain; on a low wooden table burned a round iron pot filled with
+charcoal and curious odorous herbs; a pack of dirty cards lay near it.
+“The cards must be dirty,” argued Ruth, “or no one would believe we were
+the real thing in gypsies.” Two rough stools stood by the table, and the
+only daylight shone through the tent flap. On the other side of the
+curtain, Mrs. Cartwright had been kinder to her gypsies. Here were a
+wicker couch and big chairs, where they could rest and talk; also a
+table for refreshments, “for,” laughed Mrs. Cartwright, as she left the
+tent to welcome her first guests, “I have always heard that gypsies are
+a particularly hungry race of people.”
+
+Mrs. Cartwright’s fair was a huge success. The most fashionable “set” in
+Newport were present, entering into the spirit of the occasion with
+great zest.
+
+Gladys and Harry Townsend were seen everywhere together; but to-day
+there was often a third person with them, the Countess Bertouche, the
+woman of the gold-colored brocade, but lately introduced in Newport
+society.
+
+“I believe Gladys is engaged to Harry Townsend,” whispered Grace to
+Mollie, when she had observed Harry bending over Miss Le Baron and
+talking to her in a more devoted manner than usual.
+
+“Well,” retorted pretty Mollie, with a toss of her head, “I am sure I do
+not envy either one of them.”
+
+All afternoon the gypsy tent had been flooded with visitors. Barbara and
+Ruth had the time of their lives. No one recognized the two automobile
+girls in the aged crones who mumbled and told strange fortunes in hoarse
+tones.
+
+It was growing late, and the gypsy tent was for the time deserted. Ruth
+was resting on the couch in the back of the tent, while Bab sat near
+her, talking over their experiences of the afternoon.
+
+Suddenly the tent flap opened, and Grace and Mollie rushed in. Before
+either of them spoke, they turned and fastened the flap down again
+securely, so no one could enter without their knowing it.
+
+“What’s the matter?” asked Ruth and Bab at once, for it was plain to see
+their visitors were greatly excited.
+
+Grace and Mollie started talking together. “Mrs. Cartwright’s diamond
+butterfly——” then they both stopped. “Are you sure no one can hear?
+Mollie, you tell,” finished Grace.
+
+“The butterfly has gone, vanished right off Mrs. Cartwright’s frock,
+this afternoon, while she was talking to her visitors. You know, she
+changed the ornament she wore in her hair into a brooch. She showed it
+to me early this afternoon, when I first came, and now—it is gone! I
+tell you, girls, there’s a thief among these Newport people. I think it,
+and so does Mrs. Cartwright, and ever so many others. Promise you’ll
+never tell,” went on Mollie, “but there are two detectives here watching
+all the guests! I’d like to find the thief myself. I’d know Mrs.
+Cartwright’s butterfly anywhere.”
+
+There were noises at the tent door.
+
+Barbara heard Gladys’s high, querulous voice, saying, coquettishly: “I
+don’t want my fortune told, Harry. I would much rather you told it to me
+any way.” But Mr. Townsend insisted.
+
+“Fly, girls—do, please! They are coming in!” said Barbara. “No; you
+can’t get out, but you must stay perfectly still behind this curtain,
+and not breathe a single word.”
+
+It was almost entirely dark in the gypsy tent, the only light coming
+from the burning pot of fire on the table. Barbara stooped low, when she
+opened the door to allow Harry, Gladys and the Countess Bertouche to
+come in.
+
+“It groweth late,” Bab began, croakingly. “Evil may come. No good
+fortunes fall between dusk and darkness. Beware!”
+
+Gladys shuddered. “Let’s not go in,” she urged.
+
+But Harry Townsend only laughed. “Don’t let the old hag frighten you,”
+he retorted, lightly. “Here,” he turned to the gypsy and spoke in a
+voice no one of the girls had ever heard him use, “here, you old
+swindler, speak out! What kind of fate do you read for me in the stars?”
+
+Barbara picked up the pack of dirty cards, and began to shuffle them
+slowly. An idea was revolving in her head. Dared she do it? But Barbara
+was a girl who was not easily daunted.
+
+[Illustration: Harry Townsend’s Face Grew Livid.]
+
+After a minute of silence she shook her head. “What I see I dare not
+reveal,” she whined. “All black, dark, dark mystery!”
+
+“Oh, stuff!” jeered Mr. Townsend. “Don’t try that dodge on me. Tell what
+you know.”
+
+Barbara flung down the cards and blew three puffs into the smouldering
+pot of fire. Ashes and tiny flames shot up from it. She started back,
+then pointing a finger, she hissed: “Something is moving toward you,
+curving and coiling and twisting round you. Mercy!” she cried. “It is a
+green snake, and its fangs have struck into your soul!”
+
+Harry Townsend’s face grew livid. In a moment the look of youth vanished
+from his face, his lips turned blue, and his eyes narrowed to two fine
+points.
+
+The Countess Bertouche came forward. “Harry,” she said, “come away. You
+forget yourself. Don’t listen to such nonsense.”
+
+“Harry!” thought Gladys to herself, angrily. “She certainly presumes on
+a short acquaintance! Harry, indeed!”
+
+But Barbara had not finished.
+
+“Stay!” she said, holding up a warning finger. “Another messenger
+appears. It is a beautiful, bright thing, sparkling and darting toward
+you. Why,” she added, quickly, “it is lighting on your coat. It has
+flown inside—a beautiful butterfly, born of summer time and flowers.
+Or”—this time Barbara leaned over and whispered in his ear—“or it may be
+made of diamonds and come from a jeweler’s shop.”
+
+For an instant, Harry Townsend’s hand flew to his vest pocket. He rose,
+saying quietly to his companions: “Come away from here. Did you ever see
+such a stupid old fraud? A snake and a butterfly—a curious fortune
+indeed!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII—A WORD TO THE WISE
+
+
+Barbara’s suspicion was now a certainty. Another person might not have
+been much wiser from Harry Townsend’s behavior during the telling of his
+fortune. But Barbara’s eyes were keen. The thief the detectives were
+seeking, the “Raffles” who was bowing and smiling his way through
+Newport society was none other than “Harry Townsend.” How to prove it?
+That was another matter.
+
+“Bab,” said the other girls, appearing on her side of the tent, “what a
+string of nonsense you did put off on poor Harry Townsend. What on earth
+made you tell him about a butterfly and a snake? I suppose you had
+butterfly on the brain, since we had just told you of the robbery.”
+
+“That is true,” assented Bab.
+
+“Ruth!” Barbara turned to her quickly. “I am tired of my job. I want to
+quit this fortune-telling business at once. Let’s desert and go up to
+Mrs. Cartwright’s room and change our clothes. Do hurry!” she urged, a
+little impatiently.
+
+“Oh, all right, Bab,” Ruth agreed. She stared at Barbara curiously. What
+had come over her friend? Harry Townsend always seemed to have such a
+strange effect upon her.
+
+Barbara was thinking. How could she find the detectives, to tell them of
+her suspicions, while Harry Townsend still had in his pocket the jewel
+he had stolen?
+
+“I want to ask you something, Mollie,” Bab announced, as the girls
+started for the house. “You’ll excuse a family secret, won’t you?” she
+asked of Grace and Ruth. “Mollie,” Bab whispered, “don’t speak out loud.
+Do you think you can discover who the two detectives are, and let me
+know as soon as I come downstairs? Don’t ask questions, please; only, I
+must know.”
+
+Mollie shut her lips close together. “Yes, I’ll find out for you,” she
+promised.
+
+Half an hour later, as the guests were being served with supper under
+the trees, Ruth and Barbara made their appearance.
+
+“We just couldn’t keep away any longer,” they explained to their
+friends. “Oh, yes, we are feeling perfectly well again.”
+
+Barbara called Mrs. Cartwright aside for a minute. “Is it true,” she
+asked, “that your diamond butterfly has disappeared?”
+
+Mrs. Cartwright’s face clouded. “Yes,” she replied. “It has gone within
+the last hour or so. I had it fastened here on my dress with a long pin.
+If it was stolen by a guest, which I am coming to believe, then it was
+not such a difficult theft. I have been leaning over, laughing and
+talking, and any light-fingered—woman—or man—could easily have taken it
+out of my dress.”
+
+Mrs. Cartwright shivered and turned pale, as she looked at the gay
+parties of people out on her lawn. “Isn’t it dreadful,” she said,
+plaintively, “to think that there may be a thief right over there among
+all my friends! But run along, now, child, and enjoy yourself. You and
+Ruth were the success of the afternoon. Everyone has asked me where I
+found my clever gypsies.”
+
+Barbara wandered off alone. Before she had gone more than a few steps,
+Ralph Ewing joined her. “Please don’t come with me, Ralph,” she begged.
+“I want to find Mollie.”
+
+“Well, why should that prevent my coming along, too?” Ralph asked. “I’d
+like to find Mollie myself. She hasn’t paid the slightest attention to
+me all afternoon.”
+
+“I don’t want to be horrid, Ralph,” Barbara protested, nervously, “but
+please let me find her by myself.”
+
+“Oh, certainly,” assented Ralph, walking quickly away.
+
+Over by one of the lemonade stands that had been deserted at supper time
+Bab found Mollie.
+
+“Bab,” she said, pulling her sister to one side, “do you see that tall,
+blond man, with the little, curly mustache? He is one of the detectives.
+I can’t find out where the other one is.”
+
+A little later Ralph Ewing, who was still strolling around by himself,
+felt his face flush, partly with wounded pride, partly with anger.
+Barbara was not talking to Mollie. She was standing some distance off
+from the other guests, having an earnest conversation with a man whom
+Ralph knew to be a stranger in Newport.
+
+Ralph was too proud to linger near them, since Bab had said so plainly
+she wanted none of his society. If he could have heard what she was
+saying he would have been even more horrified.
+
+“Yes,” Barbara promised, “if you will come somewhere near us, when we
+are all together, this evening, I will give you a signal to show you the
+man I mean. His name is Townsend. He looks very young, is slender and is
+of medium height. Suppose, when you see us, I bow my head slowly in the
+direction of the man I mean? If you understand me, you can return my
+bow. Can you search him before he leaves the grounds?”
+
+“No, miss.” The detective shook his head. “It would be impossible. He
+hasn’t the jewel on him now. If he’s the man we think he is, he is too
+smooth for that. He must have a confederate. If we search him here, and
+find no proof of his guilt, he will know all about us and our
+suspicions. Can’t you see, then, he would just clear out and leave us
+here to whistle for our pains?”
+
+“Yes, I see,” said Bab.
+
+“Thank you, miss, for telling us,” the detective continued. “I must say
+that emerald story sounds like the real thing. You’ve only guessed about
+the butterfly theft; but I think you’ve guessed right. Now we must go
+easy. If there is a Raffles, here in Newport, he is out for more
+plunder. He’ll make another bold attempt, and that will be our chance.”
+
+“Well, I must go on back now to my friends,” murmured Barbara, uneasily.
+It seemed strange to be taken into confidence by the detective, as
+though she were in the same line of business. “I suppose you and the
+other detective can manage, now, to secure the thief. I would rather not
+have anything more to do with the matter.” Barbara gave a little shiver
+of repulsion.
+
+“Oh, now, young lady,” protested the detective, “you mustn’t go back on
+us, just as the game commences. To catch a society thief we must have
+help from the inside. The best detective in the service can’t get on
+without it.”
+
+“Where have you been, Bab?” inquired Miss Sallie, anxiously, when
+Barbara joined her friends a few minutes later. “I was beginning to get
+uneasy about you. Mrs. Cartwright wants us to come into the house for an
+informal dance. Do you feel well enough to go? I don’t think you look
+very well, child.”
+
+Harry Townsend and Gladys came up at this minute. Harry had promised to
+take Miss Stuart indoors to watch the dancing. There was a curious,
+restless look in the man’s eyes, but his manners were as charming as
+ever.
+
+This was Barbara’s chance. She lagged behind the others, and bowed her
+head slowly in the direction of Miss Sallie’s escort. A strange, blond
+man, with a curly light mustache, standing some distance off, returned
+her bow.
+
+All evening Ralph did not come near Barbara. He devoted himself to
+Grace, who was wise enough to guess that Bab and Ralph must have had a
+quarrel. But Barbara did not understand. Not having realized that Ralph
+had felt snubbed when she dismissed him a little while before, she
+supposed he had grown tired of her.
+
+To tell the truth, Barbara was dull. All the merry, sparkling fun had
+gone out of her for this one evening. Whether she danced, or talked or
+rested quietly, she saw Harry Townsend’s face as it had looked at her
+for a single minute in the gypsy tent. “I am not a coward,” thought
+Barbara, “but I shall have to be careful if he discovers I was the gypsy
+who told his fortune this afternoon.”
+
+Barbara was right.
+
+Harry Townsend knew there was just one person in Newport who suspected
+him of being a thief; this person must be put out of the way. The fine
+Raffles preferred not to use violence, but at any cost he must win.
+
+Harry Townsend had not recognized Bab in the gypsy tent, which served,
+for the time, to avert his suspicions from her. He believed she had only
+arrived, when he met her with Miss Stuart late in the evening. Then who
+was the gypsy? Either Barbara had seen her, some time in the afternoon,
+and told her the story of the necklace, or there was some one else who
+believed he had had a part in the robberies. He must find out.
+
+“Gladys,” Harry Townsend said, “don’t let us dance all evening. I have
+not had any kind of chance to talk to you alone. Come out on the veranda
+with me, won’t you?”
