“It’s the weather,” returned Belle.
“Let us hope so. Well, if you’ve admired the view enough we’ll go on.”
They had come to a pause at the crest of a shaded hill, and down below them lay the village in which the three girls lived. Cheerful Chelton it had been designated, and cheerful it was.
Cora, who had not stopped the engine, slipped the clutch in after shifting the gear and the car moved down the slope, gradually cutting off the view of the town.
“What about the boys?” asked Bess, apropos of nothing in particular.
“What boys?” demanded Cora.
“Ours, of course,” and Bess looked surprised that any others should have been thought of. “I mean your brother Jack, Walter Pennington and Paul Hastings. Didn’t you say Paul was thinking of going to camp with our boys, if they took the little bungalow near ours at Camp Surprise?”
“Yes, Paul is coming,” Cora said.
“Well, can the boys get away earlier if we do? It won’t be any fun going there alone, particularly if there’s a mystery about the place.”
“I didn’t say there was any mystery about the place,” corrected Cora. “Though there may be. Besides, we’re to have a chaperon, you know. Or at least the caretaker and his wife live in Camp Surprise, and I presume she will be a chaperon.”
“But it won’t be half the fun if the boys don’t come along,” declared Belle. “They are so jolly, and – er – well, you know what I mean,” she finished a bit lamely.
“No need to explain at all,” said Cora cheerfully. “It’s perfectly all right. If I go, that means mother can close the house so much earlier. Jack won’t stay there alone, I know, so he’s likely to tag along.”
“And if Jack goes Walter will. I guess we can count of making an earlier start on our vacation than we contemplated,” said Bess. “It will be lovely.”
“Yes,” Cora assented.
“There’s the tea room,” added Belle a little later as the car came out on a long, level stretch of road. “It’s a perfect dear of a place; isn’t it?”
“A regular gazelle,” agreed Cora mockingly.
She swung her machine into the parking place provided, and a few minutes afterward the three girls were sitting at one of the wicker tables, in wicker chairs, near a window which opened on a vine-shaded porch, while electric fans hummed and droned breezily and refreshingly behind them and in front of them stood rose-tinted plates heaped high with pale yellow cream, nestled alongside of which were delicately browned macaroons.
“Oh, what a symphony of color!” murmured Cora, as the white-capped, colored waitress set the refreshments from off her mahogany-cretonne tray.
“If it tastes half as good as it looks,” murmured Bess, “I’m going to have another plate, if I have to roll twice my usual number of times before I go to bed to-night.”
“It is good,” said Belle. “It’s delicious!”
“I could just sit here and – dream,” announced Belle, as she closed her “effective” eyes, as Jack Kimball had designated them.
“Yes, it is very soothing and restful,” agreed her sister, who had been rendered sleepy by the combination of heat, a refreshing meal and the droning of the electric fans.
“I feel sleepy myself,” Cora confessed, closing her eyes.
She opened them a moment later though, for a cry from Belle brought her and Bess to a most unpleasant awakening.
“Your car, Cora!” cried the slim Robinson twin. “Some one is taking your auto!”
CHAPTER II – THE LOST TRAIL
“My car! Some one taking my car!” repeated Cora Kimball. “Who is it, Belle?” and she hurried to the window from which the tall, willowy Robinson twin was gazing toward the spot where the auto had been left.
“Two young men. I saw them get in, and – there they go! Out into the road! We must stop them!”
Belle turned to make her exit, but her dress caught on a chair, and as Cora and Bess were behind her, they, too, were delayed.
“Oh, hurry!” begged Cora.
“I can’t tear my dress,” retorted Belle.
With a pull she loosed it from a splinter of the wicker chair, and then made for the doorway, followed by the other girls.
And while they are thus on their way to intercept those who had taken Cora’s car I will devote a few minutes to acquainting my new readers with the characters and incidents that go to make the previous volumes of this series.
“The Motor Girls,” was the title of the initial book. In that we find Cora Kimball, the daughter of a wealthy widow, with her brother Jack, living in “Cheerful Chelton,” as it has been called, a village on the Chelton river, in New England, not far from the New York boundary. Cora and Jack each had an automobile, but most of the adventures took place in or about Cora’s car, in which she and her two most intimate chums, the Robinson twins – Bess and Belle – went for many a ride.
The Robinson girls were the daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Perry Robinson, the former a rich railroad man, and I think I have already sufficiently indicated to you their characters. Bess was plump, and Belle tall and willowy, inclined to indolence which she imagined was graceful. Cora Kimball was a leader, and where she went the Robinson twins generally followed.
Jack Kimball, a student at Exmouth college, was almost as much a chum of Cora’s as were her girl friends, and the girls regarded Jack and his chums, Walter Pennington and Paul Hastings, as their especial retainers and vassals as the case demanded. Paul’s sister Hazel, a sweet girl – if you know what I mean – had been quite friendly with Cora and her chums, until her removal to another city. Hazel was expected for a visit to Cora soon, and, as has been mentioned, Paul contemplated going camping with the boys.
Soon after Cora secured her car the Robinson twins induced their father to purchase one. The Motor Girls, as they had come to be known, went on a tour, in the course of which many things happened. They had more adventures at Lookout Beach, and also when they went through New England.
In succession Cora and her friends paid a visit to Cedar Lake, down on the coast, and next they spent a summer on Crystal Bay. They had there a most delightful time, but perhaps not more so than that told of in the book immediately preceding this one.
That volume is named “The Motor Girls on Waters Blue.” I forgot to mention that the girls, after having served their apprenticeship, as it were, in automobiles, had acquired a fine, large motor boat. In this they had many good times, though it was not this boat that figured largely on the blue waters. When Mr. Robinson had been called to Porto Rico on business he had taken his daughters and Cora with him.
How the steamer on which Mr. Robinson sailed to another island was endangered, how the Tartar was chartered by Cora and her chums to look for the shipwrecked ones, and how Inez Ralcanto, the beautiful Spanish girl, and her father, a political refugee, were aided – all this is set down in the book preceding this present volume.
It was not until after many hardships and not a little anxiety that matters were finally straightened out, and our friends came back to Cheerful Chelton, which had never seemed so homelike or so desirable, Cora said, as after the exciting episodes in what was practically a foreign land.
A fall and winter of gaiety had brought spring and early summer, in which delightful time of the year we now find our girl friends once more.
“It is gone! My car is gone!” exclaimed Cora, as they ran out of the tea room.
“Of course it is!” declared Belle. “Didn’t I see them take it!”
“Two