+
+Gladys and Harry seated themselves on the front porch, whence they could
+look through an open window at the dancers.
+
+“Do you know Mrs. Cartwright very intimately, Gladys?” inquired Mr.
+Townsend.
+
+“Oh, no,” returned Gladys, pettishly. If Harry Townsend had brought her
+out on the veranda to talk about Mrs. Cartwright, then she might as well
+have stayed indoors. “Why do you ask?”
+
+Harry Townsend frowned, then put his hands before his eyes. Gladys was
+so silly. She had served to introduce him to her friends at Newport.
+Now, if he could only make her useful in other ways!
+
+“Are you angry?” Gladys asked after a moment, “What is it that you want
+to know about Mrs. Cartwright?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t want to know anything about Mrs. Cartwright at all, Gladys.
+I am sorry I spoke of it, if the subject offends you. But I did feel a
+little curious to know where she got hold of the gypsies she had in the
+tent this afternoon. I thought you would be interested.”
+
+“I am interested, Harry,” declared Gladys. She was only a spoiled child,
+and could not help showing it. “But I am not a favorite of Mrs.
+Cartwright’s. It’s my delightful cousins that she adores—Mollie and Bab.
+I can ask one of them to inquire.”
+
+“Oh, no,” drawled Harry, “it is not of enough importance for that.”
+
+For the next half hour Harry devoted himself to the whims of Gladys. He
+could see Barbara through the window, looking pale and tired. This gave
+all the more reason for believing that she had not recovered from the
+shock of her experience on the cliffs.
+
+The cleverest man will sometimes make a false move. Harry Townsend was
+tired of Gladys, weary of her whims and foolishness. Besides, she had
+served his purpose; he was almost through with her.
+
+“Shall we take a walk, Gladys?” he asked.
+
+As they walked down the path toward the cliff, this up-to-date Raffles,
+whose fingers were more agile than a magician’s, pressed Gladys’s hand
+for a moment. At the same instant, he slipped her jeweled bracelet into
+his pocket. “I don’t want the bauble,” he said to himself, “but she
+might as well be punished for not doing what I ask her.”
+
+At the same moment a blond man stepped out from among the bushes and
+asked Harry for a light for his cigarette.
+
+Miss Stuart and her girls were saying good-night to Mrs. Cartwright.
+Hugh Post and Ralph were to escort them home. As Barbara came down the
+steps with her wraps on, some one touched her on the arm.
+
+“Miss,” the detective whispered, “I know the man you pointed out to me;
+but I have got to see you again. Tell me how we can manage it.”
+
+“Oh,” said Barbara, hopelessly, “I don’t know. Miss Sallie will be so
+angry!”
+
+“You can’t quit us now,” the detective urged. “Why not come out in the
+morning, before any of your folks are up.”
+
+“Yes,” agreed Barbara, quickly. She didn’t have time to refuse. Miss
+Sallie was coming toward her, and looked in surprise at Barbara’s
+strange companion. “Come on, child,” she said, “it is time you and Ruth
+were both in bed.”
+
+“Down the street, two turnings to the right,” Barbara heard a voice
+behind her whisper, as she turned away.
+
+Gladys was crying, as she made her way to Miss Stuart for comfort. “Miss
+Stuart,” she said, “I have lost my pearl bracelet. Mother told me it was
+too handsome for me to wear. Now she’ll be angry with me. I didn’t think
+it mattered if I wore it this one time. It was large, I suppose, and it
+slipped off my hand somewhere.”
+
+“Never mind, Gladys,” advised Harry Townsend, coming up to her. “If it
+is stolen, the thief is sure to be caught.”
+
+“Why do you stare at us so, Barbara?” demanded Gladys, angrily. “I am
+sure you look all eyes.”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” murmured Barbara.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX—“EYEOLOGY”
+
+
+All night long Bab tossed and tumbled in her bed. Should she keep her
+appointment with the detective? About daylight she fell asleep and
+wakened with her mind fully made up. Whatever the danger, she was in for
+it now. A clever thief was abroad in Newport; circumstances had led to
+her discovering him; well, she would do what she could to bring him to
+bay.
+
+At six o’clock Barbara slipped quietly out of bed, without awaking
+Mollie, and stole noiselessly through the deserted halls of Mrs. Ewing’s
+great house. Not even the servants were about.
+
+At the appointed place she found waiting for her two detectives instead
+of one.
+
+“We’re wise to the thief,” said the larger, blond man, to whom Barbara
+had talked yesterday. “I never had my eyes off of him last night, after
+you pointed him out to me. I saw him slip a bracelet from a young lady’s
+arm out in the garden, just as coolly as you’d shake hands with a
+person. But it was no time to make a row then. I never let him know that
+I saw him. The fellow would have had a thousand excuses to make. I could
+see he was on pretty intimate terms with the young lady.”
+
+“The truth is, miss,” interrupted the other detective, whom Bab saw for
+the first time this morning, “we think you have given us the clue to a
+pretty clever customer. We’ve been looking for him before. He’s known to
+the service as ‘The Boy Raffles.’ We tried to catch him two years ago
+when he played this same game at Saratoga. But he got off to Europe
+without our ever finding the goods on him. So you see, this time we’ve
+got to nail him. My partner and I,” the wiry little dark man pointed to
+the big blond one, “have been talking matters over and we believe this
+here ‘Raffles’ has got what we detectives call a ‘confed’ with him—some
+one who receives the stolen goods. So that’s why we want to ask your
+help. Have you any idea of anyone who could be playing the game along
+with him? We think he is giving the jewels to some one to keep in hiding
+for him. The gems have not been sent out of town, and we have made a
+thorough search of Mrs. Erwin’s house, where Townsend is staying. There
+is nothing there.”
+
+“Could the young lady I saw him in the garden with last night be a
+partner of his?” asked the blond detective.
+
+“Oh, my goodness, no!” cried Barbara, in horror. “She is my cousin,
+Gladys Le Baron.”
+
+“Now, that’s just it, miss. You can see we need some one like you, who’s
+on the inside, to keep us off the wrong track. Can you suggest anyone
+else?”
+
+Barbara was silent. Then she shook her head. “I don’t know of anyone
+now,” she said. “You’ll have to give me time to think and watch.”
+
+“All right, miss, and thank you. You can write a note to this address if
+you have anything to communicate.” One of the men handed her a card with
+the number of a Newport boarding house on it. “My name is Burton,” said
+the big man, “and my assistant is Rowley. We both came up from the New
+York office, and we’re at your service, miss.”
+
+On the way home Barbara tried to make up her mind whether she ought to
+tell Miss Sallie what she was doing.
+
+“I don’t think it best to tell her now,” she concluded. “She would only
+be worried and frightened to death. What is the good? Miss Sallie would
+be sure to think that girls did not hunt for jewel thieves in her day.
+And she’d probably think they ought not to hunt for them in my day,”
+Barbara confessed to herself, honestly. “I’ll just wait a while, and see
+how things develop. Now I am in this detective business, I might as well
+confess to myself that it is very interesting.”
+
+Barbara walked slowly. “I wish Ruth would find out how things are
+going,” she thought to herself. “She is so shrewd and she already
+guesses I have something on my mind. But Ruth was so positive I was
+wrong about Harry Townsend, at Mrs. Erwin’s ball, that she would
+probably think I was wrong again. So the female detective will pursue
+her lonely way for a little while longer—and then, I just must tell some
+one,” Bab ended.
+
+Miss Sallie and the girls were coming down-stairs to breakfast, when Bab
+entered at the front door. Miss Stuart was plainly displeased with
+Barbara’s explanation. “I couldn’t sleep very well, Miss Sallie,” said
+Barbara, “and I went out for a walk.” “That is partly true,” she
+reflected, “but half truths are not far from story-telling.”
+
+“Well, I must ask you, Bab,” said Miss Sallie, in firm tones, “not to
+leave the house again in the morning, unless some one is with you. I was
+most uneasy.”
+
+“Didn’t Mollie give you the note I left on the bureau to explain where I
+had gone?” inquired Bab.
+
+“Mollie did not see the note until we were almost ready to come
+downstairs. Naturally, we did not understand your absence.”
+
+“I am so sorry, Miss Sallie,” cried Bab. “I never will do it again.”
+
+Barbara was beginning to understand Miss Sallie better since Ruth’s
+accident. She knew that her cold exterior hid a very warm heart.
+
+As for Miss Sallie, she finally smiled on Bab and gave her a forgiving
+kiss. “I could forgive Bab anything,” she thought to herself, “after her
+wonderful heroism in saving Ruth. I suppose I have to expect a girl of
+so much spirit to do erratic things sometimes.”
+
+Ralph kept his eyes lowered when he said good morning and hardly spoke
+during breakfast.
+
+“Ralph is out of sorts,” his mother complained, “but, man-like, he won’t
+tell what is the matter with him.”
+
+“Perhaps you are tired from the party last night, Ralph?” suggested
+Mollie. Then Ralph laughed a mirthless laugh. “No, I am not tired,
+Mollie,” he replied.
+
+Yet all through breakfast he did not once speak to Bab.
+
+“Remember,” said Grace, “that our crowd and just a few other people are
+invited over to Mrs. Cartwright’s to-night. She is going to have a porch
+party, and we are to play the famous game ‘eyeology’ that she was
+talking of to Gladys the other day. Do you know what she means?”
+
+Nobody at the table had ever heard of it.
+
+“I begged Donald to tell me,” Grace added, “but he declares he is as
+much in the dark about it as the rest of us, and Mrs. Cartwright simply
+says, ‘wait and see!’”
+
+“I suppose,” said Miss Sallie, “that you children never intend to rest
+again. I should think that Mrs. Cartwright would be perfectly used up
+from so much entertaining.”
+
+“O Aunt Sallie,” pleaded Grace, “we shall rest well enough when we are
+back in sleepy old Kingsbridge. There is too much doing in Newport. And,
+you know, we’ve only about a week longer to stay. What a wonderful time
+we have had!”
+
+“Let’s see what we have ahead of us,” pondered Mollie. “The only
+especially big things we know about are the tennis tourney and the ball
+after it. Then Miss Ruth Stuart and Mr. Hugh Post are to win a silver
+cup, in order to spread more luster upon the reputation of the
+automobile girls at Newport. Bab helped pull Ruth out of an abyss! The
+two girls held up a burglar! Ruth is a famous tennis champion! Only you
+and I are no good, Grace. What can we do for our country?” finished
+Mollie.
+
+“Nothing at all, dear!” laughed Miss Sallie, and the rest of the party.
+“Much as I admire these two clever lassies, I am very glad to have my
+other two girls of a more peaceful and quiet variety, or my hair would
+certainly turn whiter than it is now, if that were possible.” Miss
+Stuart touched her snow-white hair, which was very handsome with her
+delicate skin and bright color.
+
+“Now I insist,” she said, “that you girls have a quiet day if you are
+going out again this evening.”
+
+“May I have a row on the bay with Ralph?” asked Barbara. “Have you
+forgotten, Ralph, that you invited me several days ago?”
+
+“I am sorry, Barbara,” Ralph answered, quietly, “but I had forgotten it.
+If you will excuse me, I have something else on hand for today that I
+must attend to. Perhaps you will go with me some other time,” he
+proposed, without any enthusiasm.
+
+“All right, Ralph,” Bab nodded. “Of course, I do not mind. We did not
+have a real engagement, anyway.” “He won’t let me make up with him,” Bab
+thought. “I wonder why he is so angry?”
+
+At five o’clock Barbara came down on the veranda, dressed for the
+evening. She spied Ralph walking alone down the garden path, which was
+arched with trellises of crimson and pink rambler roses. There were
+several seats along the walk, and it had formed a favorite retreat for
+the girls ever since they had arrived at Mrs. Ewing’s home.
+
+Perhaps another girl than Barbara would not have tried again to make
+friends with Ralph, after his refusal to take her boating in the
+morning; but Bab was so open-hearted and sincere that she could not bear
+a misunderstanding. She was fond of Ralph, he had been kind to her, and
+his manner toward her had changed so suddenly that she felt she must
+have done something to wound him. Bab did offend people, sometimes, with
+her quick speeches and thoughtlessness, but she was always ready to say
+she was wrong and to make amends.
+
+“Ralph!” she called. “Ralph!” The boy was obliged to stop and turn
+round, as Barbara was hurrying after him.
+
+“I want to talk to you, please,” she said, coaxingly. “You are not too
+angry with me to let me speak to you, are you?”
+
+“I have not said I was angry with you, Miss Thurston,” replied Ralph.
+
+“Now, Ralph!” Barbara put her hand lightly on his sleeve. “You know you
+don’t call me Miss Thurston. We decided weeks ago it was silly for us to
+call each other Miss and Mister when we were such intimate friends. I
+want you to do me a favor. Will you take me over to Mrs. Cartwright’s
+to-night? Donald and his guest, ‘the freshman,’ are coming for Grace and
+Mollie. Ruth, of course, is going over with Hugh, and I could go with
+them, but I want to talk to you. I can’t say what I have to say to you
+now, because already the girls are calling me. Please say you will take
+me.”
+
+Barbara’s eyes were so pretty and pleading that Ralph felt his anger
+already melting. Yet Ralph’s feeling toward Barbara was not only anger.
+It was a much more serious thing, a growing sense of distrust. But he
+answered: “Of course, Bab, I shall be delighted to take you.”
+
+Barbara and Ralph let the rest of their friends start ahead of them.
+They wanted to have their walk alone.
+
+Miss Sallie had pleaded fatigue, and remained at home. “Besides,
+children,” she explained, “I am much too old to take any further
+interest in games, ‘eyeology,’ or any other ‘ology.’”
+
+Ralph and Barbara walked in silence down the street for several minutes.
+Then Bab spoke. “Tell me, Ralph, what is the matter? If you were angry
+with a man you would tell him what the trouble was, if he asked you. It
+is not fair not to be open with me because I am a girl. If you think you
+are being more polite to me by not telling me why you are angry, then I
+don’t agree with you. I think you are acting a whole lot worse.”
+
+Ralph continued to go on in moody silence.
+
+“All right, then, Ralph,” said Barbara; “I can’t ask you any more
+questions, or beg your pardon, when I don’t know what I have done to
+offend you. Only I am sorry.”
+
+“Oh, it isn’t that you have offended me, Bab,” Ralph burst out. “Do you
+suppose I would act like such a bear if you had just thrown me down, or
+some little thing like that, when we have been such jolly good friends
+before? I didn’t like your sending me off yesterday, when you went to
+look for Mollie, because—because——”
+
+“Go on, Ralph,” insisted Barbara.
+
+“Very well, then, Bab; I was angry and hurt because, if you did join
+Mollie, you couldn’t have stayed with her a minute. I saw you, just
+afterwards, holding a long conversation with a strange man.”
+
+“Well, Ralph,” argued Bab, “was that such a dreadful offense? I am sure
+I should not have been angry with you, if you had talked to any number
+of strange women.” Bab’s eyes were twinkling. She had made up her mind
+that she wanted a confidant. Here was Ralph, the best one she could
+have.
+
+“That’s not all,” Ralph continued, “I did not mean to be an
+eavesdropper, but I was standing just behind you and I could not help
+overhearing that strange man make an appointment to meet you this
+morning. Say, Bab,” Ralph turned toward her, all his anger gone, “don’t
+do things like meeting that man this morning without telling. It’s not
+nice, and I’ve thought you the nicest, most straightforward girl I ever
+knew. If there is anything between you and that fellow, why should it be
+a secret? A girl can’t afford to have secrets, except with other girls.”
+
+“But I want to have a secret with _you_, Ralph,” rejoined Barbara. “Now
+listen, while I tell you everything. I have never talked to you about
+the scene in the conservatory, the night of Mrs. Erwin’s ball, though I
+did appreciate what you did to help me out when I made that strange
+request of Harry Townsend. I was not crazy. I saw Harry Townsend steal
+Mrs. Post’s emerald necklace. Ralph,” Barbara’s voice was now so low
+that he had to bend over to hear her, “Harry Townsend is not what the
+people here think him. He is a professional thief, and a dangerous one.”
+
+“Whew!” whistled Ralph. “What did you say?”
+
+Then Barbara told him the story of the three thefts, from the beginning,
+and her own part in discovering them. “The detectives are on the lookout
+now, Ralph,” she added, “but they want me to keep a watch from the
+inside.”
+
+“Well, you are a clever one, Bab!” declared Ralph. “Look here, I am glad
+you told me this. I appreciate it a whole lot, and I will not mention it
+to anyone until you tell me I may. But, remember one thing. I shall be
+on the watch, too, and it’s Miss Barbara Thurston I’ll be watching. That
+Townsend is a dangerous rogue. I’ve known there was something crooked
+about him from the first. Oh, it’s easy to say that, now, after what you
+have told me. I am not pretending I knew his special game. Only I knew
+he was not our sort. He is a whole lot older than he pretends to be, for
+one thing.”
+
+“Ralph,” sighed Barbara, “do you think there is any way I could warn
+Gladys against Harry Townsend?”
+
+Ralph shook his head. “Not any way that I know of. She would just snub
+you hard, if you tried. Even if you dared to tell her the truth she
+would go right off and tell that Townsend fellow. She’s been pretty
+hateful to you, Bab. I don’t see why you should care.”
+
+“Oh, but I do care,” retorted Bab. “She has been horrid and stuck up,
+but she hasn’t done Mollie and me any real harm, and she is my cousin.
+Her father is my mother’s brother. Uncle Ralph has never been very fond
+of us, nor has he come to see us very much, but he looks after mother’s
+money. I don’t suppose,” wound up Barbara, thoughtfully, “he would do us
+any wrong. I shouldn’t like Gladys to get into trouble.”
+
+“What has kept you children so long?” asked Grace, as Ralph and Barbara
+appeared on Mrs. Cartwright’s veranda. Then she squeezed Bab’s hand and
+whispered, so no one else could hear, “Made it up, Bab?” Barbara nodded,
+“yes.”
+
+Mrs. Cartwright was heard speaking. “Sit down, everyone, over there
+where Jones has placed the chairs for us. Professor Cartwright,” she
+bowed to show she meant herself, “will now explain to his pupils, or his
+guests, the principles of the science of ‘eyeology.’ Human character is
+expressed in the human eye—our love, our hate, our ambitions,
+everything. But can we read the characters of people about us as we look
+into their eyes? No! Why not? Because the rest of the face confuses our
+attention. Instead of the steadfast beacon of the eye, we see the nose,
+the mouth, the hair, all the other features, and so we fail to
+understand the story the eye would tell us if it were alone. To-night I
+intend to instruct you in the proper understanding of ‘eyeology.’”
+
+Mrs. Cartwright changed to her usual manner of speaking. “Don’t you
+think it would be amusing to make a test? Here Ruth,” laughed the
+hostess, “be my first pupil. Go into the drawing-room and wait there
+until I send for you. I want to find out how many of your friends you
+will know, when you see only their eyes.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX—RUTH WAKES UP!
+
+
+A curious sight met Ruth’s gaze when she was invited to return to the
+veranda.
+
+“Goodness!” she laughed. “It is just as well I am not afraid of ghosts.
+I’ve come upon a whole army of them all at once!”
+
+Mrs. Cartwright had the porch darkened, except for a single row of
+bright lights. Her visitors stood with their backs against the wall, a
+sheet drawn up on a level with their eyes. Another white cloth covered
+their heads, drawn down so low over their foreheads that even the
+eyebrows were concealed. By standing on books and stools the eyes were
+all on a level.
+
+“No giggling,” said Mrs. Cartwright severely to the ghostly set in front
+of her, “or Ruth can guess who you are by the tones of your voices.”
+
+Ruth looked confused. No signs of her friends remained, save a long row
+of shining eyes, black, blue, brown and gray, even the color being hard
+to distinguish in the artificial light.
+
+“Now, mademoiselle,” said Mrs. Cartwright, still speaking in the voice
+of a professor, “behold before you an opportunity to prove your skill in
+the remarkable science of ‘eyeology.’ I have a piece of paper and a
+pencil in my hand. As you gaze into each pair of eyes, you are to reveal
+that person’s identity. I will write the names down as you tell them to
+me. When you have gone through the whole list, the curtain shall be
+lifted. Then we shall discover how many of your friends you know by the
+character of their eyes. After Ruth has finished, anyone else who wishes
+may try his or her skill.”
+
+“My dear Mrs. Cartwright,” said Ruth, laughing and peering in front of
+her, “I tell you, right now, that I shall not guess a single name
+correctly. To tell the truth, I never saw any of these eyes before. It’s
+horrid to have them all staring and blinking at me. I am frightened at
+them all! Besides, I can’t see. May I have a candle and hold it up in
+front of each person as I pass along?”
+
+“Yes,” said Mrs. Cartwright; “only kindly keep at a safe distance. We
+don’t want to burn up any of our ghosts.”
+
+Ruth started down the line. She had the privilege of staring as long and
+as hard as she liked into each pair of eyes.
+
+The company was strangely silent. They were really interested in the
+idea, and knew that any talking would spoil the whole experiment.
+
+“I’ve mixed the babies up, Ruth,” said Mrs. Cartwright, “so you needn’t
+think you can guess anyone by his choice of a next-door neighbor. No
+social preferences have been allowed in this game.”
+
+Ruth tried the first pair of eyes. She looked at them intently. Then she
+turned round to Mrs. Cartwright. “I am sure I never saw those eyes
+before. You have introduced some stranger since I left the porch.”
+
+“There is not a person here whom you do not know well,” Mrs. Cartwright
+assured her. “Don’t try to slip out of your task.”
+
+Ruth kept staring. The eyes in front of her drooped, and soft, curling
+lashes for an instant swept over them. A little wistful look lay in the
+depths of them, when the lids lifted. “Why, it’s Molliekins! How absurd
+of me not to know her! I was about to guess Ralph!”
+
+Mistress Ruth must have guessed wrongly next time, for there was a burst
+of laughter, afterwards, that made the white sheets shake.
+
+“Be quiet,” warned Mrs. Cartwright sternly.
+
+So Ruth passed on down the line. There were about twenty people in the
+game, but Ruth knew all of them very well. Sometimes her guesses were
+right, sometimes they were wrong. Once or twice she had to confess
+herself beaten, and “gave up” with a shake of her head at Mrs.
+Cartwright.
+
+Ruth had nearly finished her task. Only a few more pairs of eyes
+remained to be investigated.
+
+“Well, I am nearly through,” she said gayly. “If anyone thinks I have
+had an easy time of it, he has only to take my place and try the next
+turn. No more mistakes now, for Ruth Stuart! Who is my next victim?”
+Ruth held her candle above her head and looked up.
+
+Gleaming at her through the darkness lit by the flare from her
+candle-light was a pair of eyes that were strangely familiar.
+
+Ruth stared at them. They belonged to none of the friends she knew—yet,
+somewhere, she had seen them before.
+
+Ruth looked and looked. The eyes shifted and narrowed. Ruth still held
+her candle aloft; but she had forgotten where she was. Where had she
+seen those eyes before?
+
+“Look straight ahead of you,” said Mrs. Cartwright to the gleaming eyes,
+“how can Ruth guess when your eyes are closed?” But again the eyes
+shifted.
+
+“I am going to find out to whom those eyes belong, if I stay here all
+night,” said Ruth, speaking to herself.
+
+The eyes glinted, narrowed and shone like two fine points of steel.
+
+“Oh!” said Ruth. She staggered a little and the candle shook in her
+hand. “I thought I knew those eyes, but I don’t. I must be mistaken. I
+beg your pardon, Mrs. Cartwright,” said Ruth, “but I am tired. I don’t
+think I can go on. Will some one take my place?”
+
+Ruth’s expression was so peculiar that Mrs. Cartwright came up to her.
+“You foolish child!” she said, putting her hand on Ruth’s shoulder, “I
+believe this game is making you nervous. Who is it sitting there with
+the eyes that Ruth remembers, yet will not reveal to us?” she called.
+
+“Harry Townsend, Harry Townsend!” the people sitting closest to him
+answered.
+
+“Harry,” said Mrs. Cartwright, “you come and take Ruth’s place. Let’s
+see if you are a better ‘eyeologist’ than she is.”
+
+Before Harry Townsend had slipped out from under his strange covering,
+Ruth turned to Mrs. Cartwright. “Excuse me for a minute,” she begged.
+“My labors as an optician have used me up. I will be back in a little
+while.”
+
+Barbara crept from under the sheet, and, without speaking to anyone, ran
+after Ruth, who was on her way upstairs to Mrs. Cartwright’s boudoir.
+
+“Ruth, dear, what on earth has happened to you? Are you sick?” asked
+Barbara.
+
+“Oh, I am worse than sick, Bab!” muttered Ruth, with a shudder. “Don’t
+ask me to talk until we get upstairs.”
+
+The girls closed the dressing-room door.
+
+“I must be wrong, Bab, yet I don’t believe I am. I saw to-night the same
+eyes that glared at us from behind a black mask the time of that
+horrible burglary at New Haven, when, for a little while, I thought you
+were killed. I have never said much about it. I wanted to forget and I
+wanted everyone else to forget it, but those eyes have followed me
+everywhere since. To-night——”
+
+Bab took Ruth’s hand.
+
+“Oh, Bab,” groaned Ruth, “what does it mean? I saw those eyes again
+to-night and they were Harry Townsend’s. I wanted to scream right out:
+‘Burglar! robber!’ But I could not make a scene. I came upstairs, hardly
+knowing how I reached here.”
+
+One of the maids knocked at the door. “Do the young ladies wish
+anything? Mrs. Cartwright sent me up to inquire,” she said.
+
+“Nothing at all. Tell her we are all right, and will be down in a few
+minutes.”
+
+“Ruth,” said Barbara, “I want to tell you something. If I do, can you
+pretend that nothing has happened, and be perfectly composed for the
+rest of the evening? Now don’t say ‘yes’ unless you feel sure.”
+
+Ruth looked straight at Barbara, “Yes; tell me what it is,” she urged.
+“I am beginning to guess.”
+
+“The eyes you saw to-night were Harry Townsend’s, and he is a burglar
+and a thief. I did not know he was the robber at New Haven; I have only
+suspected it. Now I feel sure, and you recognized him to-night. He is a
+more dangerous character than I had thought, and he must not know that
+you suspect him.”
+
+“He shall know nothing from me,” said Ruth, coolly. Her color had come
+back, now that she knew the truth. “It was only the shock that unnerved
+me. Why haven’t you told me before, Bab?”
+
+“I was afraid you’d ask me that, Ruth, dear, and I want to explain. You
+see, I have believed Harry Townsend a thief ever since I saw him, with
+my own eyes, take the necklace from Mrs. Post’s neck at Mrs. Erwin’s
+ball; but you were positive I was wrong, and asked me not to talk about
+it. So I didn’t know what to do. I have only watched and waited.
+To-night I told Ralph what I knew.”
+
+Barbara then explained to Ruth the whole story, and the part the
+detectives had asked her to play in Townsend’s apprehension. “What shall
+I do, Ruth?” she ended.
+
+“Come on downstairs, Bab,” said Ruth. “Some one may suspect us if we
+don’t. Do, Bab. We are going on to play the game, just as you have been
+playing it by yourself. We will say nothing, but we will do some hard
+thinking; and, when the time comes, we shall act! To tell you the truth,
+if you will never betray me to Aunt Sallie, I think playing detective
+beats nearly any fun I know.”
+
+“Eyeology” was no longer amusing the guests when the two girls came
+downstairs; indeed, the company had scattered and was talking in
+separate groups. Ruth and Bab joined Mollie and Grace, who were standing
+near Mrs. Post and their new acquaintance, the Countess Bertouche.
+
+“Girls,” asked Mrs. Post, “would you like to join the Countess Bertouche
+and myself Saturday afternoon? We are going to explore old Newport; the
+old town is well worth seeing. The countess tells me this is her first
+visit to Newport, so, before she goes back to Paris, I want her to see
+that we have a little of the dignity that age gives.
+
+“Why,” and Mrs. Post turned smilingly to the little group, “Newport
+boasts even a haunted house! It is not occupied, and I have the
+privilege of showing you over it. A story has been written about the old
+mansion. Here a young woman lived who loved an officer in Rochambeau’s
+fleet, when the gallant French sailor came over to these shores. But the
+sailor loved and sailed away, never to return. So the lady pined and
+died; but her presence still haunts the old house. You can feel her
+approaching you by a sudden perfume of mignonette. After we see all the
+sights of the town, we shall go to the old house at about dusk, so that
+we may have a better chance to discover the ‘spirit lady.’”
+
+Mollie and Grace accepted Mrs. Post’s invitation with enthusiasm.
+Barbara and Ruth had to decline regretfully.
+
+“You see, Mrs. Post,” Barbara explained, “Ruth and Hugh have to practice
+their tennis, every hour they can manage, until the tournament on
+Monday. Ruth has become a little out of practice since her accident, and
+must work hard at her game for the next few days. Ralph and I have
+promised to help by furnishing the opposition.”
+
+“You’ll excuse Mollie and me from playing audience, won’t you, Ruth?”
+asked Grace. “We are going home so soon after the tournament is over
+that we can’t resist Mrs. Post’s invitation.”
+
+“Barbara,” said Ruth, coming into Bab’s room, just as that young woman
+was about to step into bed, “can you imagine anyone whom Harry Townsend
+can be using as a confederate?”
+
+“Sh-sh!” warned Bab. “Here comes Mollie. Don’t say anything. I haven’t
+the faintest idea.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI—THE CAPTURE OF THE BUTTERFLY
+
+
+Harry Townsend was not aware of the chain of suspicion that was
+tightening around him; but he was too clever not to use every
+precaution. Once or twice he had come across the small, dark detective
+who was making investigations in Mrs. Erwin’s house—the large, blond
+man, named Burton, had kept in the background—but knowing that the
+servants had been under suspicion, he supposed that the search was being
+made on their account. He knew of no act of his own that could possibly
+implicate him in the robberies. He came and went among Mrs. Erwin’s
+guests, and was on a friendly footing with their most fashionable
+friends at Newport. He had seen no one else during his visit, as the
+whole world was privileged to know.
+
+The only act that the detective, Rowley, was able to report to his
+superior was that Mr. Townsend mailed his own letters. In Mrs. Erwin’s
+household it was the custom of her guests to place all their mail in a
+bag, which the butler sent to the postoffice at regular hours; but Mr.
+Townsend preferred to mail his own letters. This act occasioned no
+comment. Other guests, writing important business letters, had done the
+same thing.
+
+“And Townsend has mailed only letters,” continued Rowley in making his
+report. “Not a single package, even of the smallest size, has gone out
+through the postoffice. The jewels are still in Newport.”
+
+Mr. Townsend had already begun to discuss with his hostess the
+possibility of his soon having to leave her charming home. “I have
+presumed on your hospitality too long,” he said to Mrs. Erwin, several
+times. “When the famous Casino ball is over I must be getting back to
+New York.”
+
+To Gladys he explained: “My dear Gladys, my holiday time must end some
+day. I shall be able to see you often when you go back to Kingsbridge. I
+am going into a broker’s office as soon as I get back to New York. I
+have been loafing around in Europe for the last two years, but I have
+decided that, even if a fellow has money enough to make him fairly
+comfortable, work is the thing for the true American!”
+
+To-day Harry Townsend walked to the post-office alone. He carried three
+letters. One of them was to a steamship company engaging passage to
+Naples for “John Brown.” The steamer was due to sail the following
+Wednesday. The other two letters had New York addresses. When they
+arrived at their first destination, they were to be remailed to other
+addresses. A tall, blond man, who happened to be lounging in the
+postoffice at the time Mr. Townsend entered it, observed that the young
+gentleman was anxious to know when the letters would be delivered in the
+city.
+
+The letters posted, Townsend walked over to the Casino courts, where Bab
+and Ruth were playing tennis. He had promised Gladys to join her there.
+He still had some investigations he desired to make. But he walked
+slowly. Clever fingers must be directed by a clever brain, whether their
+work be good or evil. No matter how well he knew he could depend on his
+wonderful fingers to do their share of the work, the “boy Raffles”
+always thought out carefully the plan of his theft before he tried to
+execute it.
+
+On Monday night, at the Casino tournament ball, he planned to make his
+final theft. This accomplished, he could leave Newport feeling he had
+reaped a rich harvest, even in the summer season, when harvests are not
+supposed to be gathered.
+
+Harry Townsend, alias half a dozen other names, had seen the jewel he
+most coveted for his final effort. It was a diamond tiara belonging to
+one of the richest and most prominent women in Newport. His schemes were
+carefully laid. He was waiting for Monday night.
+
+At about three o’clock, on this same Saturday afternoon, Mrs. Post and
+the Countess Bertouche stopped in a small automobile for Grace and
+Mollie. They had no one with them except the chauffeur.
+
+It took them some time to drive through the old town of Newport. The
+ladies descended at the old Trinity church, to investigate it, and the
+girls were much interested in the ancient jail. There, they were told,
+was once kept a woman prisoner who complained because she had no lock on
+her door.
+
+Mollie and Grace were not ardent sightseers. It was really the thought
+of the haunted house that had brought them on their pilgrimage. But Mrs.
+Post and the countess insisted on poking their way down the Long Wharf,
+with its rows of sailors’ houses and junk shops. Both girls were
+dreadfully bored, and secretly longed to be on the tennis courts with
+Bab and Ruth. Yet the thought of the haunted house buoyed them up.
+
+Mrs. Post was a collector. If you have ever traveled with one, you will
+understand that it means hours and hours of looking through dirt and
+trash in order to run across one treasure that a collector regards as
+“an antique.”
+
+Even when Mrs. Post was through with her search she decided that it was
+not yet sufficiently late for them to visit the haunted house. “I told
+the caretaker not to meet us there until a quarter of seven. We shall
+want only a few minutes to go through the old place; but, of course, we
+must see it under conditions as romantic as possible.” Mrs. Post then
+ordered the chauffeur to take them for a drive before driving them to
+the haunted house.
+
+Mollie and Grace were unusually quiet, so they noticed that the Countess
+Bertouche had little to say during the afternoon. She seemed tired and
+nervous. When Mrs. Post asked her questions about her life abroad, after
+she married, the countess replied in as few words as possible.
+
+At exactly the appointed time the automobile delivered its passengers
+before the door of the house they sought. It was an old, gray,
+Revolutionary mansion, three stories high, with a sloping roof and small
+windows with diamond-latticed panes. It was quite dark when the girls
+entered the ghostly mansion, following Mrs. Post and the countess, who
+were led by a one-eyed old caretaker carrying a smoky lamp. There was
+just enough daylight shining through the windows to see one’s way about,
+but the corners of the vast old house were full of terrifying shadows.
+
+“Let us not stay too long, Mrs. Post,” urged the countess. “I am not
+fond of ghosts, and I am tired.” But Mrs. Post was the kind of
+sight-seer who goes on to the end, no matter who lags behind. She led
+the party up the winding steps, peering into each room as they went
+along. The house was kept furnished with a few rickety pieces of old
+furniture.
+
+When they reached the second floor, the caretaker announced that the
+middle bedroom was the sleeping apartment of the haunted lady. The
+little party searched it curiously. There was no sign of the ghostly
+inhabitant; no perfume of mignonette.
+
+“I don’t see anything unusual about this room,” said the countess,
+suppressing a sigh, “except that it has the most comfortable chair in
+the house. I shall sit here and rest while you take the two girls over
+the other part of the building.”
+
+The three left her. The woman dropped into a chair, and a worn, nervous
+look crossed her face.
+
+As Mollie ascended the attic stairs behind Grace she called out, “If you
+will excuse me, Mrs. Post, I shall go down and join the countess.”
+
+An imp of mischief had entered Mollie. Wrapped up in her handkerchief,
+carefully concealed in her purse bag, was a handful of mignonette, which
+she had gathered from Mrs. Ewing’s garden only that morning. Mollie
+meant to impersonate the “spirit lady.” Suddenly she had decided that
+the countess was the best one upon whom she could try her joke.
+
+Creeping down the stairs as quietly as a mouse, Mollie stole into the
+back room, adjoining the one where the countess sat. Had she looked in,
+she would hardly have played her naughty trick. The woman who sat there
+was a very different person from the gay society lady they had been
+meeting everywhere in the last few weeks. This woman looked weary and
+frightened. But Mollie was thinking only of mischief.
+
+Silently she took the mignonette out of her bag and crushed it in her
+hand. There was a sudden fragrance all about her. Then she slipped her
+hand slyly through the open doorway and dropped her bunch of mignonette
+into the room where the countess was sitting. There was no response. The
+countess had not detected the odor of the flowers and Mollie was deeply
+disappointed.
+
+Faintly, however, the countess began to be aware of the fragrance of a
+subtle perfume; but she was thinking too deeply of other things to be
+conscious of what it was. Besides, the growing darkness was making her
+nervous.
+
+Mollie gave up in despair. Her effort with the mignonette had plainly
+proved a failure. The countess refused to be frightened by the
+suggestion of the ghost.
+
+“Countess!” said Mollie, appearing suddenly in the open doorway. She
+certainly expected no result from this simple action; but the countess,
+who thought she was entirely alone, was dreadfully startled. She rose,
+with a short scream of surprise, and started forward. Her foot catching
+in a worn old rug, she stumbled. Mollie was by her side in a second,
+trying to help her to rise.
+
+“I am so sorry to have frightened you!” the child said penitently. “Wait
+a minute, you have dropped something.” Mollie picked up a square chamois
+skin bag. In her excitement and embarrassment she caught hold of the
+wrong end of it. Out of it tumbled a purse, and—Mollie saw it as plainly
+as could be, though it was nearly dark in the room—Mrs. Cartwright’s
+diamond butterfly!
+
+“Child!” said the countess, angrily. “See what your nonsense has done!
+This is the bag that I wear under my dress to carry my money and jewels.
+It is always securely fastened. I suppose, falling as I did, I must have
+broken the catch.” She picked up the things quickly and thrust them into
+her bag. It was so dark in the room she supposed Mollie had not seen
+them. Then, holding the bag tightly in her hand, she went on downstairs,
+Mollie after her, and joined Grace and Mrs. Post, who had preceded them
+to the automobile.
+
+“Well, did anyone see the ghost?” asked Mrs. Post. “You, Mollie, my
+child, look as if you had seen something.”
+
+“Oh, no,” denied Mollie; “but I am afraid I frightened the countess. I
+threw some mignonette in the room, trying to make her think I was the
+ghost, but she didn’t notice it. Then, when I spoke to her to tell her
+it was time to come downstairs, she was dreadfully startled.”
+
+Mrs. Post ordered the chauffeur to drive home first, as she and the
+countess had a dinner engagement; the two girls being later taken to
+Mrs. Ewing’s.
+
+The two women had barely left the car before Mollie put her lips near
+Grace’s ear and whispered: “Grace Carter, the Countess Bertouche has
+stolen Mrs. Cartwright’s butterfly! I saw it with my own eyes. She
+dropped it out of a bag on the floor, when she fell down.”
+
+“Goose!” smiled Grace. “What are you talking about? Don’t you suppose a
+countess may have a jeweled butterfly of her own?”
+
+“Not like that one,” retorted Mollie, firmly. “I would know it among a
+thousand. You needn’t believe me, but it’s as true as that my name is
+Mollie Thurston. I am going to tell Ruth and Bab, as soon as I get home.
+I know they will believe me.”
+
+“I do believe you, only I am so dumfounded I can’t take it in,” said
+Grace.
+
+“What on earth is the matter with you, Mollie?” asked Bab of her sister,
+as soon as they had finished dinner. “You look awfully excited.”
+
+“Bab,” whispered Mollie, “call Ruth and Grace right away. Don’t let
+anyone else come. Let’s go down to the end of the garden. I have
+something I must tell you, this minute!”
+
+Grace had already found Ruth, and the two came hurrying along. “No,
+Ralph,” ordered Grace, “you can’t come. This is strictly a girl’s
+party.”
+
+“Bab,” began Mollie, “you will believe me, won’t you? I do know what I
+am talking about. This afternoon I saw the Countess Bertouche with Mrs.
+Cartwright’s diamond butterfly. She dropped it, right before my eyes,
+out of the same kind of bag that Miss Sallie uses to keep her jewelry
+in. What can it mean?”
+
+“Ruth!” gasped Bab. “Bab!” uttered Ruth.
+
+The two girls looked at each other in silence. Then Bab exclaimed: “It
+took my Mollie to make the discovery, after all!”
+
+“What are you talking about, Barbara Thurston? What discovery have I
+made?” demanded Mollie.
+
+“Ruth, do you think I had better tell the girls?” asked Bab.
+
+Ruth nodded, and Barbara related the principal facts of the jewel
+robbery. She also told the girls that she and Ruth suspected that Harry
+Townsend had been the robber who frightened them at New Haven. “You
+remember,” Bab continued, “he was a guest at the hotel the same night we
+were, and left early the next morning. If he had one of the rooms under
+us, he could have climbed down the fire escape and into his own room
+before anyone could discover him.”
+
+But Bab kept to herself that she and Ruth were expecting another
+burglary, and that she, Bab, was to play a part in bringing the thief to
+bay. Mollie and Grace would both be terribly frightened at the thought,
+but it was just as well that they knew enough not to be surprised at
+what was to follow.
+
+Barbara went upstairs and wrote a note to the address in Newport that
+the detectives had given to her. It told the story just recited by
+Mollie.
+
+“Ralph,” requested Barbara, sauntering slowly through the hall, “will
+you mail this at once with your own hands? Little Mollie has done the
+deed, after all. She has found the woman who receives Harry Townsend’s
+stolen goods!”
+
+Ralph took the letter with an exclamation of surprise and hurried off to
+the post.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII—THE TENNIS TOURNAMENT
+
+
+The girls were dressing for the tennis tournament. The games were to
+begin at noon, and continue until six o’clock. Three hours later the
+annual tennis ball took place at the Casino.
+
+“You know, Ruth,” said Bab, fixing a pin in her friend’s collar, as they
+stood before the mirror, “that the really most important thing in our
+whole stay at Newport is your winning the silver cup in the tournament
+to-day.”
+
+“Oh!” cried Ruth. “Don’t be quite so energetic, Bab. You jabbed that pin
+right into my neck. I believe I am going to win. I can’t imagine a good
+soldier going into battle with the idea that he is going to be beaten.
+Why, an idea like that would take all the fight out of a man, or a girl
+either, for that matter. No, Hugh and I are going to do everything we
+possibly can to come out winners. But, if we do, Bab, Hugh and I will
+think we owe it to you and Ralph. You have been such trumps about
+keeping us up to the mark with your fine playing.”
+
+“Nonsense, Ruth!” retorted Bab, decidedly. “All Ralph and I ask this
+afternoon is a chance to do some shouting for the winners. What time is
+the tourney on for the ‘eighteen-year-olds’?”
+
+“Just after lunch; about two o’clock, I believe. Bab, are you nervous
+about to-night?” Ruth asked. “Do you think there is going to be a scene
+at the ball? The detectives will be watching Mr. Townsend closely. They
+suspect that he means to make another big attempt, don’t they?”
+
+“I really don’t know, Ruth,” Barbara answered. “I had a short note from
+Mr. Burton this morning. I meant to show it to you, but I did not have a
+chance. It simply said: ‘Thanks. The game is ours. Keep a sharp
+lookout!’ But I want to forget the whole burglary business to-day.
+Tennis is the only really important thing. Hurrah for Miss Ruth Stuart,
+the famous girl champion!” cried Barbara, then suddenly sobered down.
+The two girls had been in the wildest spirits all day. Indeed, Miss
+Sallie had sent them into the same room to dress, in order to get rid of
+them.
+
+“What is the matter, Bab?” said Ruth, turning round to look into her
+friend’s face.
+
+“I’ve a confession to make to you. In my heart of hearts, way down
+underneath, I am kind of sneakingly sorry for Harry Townsend. I know he
+is a rogue and everything that’s wicked. When I think of him in that way
+I am not sorry for him a bit. Then the thought comes of the man who has
+been around with us for weeks, playing tennis with us and going to our
+parties, and I can’t quite take it in.”
+
+“I know just what you mean, Bab,” replied Ruth, reflectively. “Don’t you
+think it must be the same idea as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Everyone has
+a good and a bad side. We can’t help being sorry for the good part of a
+person, when the evil gets ahead of it. But, then, you and I have never
+really liked even the good side of Harry Townsend much. So I wonder why
+we both feel sorry.”
+
+“It’s the woman in us, I suppose,” sighed Bab.
+
+“Ruth, come in here and let me see how you look,” called Miss Sallie.
+She had sent up to New York for a special tennis costume for Ruth. The
+suit was a light-weight white serge skirt with an embroidered blouse of
+handkerchief linen, and the only color was Ruth’s pale blue necktie and
+the snood on her hair, which was carefully braided and securely fastened
+to the back of her head.
+
+Gowns were an important part of tournament days; indeed, the New York
+Horse Show seldom shows more elaborate dressing than does the annual
+tennis tournament at the Newport Casino.
+
+Mollie and Barbara were the proud owners of two new gowns made by their
+mother for this special occasion. Bab’s frock was a simple yellow
+dimity, and she wore a big white hat with a wreath of yellow roses round
+it.
+
+“You’re a baby blue, Mollie, aren’t you?” asked Grace standing and
+admiring her little friend. Grace had on a lingerie frock of lavender
+muslin and lace, and a big hat trimmed in lavender plumes.
+
+“Well,” said Mollie, making her a low bow, “lucky am I to be dressed in
+blue, if it means I may sit near so lovely a person as you. Fortunately,
+lavender and blue make a pretty color combination.”
+
+Miss Stuart had a box for the tennis tournament.
+
+When she and the girls entered it, they found it nearly filled with
+roses. There were no cards except a single one inscribed: “For the
+Automobile Girls,” for Miss Sallie was as much an automobile girl as any
+of the others. The girls selected the bunches of flowers that seemed
+most suited to their costumes. Miss Sallie and Grace immediately decided
+on the white roses, Mollie chose the pink ones, looking in her pale blue
+dress and hat like a little Dresden shepherdess.
+
+In some one’s garden a yellow rose bush of the old-fashioned kind must
+have bloomed for Bab. “Why!” uttered Miss Sallie, holding up Bab’s
+flowers, from which streamed a long yellow satin bow, “I have not seen
+these little yellow garden roses since I was a girl. See how they open
+out their hearts to everyone! Is that like you, Bab? Be careful how you
+hold them,” teased Miss Sallie; “they have a few thorns underneath, and
+must be gently handled.”
+
+Ruth half suspected Hugh had been the anonymous giver of the flowers, as
+soon as she discovered her own bunch. They formed a big ball of pale
+blue hydrangeas, tied with Ruth’s especial shade of blue ribbon.
+
+“See!” said Ruth, laughing, and holding them up for the other girls to
+admire. “Hugh was not discouraged by the fact that blue flowers are so
+hard to find. I wouldn’t have dreamed that hydrangeas could look so
+lovely, except on the bush.”
+
+Ruth sat in the front of the box, waiting for her name to be called for
+her tennis match. She was one of the most popular visitors in Newport;
+nearly everyone who passed her box stopped to wish good luck to her and
+to Hugh.
+
+“I have seen a good many sights, in my day,” said Miss Sallie, gazing
+around through her lorgnette, “but never one more beautiful than this.”
+
+The grass of the wide lawns was so perfectly trimmed that it looked like
+a carpet of moss. Over the green there swept a crowd of laughing, happy
+people, the women in frocks of every delicate color. Even the sober note
+that men’s clothes generally make in a gay throng was missing to-day,
+for the boys, young and old, wore white flannels and light shirts that
+rivaled the dresses of the girls in the brightness of their hues.
+
+Tier upon tier of seats rose up around the tennis courts; before the
+first game was called every one was filled.
+
+“Give me my smelling salts, Grace,” said Miss Sallie, when Ruth and Hugh
+were called out to commence their game. “I shall not look at them until
+the set is over.”
+
+“O Miss Sallie!” declared Ralph, who had quietly slipped into Ruth’s
+place next Barbara. “I am ashamed of you for not having more courage. I
+am certain they will win. We shall have two silver cups in this box in
+the next hour or so.”
+
+Over the heads of the great crowd Barbara could see the Countess
+Bertouche. She was standing near Mr. and Mrs. Erwin’s box, in which sat
+Governor and Mrs. Post, Gladys and Harry Townsend.
+
+For the first time in her acquaintance with them, Barbara saw Harry
+Townsend leave his seat and walk across the lawn with the countess.
+Evidently she had made some request of him. Not far off Barbara could
+also see a tall, blond man, with a curly, light mustache, who followed
+the pair with his eyes and then moved nonchalantly in their direction.
+
+But Harry Townsend was back with his friends in a minute. He had only
+taken the countess to her place, so that she need not be alone in the
+crowd.
+
+Ruth and Hugh were easy winners. They had no such tennis battle as they
+fought the day they earned the right to represent their crowd over the
+heads of Ralph and Barbara.
+
+“Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!” shouted the crowd.
+
+Ruth and Hugh were standing near each other in front of the judges’
+stand, where the prizes were awarded.
+
+With a low bow, Mr. Cartwright presented Ruth with a beautiful silver
+cup and to Hugh another of the same kind. On the outside of each cup was
+engraved a design of two racquets crossing each other, with the word
+“champion” below.
+
+Barbara and Ruth had given up all their interest and thought to the
+tennis match during the day; but Ruth having won her cup, both girls’
+minds turned to the jewel robbery.
+
+Except for the note Bab had received in the morning, she had had no sign
+nor signal from the two detectives. The Countess Bertouche, apparently
+as calm and undisturbed as any of the other guests, had been an
+interested watcher of the tournament.
+
+The girls were late in arriving at the ball. Miss Stuart had insisted on
+their resting an hour after dinner, and the affair was in full swing
+when they entered the beautiful Casino ballroom.
+
+“You’re just in time for the barn dance, all of you,” called Mrs.
+Cartwright. “We are going to be informal for the next half hour, at
+least. Come, Ruth, I insist on you and Hugh leading off. You are our
+special tennis champions. Wasn’t it hard luck that I didn’t win, when my
+husband was a judge?”
+
+“Miss Thurston,” said Harry Townsend, turning suddenly to Barbara,
+“won’t you dance with me?”
+
+Barbara’s hands turned cold as ice and her cheeks suddenly flamed. She
+hated to dance with a man whom she knew to be of the character of Harry
+Townsend. Yet how could she refuse?
+
+He looked at her coolly, and Bab saw a mocking smile curl the corners of
+his lips. But he was as smooth and courteous as usual.
+
+“He is the prince of actors,” thought Bab. “I was a goose to let him see
+how I felt. I will show him that I know how to act as well as he does,
+when I am forced to it.”
+
+Barbara accepted the invitation quietly. They took their places with the
+two long rows of dancers extending down the whole length of the great
+ballroom.
+
+The barn dance, with its merry, unconventional movement, its swinging
+music and grace, was generally the greatest joy to Bab. But tonight, in
+spite of her pretense at acting, her feet lagged. She dared not look
+into the face of her partner. He was as gay and debonair as usual.
+
+When the dance was over, Townsend asked Bab to walk out on the lawn with
+him.
+
+As Ruth saw Harry and Barbara walk out at the door, she turned suddenly
+to the stranger with whom she was talking. “Will you,” she said to him,
+“tell Ralph Ewing I would like to speak to him at once? I want to tell
+him something that is very important. Please forgive my asking you, but
+I must see him. I will wait right here until you find him.” It was
+five—ten minutes, before Ralph was found.
+
+Harry Townsend meant to discover what Barbara Thurston knew. She was a
+young girl, still at school. He was a man approaching thirty, with a
+record behind him of nearly ten years of successful villainy.
+
+Would Barbara betray herself? Would she “give the game away?”
+
+“Miss Thurston,” began Harry Townsend, politely, “as I shall be going
+away from Newport very soon, I want to have a talk with you. I must
+confess, that, since the night of Mrs. Erwin’s ball, I have been very
+angry with you. No high-minded man could endure the suggestion you made
+against my honor, when you asked Hugh Post to search me, so soon after
+his mother’s jewels had disappeared. But time has passed, and I do not
+now feel so wounded. Before I go away, would you mind telling me why you
+made such an accusation against me?”
+
+“Mr. Townsend,” said Barbara, biting her lips, but keeping cool and
+collected, “is it necessary for you to ask me why I made such an
+accusation? If it is, then, I beg your pardon. The jewels were not in
+your possession, certainly, when the search was made. I own I was most
+unwise.”
+
+“Then you withdraw the accusation?” Townsend was puzzled. He had
+expected Barbara to defy him, to insist he had stolen the jewels, that
+she had seen him in the act of doing it. He was wise enough to know
+that, if he could once make her angry, she would betray what she knew.
+He had still to discover who the gypsy was that had so strangely
+revealed to him her knowledge of his crimes.
+
+Barbara’s heart was beating like a sledgehammer.
+
+There was a slight movement in the nearby shrubbery. Harry Townsend
+wheeled like a flash. Barbara turned at the same instant. It was only a
+stranger who had wandered across the lawn and mistaken the path, but
+Barbara knew that his presence there meant eternal vigilance.
+
+“O Mr. Townsend,” she said, “the music is commencing. I would rather
+return to the ballroom. I have an engagement for this dance.”
+
+Harry Townsend realized he must manage to entice Barbara to a more
+secluded part of the Casino grounds before he could have a satisfactory
+talk with her.
+
+“No,” he said, “we will not go back yet, I want to talk to you. We must
+understand each other better, before the night is over. Come!” He spoke
+in a voice as cold and hard as ice and took Barbara by the wrist.
+
+Barbara could not jerk away or call for help. She decided it was best to
+follow him.
+
+“You are not running away, are you, Miss Thurston?” It was Ralph’s voice
+calling. “I am sure Mr. Townsend will excuse you, as you have a previous
+engagement with me.”
+
+“Oh, certainly,” said Harry Townsend, pleasantly, “sorry as I am to lose
+Miss Thurston’s society.” As Barbara and Ralph walked away, he bit his
+lips savagely. Then he decided to follow the tall man he had seen moving
+about in the shrubbery. It might be that the man suspected something.
+But Townsend found him ten minutes later in the smoking-room, quietly
+moving around among the men.
+
+“Bab,” Ruth had a chance to whisper to her later in the evening, “is it
+all right with you? I was desperately frightened when I saw you
+disappear outside with Harry Townsend. Have you noticed something?”
+
+“What?” said Bab, gazing searchingly about her.
+
+“Only,” Ruth answered, “that the Countess Bertouche is not here this
+evening.”
+
+Both realized that the first card in the game had been played.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII—BROUGHT TO BAY
+
+
+One other person had noticed, with even greater interest than had Ruth
+and Bab, that the Countess Bertouche had failed to appear at the ball.
+That person was the jewel thief, Harry Townsend. He was filled with a
+silent rage. How dared she fail him this night of all others?
+
+All the fellow’s plans were carefully laid. The woman with the jewels he
+coveted sat in the ballroom; large and slow witted, she would not be
+quick either to discover her loss or to raise an alarm. And Harry
+Townsend was on friendly terms with her. Once she decided to leave the
+brightly lighted halls for the darkness of the grounds outside, lifting
+the tiara would be an easy matter. But Townsend never kept the jewels he
+stole in his possession ten minutes after their theft. How was he to get
+rid of them to-night?
+
+It was after midnight. Many of the guests had withdrawn to the veranda;
+the lawns were filled with people walking about. Now Harry Townsend
+stood back of a row of lights that cast a deep shadow. He was talking to
+some acquaintances. The women were elegantly gowned, and one of them
+wore a beautiful diamond tiara.
+
+Bab was standing alone in the door of the girls’ dressing-room. Miss
+Sallie had called her in, after supper, to smooth her hair. The other
+girls had been with her, but they had returned to join the dancers. Bab
+was resting and thinking. Mollie and Grace knew nothing of what she and
+Ruth had on their minds. The younger girls knew that Harry Townsend and
+the Countess Bertouche were suspected as thieves, but they did not know
+that the detectives were on the alert, and that the arrest might come
+to-night.
+
+Barbara was wondering if she ought to tell Gladys Le Baron what she
+knew. After all, Gladys was her cousin; and, as she had told Ralph, the
+other day, Bab felt that there ought to be a certain loyalty among
+people of the same blood, even when they were not fond of one another.
+
+To-night Gladys Le Baron had been more conspicuous with Harry Townsend
+than ever before. Not only was she seen with him constantly, but she
+wore an air of conscious pride, as if to say, “See what a prize I have
+won!”
+
+Gladys had passed Bab two or three times during the evening, but had
+pretended not to see her. Now she was coming in at the dressing-room
+door.
+
+“Gladys,” said Bab, timidly.
+
+Gladys turned to her haughtily. “I would rather,” she said, “that you
+did not speak to me. We cannot have much to say to each other. Harry
+Townsend told me”—Gladys spoke so passionately and with such deep anger
+in her tones that Barbara stared at her aghast—“of the accusation you
+made against him. He made me promise not to speak of it, but I will
+speak of it to you. I want you to know that I shall never forgive you as
+long as I live, and that I shall get even with you some day. You are
+jealous and envious of me because we have more money, and because Harry
+Townsend likes me. I want you never to talk to me.”
+
+“O Gladys!” said Barbara. She was angry and hurt, but she was more
+frightened by the real feeling her cousin showed. Did she care for Mr.
+Townsend so much? Gladys was nearly eighteen, and Bab knew that ever
+since she was a girl of fourteen she had been brought up to think she
+was a young lady.
+
+“Gladys,” said Bab, firmly, “listen to me! Be quiet. I cannot tell you
+what I wish to say in this ballroom, to-night, among all these people,
+but I have something to tell you that you simply must know. Do you
+understand? Come to my house in the morning, and don’t fail.” Barbara’s
+tones were so new and commanding that Gladys could only stare at her in
+silent amazement.
+
+“Yes,” she said, meekly; “I will come.”
+
+Bab’s eyes were burning, and her cheeks stung with the shame of the
+scene between herself and Gladys. In order to be alone in the fresh air,
+she slipped out of the dressing-room door which opened into a side yard.
+This yard had a double hedge of althea bushes which led into the back
+part of the Casino grounds. At the same instant that Bab left the
+dressing-room door, a man passed her on the other side of the hedge. He
+was going into the back part of the garden.
+
+The show grounds of the Casino were in a central court. In the rear,
+back of the kitchens, was a long arbor covered with heavy grapevines.
+The man Bab followed slipped into this arbor.
+
+When Barbara glanced into it a second later—she dared not move quickly,
+for fear of making a noise—there was no human figure in sight. “He has
+gone on down through the arbor and slipped over the fence,” she thought
+to herself.
+
+She was feeling her way along, trying to keep in the center path. The
+night was dark, and there were few stars overhead.
+
+Suddenly, Bab gave a little shriek of terror and started back. Crouching
+in the darkness was a man. His back was turned to Barbara, and, if the
+darkness was not deceiving her, he was digging in the earth.
+
+But Barbara’s shriek roused him. “You, again!” he cried. He leaped at
+her, and, before she could call for help, his hand covered her mouth,
+and her head was pressed back.
+
+“Don’t make a noise,” another voice said quietly. “My instructions were
+not to make a scene.”
+
+Townsend felt his own arms seized and drawn down to his sides. The big,
+blond man, who had interrupted his tête-à-tête with Barbara earlier in
+the evening, was again by his side. A smaller, dark man stood near him.
+
+“Well, we have got you this time with the goods on you, or pretty close
+to you,” said the smaller detective, striking a match and looking down
+at his feet. Just near where they stood, only partially concealed by the
+dirt, which had been hastily dug up, something brilliant flashed and
+sparkled.
+
+“Did you think, Mr. Townsend,” laughed Detective Burton quietly, “that
+you were the only clever person in Newport? These jewels you have just
+stolen are hardly worth the risk you ran. You might get about
+twenty-five dollars for the lot. I suppose you didn’t know, since it has
+become the fashion to have a jewel thief in Newport, it has also become
+the fashion to wear paste jewels.” The man held the tiara in his hand.
+“But I will restore them to the rightful owner,” he said. “Mrs. Oliver
+informed me they were gone, two minutes after you slipped them out of
+her hair.”
+
+Townsend had not spoken. “Don’t,” he now said, with a shudder, “put
+those handcuffs on my hands. I will go quietly. I see the game is
+up—thanks to you!” He turned to Barbara with a snarl. But Ruth and Ralph
+were standing close by her side.
+
+Barbara was much shaken and frightened by her encounter, but she tried
+to summon a little of her old spirit. “You do me too much honor, Mr.
+Townsend,” she answered quietly.
+
+“Where is the Countess Bertouche?” asked Townsend stolidly.
+
+“She is ready to leave Newport with you to-night. Only we persuaded her
+to get ready a little earlier; indeed, we called upon her this
+afternoon, while she was at the tournament, and were waiting for her
+when she got back. She had two or three little trinkets in her
+possession, which she was holding for you, that we wished to return to
+their rightful owners. The lady will be able to travel as soon as you
+are. We think it best not to have any excitement in Newport. By the
+way,” went on the detective—the three young people were listening
+breathlessly—“the lady is not such a cool customer as you are. She
+confessed that she was not a countess, but a poor newspaper woman out of
+a job, whom you enticed down here to help you. She explained that you
+had been mailing letters of instruction to her by sending them on to New
+York and having them remailed to her here. A poor business it has been
+for both of you, I am thinking.”
+
+“Ruth,” said Barbara, quickly, “it’s too awful! Let us go back to Miss
+Sallie!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV—GOOD-BYE TO NEWPORT
+
+
+Early next morning Ruth and Barbara made full confession to Miss Sallie.
+Mollie and Grace were not surprised, for they had been told enough of
+the circumstances to expect the outcome. But imagine Miss Sallie!
+
+“You mean to tell me, Ruth and Bab,” she gasped, dropping limply into
+the nearest chair, “that Harry Townsend is the jewel thief, the Newport
+Raffles? Why, you girls have walked with him, talked with him, played
+tennis with him! And Barbara has suspected him all the time! My
+heavens!” she wailed, in despair. “Did it never dawn on you, Barbara,
+that you might have been killed?”
+
+Miss Stuart was overcome. “Ruth Stuart, my own niece, do you mean to
+tell me that you lately discovered that ‘this Townsend’ was the thief
+who tried to rob us in New Haven? Why was I not told at once? But then,
+I am grateful I was not. And you, Mollie, fourteen-year-old Mollie, you
+found out this wretch’s accomplice, and discovered Mrs. Cartwright’s
+stolen butterfly! I never would have thought it of you!”
+
+“But I didn’t mean to, Miss Sallie. It was all an accident. I am awfully
+sorry for that poor woman,” answered Mollie.
+
+“Nonsense, child!” said Miss Sallie. “I am grateful enough that such
+dangerous people are out of the way.”
+
+The girls were standing in a circle round her. “Come to my arms,” she
+demanded of Grace. “Thank heavens, child, you have not turned detective,
+and can be relied on to keep me company!”
+
+“But it was just as much Grace’s fault as it was mine that I discovered
+the butterfly,” argued Mollie, who could not see that Miss Sallie was
+joking. “She was with me when I found it out.” Everyone joined in the
+laugh at Mollie’s expense.
+
+“Some one to see you in the library, miss,” announced Susan, the parlor
+maid. “She says she’d like to see you alone, first, and she’d rather not
+give her name.”
+
+“Then you are not to go one step, Barbara Thurston,” said Miss Stuart in
+the voice the girls knew had to be obeyed. “There is no telling who it
+is waiting for you, nor what her intentions may be toward you. You’d go
+if you thought you’d be murdered the next minute. I never saw a girl
+like you. I will go myself,” announced Miss Sallie.
+
+“Oh, no,” said the girls, all pulling together at her skirts.
+
+Miss Sallie had to pause. “If you think, young ladies,” she said,
+calmly, “that, because I have not unearthed a jewel robber, nor attacked
+a burglar in the dark, I am therefore more of a coward than a parcel of
+silly girls, you are vastly mistaken. Let go of me!” Miss Sallie marched
+majestically forward.
+
+“Susan, _I_ will go down.”
+
+“Oh, no’m,” pleaded Susan, giggling. She had no idea what all the fuss
+was about, but she knew it was most unnecessary. “Please’m, let me
+whisper to you. It’s only that Miss Gladys Le Baron, but I promised not
+to give her name. I am sure she means no harm, miss. She looks like she
+was worried and had been crying a bit, ma’am.”
+
+“It is all right, Barbara,” said Miss Sallie. “From what Susan tells me
+you may go downstairs alone.”
+
+Bab had not the faintest idea who could be waiting for her. In all the
+excitement, she had entirely forgotten that she had told Gladys Le Baron
+to come to see her this morning without fail. As soon as she opened the
+library door, she remembered. “Good morning,” she said, coldly.
+
+But Gladys flung her arms about her neck and burst into a torrent of
+tears. “I know it all, all!” she said. “Mrs. Post and Mrs. Erwin called
+me into their rooms last night, and told me everything. I had expected
+Harry Townsend to take me home from the ball, and, when he didn’t put in
+his appearance, I was so angry and behaved so badly Mrs. Post said I had
+to be told at once. Mrs. Erwin wanted to wait until morning. O Bab, I
+didn’t sleep a wink last night!”
+
+“I am sorry,” said Bab, but she didn’t really show a great deal of
+feeling.
+
+“Bab,” Gladys went on, “I simply can’t believe it! And to think you knew
+it almost all the time! Mrs. Post says I have to believe it, now,
+because the whole story is out. She says she was completely deceived,
+too, and can understand why I thought Townsend was a gentleman. Father
+seemed to think he was all right. He told us all about his being an
+orphan, and who his rich relations were. Mrs. Erwin is so good. She just
+says she is sorry for me, and hasn’t uttered a word of blame. Only
+think, I brought that dreadful wretch to her house, and I am responsible
+for all the trouble! O Barbara, I can never face it!” Gladys wiped her
+eyes again with her handkerchief, which was already wet with her tears.
+
+“I want to go home to mother to-day, but Mrs. Erwin says I have to stay
+with her a little while longer. She says that, if I rush right off now,
+if I disappear the very same day Harry Townsend and that woman leave,
+people will believe there is more between us than there really is. There
+wasn’t anything exactly serious, though I did like him. I am sure I
+shall never hold up my head again.”
+
+“I wanted to warn you sooner, Gladys; believe me, I did,” answered
+Barbara; “but I knew you wouldn’t listen to me, and would not believe a
+word I said.”
+
+“I know, Barbara,” said Gladys, humbly. “I have been a horrid stuck-up
+goose. I know, now, if you hadn’t seen him steal the necklace at Mrs.
+Erwin’s, we might never have found out who the thief was. Then I don’t
+know what dreadful thing might have happened to me, if I had gone on
+seeing him and never understood his true nature. Do you think he could
+have stolen my bracelet?”
+
+“I know he did,” Bab answered.
+
+“The horrid, hateful thing!” cried Gladys, with a fresh burst of tears.
+“Barbara, I want to ask you a favor. Will you beg Ruth to let me go back
+to Kingsbridge in the automobile with you? I suppose I ask you because I
+have been more hateful to you than to anyone else. I know if you will
+forgive me the other girls will. Ruth will do anything you ask her.”
+
+“But I can’t ask Ruth such a favor as that, Gladys,” argued Barbara.
+“There wouldn’t be room in the car, for one thing.”
+
+“Oh, I could sit on the little seat and I would be as nice and give as
+little trouble as I possibly could, if you will only ask her. I somehow
+feel that if you girls will stick by me, now, other people will not
+think so badly of me. They will know I have been a goose, and have been
+dreadfully deceived by Harry Townsend, but they’ll understand that I
+never meant any wrong, and am not really bad. You see, Bab, you and
+Mollie are my cousins. Everyone is sure to find out you helped to expose
+the awful villain; so, if I am seen with you now, it will show that you
+take my part, and that you knew I had only been deceived.”
+
+“Don’t you think it is a good deal to ask of me, Gladys?” said Barbara,
+speaking very slowly. She was thinking of every snub, every cruel thrust
+Gladys had given her since they were children.
+
+Gladys did not answer at first. Then she shook her head, and rose to go.
+“Yes, Barbara,” she said; “I know I don’t deserve a bit of kindness at
+your hands. I have been perfectly hateful to you, always. Good-bye.”
+
+“Oh, stay, Gladys,” begged Bab, penitent in an instant. “I didn’t mean
+that. Of course we will all stand by you. Indeed, I shall ask Ruth if
+you may go back in the automobile with us, and I am sure, if Miss Stuart
+thinks there is room enough, Ruth will be delighted to have you. She is
+always the dearest, most generous girl in the world,” said Bab, her face
+glowing with the enthusiasm she always felt in speaking of Ruth.
+
+“Now,” she continued, “do come on upstairs and take off your hat. You
+must stay to lunch with us. Oh, no; you needn’t be afraid of Miss
+Stuart. She won’t be unkind to you; she’s a perfect dear! She’ll just be
+awfully sorry for you, when you tell her how badly you feel. Come on,
+Gladys.” Bab took hold of her hand.
+
+“Won’t you call Ruth down first?” urged Gladys. “I feel too much ashamed
+to go right on up there among all of you.”
+
+Ruth and Bab, between them, persuaded Gladys to go to their rooms. To
+their surprise, Mistress Mollie was the one to be appeased. She was not
+so ready to kiss and make up as Bab had been, yet even Mollie’s “hard”
+little heart softened when she saw what a changed and chastened Gladys
+the girls brought upstairs with them.
+
+“You’ll see I am going to be different,” Gladys said to Bab, “and if
+ever there’s a chance for me to prove how I appreciate your being so
+kind to me now, I shall do it. Of course, I don’t expect you to have
+much faith in me yet.”
+
+“Miss Barbara Thurston is requested to spend her last day in Newport as
+the guest of honor of Governor and Mrs. Post on board their yacht, the
+‘Penguin,’ which is at this instant awaiting her answer outside in
+Narragansett Bay,” said Ruth, with a flourish of a letter she held in
+her hand and a low bow to Barbara.
+
+“Goose!” shot Barbara at Ruth. “But are we all invited for a sail? How
+jolly!”
+
+“I am no goose, madam,” retorted Ruth. “I mean what I say. Read this.”
+
+She handed Barbara a letter which Miss Stuart had received from Mrs.
+Post only a few minutes before, and which read:
+
+  My Dear Miss Stuart,
+
+  We want, in some quiet fashion, to show our appreciation of, and
+  thanks to, the little girl who so patiently and cleverly kept her own
+  counsel, and so materially aided in the discovery of the jewel thief.
+  I feel that I did not do her justice. Governor Post and I both believe
+  that it is to her wit and courage that I owe the return of my emerald
+  necklace. I have talked matters over with Hugh, and, with your
+  consent, I should like to give a luncheon, in her honor, on board the
+  yacht at one o’clock to-morrow. We will spend the afternoon sailing in
+  the bay. Only our intimate friends will be invited and we feel that no
+  party could be complete, at Newport, without the presence of “The
+  Automobile Girls.”
+
+                                                     Faithfully yours,
+                                                       Katherine Post.
+
+
+“What larks!” cried Barbara, blushing with pleasure. “Has Miss Sallie
+said we could go?”
+
+“Certainly she has,” rejoined Ruth. “I told Hugh so at once.”
+
+        Columbia, the gem of the ocean,
+        The home of the brave and the free,
+        The shrine of each patriot’s devotion——
+
+The young people were in the bow of the yacht when the music commenced.
+“Why, Hugh,” Bab whispered to him in an undertone, “have we a band on
+board? How perfectly delightful!”
+
+“Young Miss America,” Hugh answered, “you needn’t think, for one minute,
+that this party on the ‘Penguin’ is going to enjoy any ordinary
+entertainment to-day. The band is not half. Just you wait, and see all
+the remarkable things that are to take place on this blessed boat
+excursion.”
+
+Earlier in the day, when Ruth and Grace first came aboard, they passed
+through the salon on their way to the upper deck. Grace caught hold of
+Ruth’s sleeve and drew her back to whisper to her: “Has it ever occurred
+to you that Harry Townsend might have stolen your fifty dollars that
+disappeared after we spent our first day on the yacht? I have been
+thinking that he must have been dreadfully hard up, or he never would
+have tried the robbery at New Haven, or have stolen such a small sum
+from you afterwards.”
+
+“Yes, I have thought about it,” said Ruth, shaking her head, with a
+forlorn gesture. “Isn’t it too dreadful? Let’s forget all about him
+to-day.”
+
+The luncheon was announced promptly at one.
+
+“‘The Automobile Girls,’ including Miss Sallie, will kindly stay on deck
+until they are summoned,” called Mrs. Post, sweeping on ahead, followed
+by her other guests.
+
+Miss Sallie and the girls waited in some excitement. The sun was shining
+gayly on the deck of the little ship, which sailed through the water
+like a white bird. All the flags were flying in Barbara’s honor, as the
+governor explained, when she came on board.
+
+Suddenly Hugh’s smiling face appeared at the open door. “Come in, now,”
+he requested.
+
+Miss Sallie and the girls marched into the long salon dining-room, while
+the band played “Liberty Bell.”
+
+In the center of the luncheon table, raised on a moss-covered stand, was
+a miniature automobile. In it sat five dolls wearing automobile veils of
+different colors and long dust coats. Two of the dolls were blondes, the
+other two were brunettes. But the stateliest and handsomest doll of the
+lot had soft, white hair and reclined against a violet cushion. A pale
+blue flag flew over the car. It bore the inscription: “The Automobile
+Girls—Long May They Flourish!”
+
+At either end of the table stood Hugh’s and Ruth’s silver cups, won at
+the tennis tournament.
+
+As Miss Sallie and the four girls took their places, Hugh raised one
+cup, his mother the other. “We will drink from these loving cups,” he
+said, “to the health of our guests of honor, ‘The Automobile Girls.’” He
+then passed the cups, filled with a fruit punch, around the table.
+
+At the close of the luncheon, Hugh again rose to his feet.
+
+“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “I am going to make a speech.”
+
+“Don’t do it, Hugh,” laughed Ralph.
+
+“All right, Ralph,” said Hugh; “I won’t. Barbara,” Hugh leaned over to
+attract her attention, and Barbara turned a rosy red, “here’s a souvenir
+of Newport for you. I guess it’s a gift from us all.” He motioned to his
+friends around the table and handed to Bab a small green velvet box.
+“For the girl who is always on the watch,” he ended.
+
+Barbara’s eyes were full of tears. They came partly from embarrassment,
+but most of all from pleasure. Inside the velvet case was a tiny gold
+watch, set in a circle of small emeralds.
+
+But Mollie was calling Bab to look at her gift. Mrs. Cartwright, who sat
+next her favorite of the girls, had pinned a little, pearl butterfly in
+the lace yoke of Mollie’s gown. Ruth and Grace were each rejoicing in
+their gifts, silver pins representing tennis racquets, their souvenirs
+of the luncheon and their month’s stay in Newport.
+
+“It has been just too lovely!” said Mollie to Mrs. Post, as she bade her
+good-night. “Yes, we start for home the first thing in the morning. In a
+few days there will be no more ‘Automobile Girls,’” she ended with a
+sigh.
+
+“Oh,” said Ruth, laughing and coming up beside her, “who knows? You
+never can tell! Good-bye, everyone,” she said, taking hold of Bab’s
+hand. “We have had the time of our lives, just as we hoped we would.
+Till we meet again,” she finished with a smile.
+
+The four girls ran down the gangplank and rejoined Miss Sallie.
+
+As many of our readers will guess, the return to Kingsbridge did not
+bring an end to the adventures of the natural and charming girls in
+their automobile. Further adventures and a host of new things remain to
+be told, but these must be deferred for narration in the next volume,
+which will be entitled, “The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires; or, The
+Ghost of Lost Man’s Trail.”
+
+
+                               [The End]
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY’S
+
+Best and Least Expensive
+
+Books for Boys and Girls
+
+The Motor Boat Club Series
+
+By H. IRVING HANCOCK
+
+The keynote of these books is manliness. The stories are wonderfully
+entertaining, and they are at the same time sound and wholesome. No boy
+will willingly lay down an unfinished book in this series.
+
+    1 THE MOTOR BOAT CLUB OF THE KENNEBEC; Or,
+      The Secret of Smugglers’ Island.
+    2 THE MOTOR BOAT CLUB AT NANTUCKET; Or, The
+      Mystery of the Dunstan Heir.
+    3 THE MOTOR BOAT CLUB OFF LONG ISLAND; Or, A
+      Daring Marine Game at Racing Speed.
+    4 THE MOTOR BOAT CLUB AND THE WIRELESS; Or,
+      The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise.
+    5 THE MOTOR BOAT CLUB IN FLORIDA; Or, Laying
+      the Ghost of Alligator Swamp.
+    6 THE MOTOR BOAT CLUB AT THE GOLDEN GATE;
+      Or, A Thrilling Capture in the Great Fog.
+    7 THE MOTOR BOAT CLUB ON THE GREAT LAKES;
+      Or, The Flying Dutchman of the Big Fresh Water.
+
+
+Cloth, Illustrated—Price, per Volume, $1.00
+
+Sold by all booksellers or sent postpaid on receipt of price.
+
+Henry Altemus Company
+
+1326-1336 Vine Street, Philadelphia
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Battleship Boys Series
+
+By FRANK GEE PATCHIN
+
+These stories throb with the life of young Americans on to-day’s huge
+drab Dreadnaughts.
+
+    1 THE BATTLESHIP BOYS AT SEA; Or, Two Apprentices
+      in Uncle Sam’s Navy.
+    2 THE BATTLESHIP BOYS’ FIRST STEP UPWARD; Or,
+      Winning Their Grades as Petty Officers.
+    3 THE BATTLESHIP BOYS IN FOREIGN SERVICE; Or,
+      Earning New Ratings in European Seas.
+    4 THE BATTLESHIP BOYS IN THE TROPICS; Or, Upholding
+      the American Flag in a Honduras Revolution.
+    5 THE BATTLESHIP BOYS UNDER FIRE; Or, The Dash for
+      the Besieged Kam Shau Mission.
+    6 THE BATTLESHIP BOYS IN THE WARDROOM; Or,
+      Winning their Commissions as Line Officers.
+    7 THE BATTLESHIP BOYS WITH THE ADRIATIC CHASERS;
+      Or, Blocking the Path of the Undersea Raiders.
+    8 THE BATTLESHIP BOYS’ SKY PATROL; Or, Fighting
+      the Hun from Above the Clouds.
+
+Price, $1.00 each
+
+
+The Range and Grange Hustlers
+
+By FRANK GEE PATCHIN
+
+Have you any idea of the excitements, the glories of life on great
+ranches in the West? Any bright boy will “devour” the books of this
+series, once he has made a start with the first volume.
+
+    1 THE RANGE AND GRANGE HUSTLERS ON THE RANCH;
+      Or, The Boy Shepherds of the Great Divide.
+    2 THE RANGE AND GRANGE HUSTLERS’ GREATEST ROUND-UP;
+      Or, Pitting Their Wits Against a Packers’ Combine.
+    3 THE RANGE AND GRANGE HUSTLERS ON THE PLAINS;
+      Or, Following the Steam Plows Across the Prairie.
+    4 THE RANGE AND GRANGE HUSTLERS AT CHICAGO;
+      Or, The Conspiracy of the Wheat Pit.
+
+Cloth, Illustrated—Price, per Volume, $1.00
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Submarine Boys Series
+
+By VICTOR G. DURHAM
+
+    THE SUBMARINE BOYS ON DUTY;
+      Or, Life on a Diving Torpedo Boat.
+    THE SUBMARINE BOYS’ TRIAL TRIP;
+      Or, “Making Good” as Young Experts.
+    THE SUBMARINE BOYS AND THE MIDDIES;
+      Or, The Prize Detail at Annapolis.
+    THE SUBMARINE BOYS AND THE SPIES;
+      Or, Dodging the Sharks of the Deep.
+    THE SUBMARINE BOYS’ LIGHTNING CRUISE;
+      Or, The Young Kings of the Deep.
+    THE SUBMARINE BOYS FOR THE FLAG;
+      Or, Deeding Their Lives to Uncle Sam.
+    THE SUBMARINE BOYS AND THE SMUGGLERS;
+      Or, Breaking Up the New Jersey Customs Frauds.
+
+
+Grace Harlowe Overseas Series
+
+    GRACE HARLOWE OVERSEAS.
+    GRACE HARLOWE WITH THE RED CROSS IN FRANCE.
+    GRACE HARLOWE WITH THE MARINES AT CHATEAU THIERRY.
+    GRACE HARLOWE WITH THE AMERICAN ARMY IN THE ARGONNE.
+
+
+The College Girls Series
+
+By JESSIE GRAHAM FLOWER, A.M.
+
+    GRACE HARLOWE’S FIRST YEAR AT OVERTON COLLEGE.
+    GRACE HARLOWE’S SECOND YEAR AT OVERTON COLLEGE.
+    GRACE HARLOWE’S THIRD YEAR AT OVERTON COLLEGE.
+    GRACE HARLOWE’S FOURTH YEAR AT OVERTON COLLEGE.
+    GRACE HARLOWE’S RETURN TO OVERTON CAMPUS.
+    GRACE HARLOWE’S PROBLEM.
+    GRACE HARLOWE’S GOLDEN SUMMER.
+
+All these books are bound in Cloth and will be sent post-paid on receipt
+of only $1.00 each.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Pony Rider Boys Series
+
+By FRANK GEE PATCHIN
+
+These tales may be aptly described the best books for boys and girls.
+
+    1 THE PONY RIDER BOYS IN THE ROCKIES;
+      Or, The Secret of the Lost Claim.
+    2 THE PONY RIDER BOYS IN TEXAS;
+      Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains.
+    3 THE PONY RIDER BOYS IN MONTANA;
+      Or, The Mystery of the Old Custer Trail.
+    4 THE PONY RIDER BOYS IN THE OZARKS;
+      Or, The Secret of Ruby Mountain.
+    5 THE PONY RIDER BOYS IN THE ALKALI;
+      Or, Finding a Key to the Desert Maze.
+    6 THE PONY RIDER BOYS IN NEW MEXICO;
+      Or, The End of the Silver Trail.
+    7 THE PONY RIDER BOYS IN THE GRAND CANYON;
+      Or, The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch.
+
+Cloth, Illustrated—Price, per Volume, $1.00
+
+
+The Boys of Steel Series
+
+By JAMES R. MEARS
+
+Each book presents a vivid picture of this great industry. Each story is
+full of adventure and fascination.
+
+    1 THE IRON BOYS IN THE MINES;
+      Or, Starting at the Bottom of the Shaft.
+    2 THE IRON BOYS AS FOREMEN;
+      Or, Heading the Diamond Drill Shift.
+    3 THE IRON BOYS ON THE ORE BOATS;
+      Or, Roughing It on the Great Lakes.
+    4 THE IRON BOYS IN THE STEEL MILLS;
+      Or, Beginning Anew in the Cinder Pits.
+
+Cloth, Illustrated—Price, per Volume, $1.00
+
+
+The Madge Morton Books
+
+By AMY D. V. CHALMERS
+
+    1 MADGE MORTON—CAPTAIN OF THE MERRY MAID.
+    2 MADGE MORTON’S SECRET.
+    3 MADGE MORTON’S TRUST.
+    4 MADGE MORTON’S VICTORY.
+
+
+Cloth, Illustrated—Price, per Volume, $1.00
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+West Point Series
+
+By H. IRVING HANCOCK
+
+The principal characters in these narratives are manly, young Americans
+whose doings will inspire all boy readers.
+
+    1 DICK PRESCOTT’S FIRST YEAR AT WEST POINT; Or,
+      Two Chums in the Cadet Gray.
+    2 DICK PRESCOTT’S SECOND YEAR AT WEST POINT; Or,
+      Finding the Glory of the Soldier’s Life.
+    3 DICK PRESCOTT’S THIRD YEAR AT WEST POINT; Or,
+      Standing Firm for Flag and Honor.
+    4 DICK PRESCOTT’S FOURTH YEAR AT WEST POINT; Or,
+      Ready to Drop the Gray for Shoulder Straps.
+
+Cloth, Illustrated—Price, per Volume, $1.00
+
+
+Annapolis Series
+
+By H. IRVING HANCOCK
+
+The Spirit of the new Navy is delightfully and truthfully depicted in
+these volumes.
+
+    1 DAVE DARRIN’S FIRST YEAR AT ANNAPOLIS; Or, Two
+      Plebe Midshipmen at the U. S. Naval Academy.
+    2 DAVE DARRIN’S SECOND YEAR AT ANNAPOLIS; Or,
+      Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy “Youngsters.”
+    3 DAVE DARRIN’S THIRD YEAR AT ANNAPOLIS; Or, Leaders
+      of the Second Class Midshipmen.
+    4 DAVE DARRIN’S FOURTH YEAR AT ANNAPOLIS; Or,
+      Headed for Graduation and the Big Cruise.
+
+Cloth, Illustrated—Price, per Volume, $1.00
+
+
+The Young Engineers Series
+
+By H. IRVING HANCOCK
+
+The heroes of these stories are known to readers of the High School Boys
+Series. In this new series Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton prove worthy of
+all the traditions of Dick & Co.
+
+    1 THE YOUNG ENGINEERS IN COLORADO; Or, At Railroad
+      Building in Earnest.
+    2 THE YOUNG ENGINEERS IN ARIZONA; Or, Laying Tracks
+      on the “Man-Killer” Quicksand.
+    3 THE YOUNG ENGINEERS IN NEVADA; Or, Seeking Fortune
+      on the Turn of a Pick.
+    4 THE YOUNG ENGINEERS IN MEXICO; Or, Fighting the
+      Mine Swindlers.
+
+Cloth, Illustrated—Price, per Volume, $1.00
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Boys of the Army Series
+
+By H. IRVING HANCOCK
+
+These books breathe the life and spirit of the United States Army of
+to-day, and the life, just as it is, is described by a master pen.
+
+    1 UNCLE SAM’S BOYS IN THE RANKS; Or, Two Recruits
+      in the United States Army.
+    2 UNCLE SAM’S BOYS ON FIELD DUTY; Or, Winning
+      Corporal’s Chevrons.
+    3 UNCLE SAM’S BOYS AS SERGEANTS; Or, Handling
+      Their First Real Commands.
+    4 UNCLE SAM’S BOYS IN THE PHILIPPINES; Or, Following
+      the Flag Against the Moros.
+    6 UNCLE SAM’S BOYS AS LIEUTENANTS; Or, Serving
+      Old Glory as Line Officers.
+    7 UNCLE SAM’S BOYS WITH PERSHING; Or, Dick Prescott
+      at Grips with the Boche.
+    8 UNCLE SAM’S BOYS SMASH THE GERMANS; Or, Winding
+      Up the Great War.
+
+
+Dave Darrin Series
+
+By H. IRVING HANCOCK
+
+    1 DAVE DARRIN AT VERA CRUZ;
+      Or, Fighting With the U. S. Navy in Mexico.
+    2 DAVE DARRIN ON MEDITERRANEAN SERVICE.
+    3 DAVE DARRIN’S SOUTH AMERICAN CRUISE.
+    4 DAVE DARRIN ON THE ASIATIC STATION.
+    5 DAVE DARRIN AND THE GERMAN SUBMARINES.
+    6 DAVE DARRIN AFTER THE MINE LAYERS;
+      Or, Hitting the Enemy a Hard Naval Blow.
+
+
+The Meadow-Brook Girls Series
+
+By JANET ALDRIDGE
+
+    1 THE MEADOW-BROOK GIRLS UNDER CANVAS.
+    2 THE MEADOW-BROOK GIRLS ACROSS COUNTRY.
+    3 THE MEADOW-BROOK GIRLS AFLOAT.
+    4 THE MEADOW-BROOK GIRLS IN THE HILLS.
+    5 THE MEADOW-BROOK GIRLS BY THE SEA.
+    6 THE MEADOW-BROOK GIRLS ON THE TENNIS COURTS.
+
+All these books are bound in Cloth and will be sent post-paid on receipt
+of only $1.00 each.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+High School Boys Series
+
+By H. IRVING HANCOCK
+
+In this series of bright, crisp books a new note has been struck.
+
+Boys of every age under sixty will be interested in these fascinating
+volumes.
+
+    1 THE HIGH SCHOOL FRESHMEN; Or, Dick & Co.’s First
+      Year Pranks and Sports.
+    2 THE HIGH SCHOOL PITCHER; Or, Dick & Co. on the
+      Gridley Diamond.
+    3 THE HIGH SCHOOL LEFT END; Or, Dick & Co. Grilling on
+      the Football Gridiron.
+    4 THE HIGH SCHOOL CAPTAIN OF THE TEAM; Or, Dick &
+      Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard.
+
+
+Cloth, Illustrated—Price, per Volume, $1.00
+
+
+Grammar School Boys Series
+
+By H. IRVING HANCOCK
+
+This series of stories, based on the actual doings of grammar school
+boys, comes near to the heart of the average American boy.
+
+    1 THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL BOYS OF GRIDLEY;
+      Or, Dick & Co. Start Things Moving.
+    2 THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL BOYS SNOWBOUND;
+      Or, Dick & Co. at Winter Sports.
+    3 THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL BOYS IN THE WOODS;
+      Or, Dick & Co. Trail Fun and Knowledge.
+    4 THE GRAMMAR SCHOOL BOYS IN SUMMER ATHLETICS;
+      Or, Dick & Co. Make Their Fame Secure.
+
+Cloth, Illustrated—Price, per Volume, $1.00
+
+
+High School Boys’ Vacation Series
+
+By H. IRVING HANCOCK
+
+“Give us more Dick Prescott books!”
+
+This has been the burden of the cry from young readers of the country
+over. Almost numberless letters have been received by the publishers,
+making this eager demand; for Dick Prescott, Dave Darrin, Tom Reade, and
+the other members of Dick & Co. are the most popular high school boys in
+the land. Boys will alternately thrill and chuckle when reading these
+splendid narratives.
+
+    1 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOYS’ CANOE CLUB; Or, Dick & Co.‘s
+      Rivals on Lake Pleasant.
+    2 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOYS IN SUMMER CAMP; Or, The
+      Dick Prescott Six Training for the Gridley Eleven.
+    3 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOYS’ FISHING TRIP; Or, Dick & Co.
+      in the Wilderness.
+    4 THE HIGH SCHOOL BOYS’ TRAINING HIKE; Or, Dick &
+      Co. Making Themselves “Hard as Nails.”
+
+Cloth, Illustrated—Price, per Volume, $1.00
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Circus Boys Series
+
+By EDGAR B. P. DARLINGTON
+
+Mr. Darlington’s books breathe forth every phase of an intensely
+interesting and exciting life.
+
+    1 THE CIRCUS BOYS ON THE FLYING RINGS; Or, Making
+      the Start in the Sawdust Life.
+    2 THE CIRCUS BOYS ACROSS THE CONTINENT; Or, Winning
+      New Laurels on the Tanbark.
+    3 THE CIRCUS BOYS IN DIXIE LAND; Or, Winning the
+      Plaudits of the Sunny South.
+    4 THE CIRCUS BOYS ON THE MISSISSIPPI; Or, Afloat with
+      the Big Show on the Big River.
+
+Cloth, Illustrated—Price, per Volume, $1.00
+
+
+The High School Girls Series
+
+By JESSIE GRAHAM FLOWER, A.M.
+
+These breezy stories of the American High School Girl take the reader
+fairly by storm.
+
+    1 GRACE HARLOWE’S PLEBE YEAR AT HIGH SCHOOL;
+      Or, The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshman Girls.
+    2 GRACE HARLOWE’S SOPHOMORE YEAR AT HIGH SCHOOL;
+      Or, The Record of the Girl Chums in Work and Athletics.
+    3 GRACE HARLOWE’S JUNIOR YEAR AT HIGH SCHOOL;
+      Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities.
+    4 GRACE HARLOWE’S SENIOR YEAR AT HIGH SCHOOL;
+      Or, The Parting of the Ways.
+
+Cloth, Illustrated—Price, per Volume, $1.00
+
+
+The Automobile Girls Series
+
+By LAURA DENT CRANE
+
+No girl’s library—no family book-case can be considered at all complete
+unless it contains these sparkling twentieth-century books.
+
+    1 THE AUTOMOBILE GIRLS AT NEWPORT;
+      Or, Watching the Summer Parade.
+    2 THE AUTOMOBILE GIRLS IN THE BERKSHIRES;
+      Or, The Ghost of Lost Man’s Trail.
+    3 THE AUTOMOBILE GIRLS ALONG THE HUDSON;
+      Or, Fighting Fire in Sleepy Hollow.
+    4 THE AUTOMOBILE GIRLS AT CHICAGO;
+      Or, Winning Out Against Heavy Odds.
+    5 THE AUTOMOBILE GIRLS AT PALM BEACH;
+      Or, Proving Their Mettle Under Southern Skies.
+    6 THE AUTOMOBILE GIRLS AT WASHINGTON;
+      Or, Checkmating the Plots of Foreign Spies.
+
+Cloth, Illustrated—Price, per Volume, $1.00
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Automobile Girls at Newport, by 
+Laura Dent Crane
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE AUTOMOBILE GIRLS AT NEWPORT ***
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