Then Mary’s offerings were brought to light, and amply maintained that person’s reputation for culinary skill. Lettuce sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, fried chicken legs, lemon tarts and fruit followed each other in rapid succession. Then, too, there was a thermos bottle filled with hot, fragrant coffee.
Their morning in the open air had sharpened the appetites of the girls, and they ate with a zest that would have made a dyspeptic turn green with envy. Bess, to be sure, tried feebly to bear in mind her rules for dieting, but the temptation was too great, and for that once anyway her good resolutions went by the board.
“I could die happy now,” she murmured, between bites of a lemon tart.
“You will die anyway if you eat much more,” said her sister severely. “Bess Robinson, I’m ashamed of you.”
“You’ll have to take twenty rolls to-morrow instead of ten, to make up for this,” laughed Cora.
“To-morrow’s a new day,” replied Bess mutinously. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
“She’s a hopeless case, I’m afraid,” sighed Belle. “But come along now, girls, and gather up these things. We want to get to the house of Cora’s aunt before it gets dark.”
“Behold a stranger cometh,” remarked Cora, as a horse and buggy came in sight, with a young man holding the reins.
The vehicle approached rapidly, and the eyes of the driver lighted up as he caught sight of the three girls. Instead of driving by, he reined up at the roadside and jumping from the buggy made his way toward the little party.
He was of medium height, flashily dressed, and had a weak, dissipated-looking face. The girls had risen to their feet and drawn a little closer together as he approached.
He took off his hat and bowed, with a smile that he tried to make ingratiating.
“I see I’m in luck,” he remarked. “Just in time to have a bite of lunch, if there’s any left.”
Cora, to whom the other girls looked for leadership, froze him with a glance.
“If you’re hungry, you can probably get something to eat at the next town,” she said. “We haven’t anything for tramps.”
The man flushed uncomfortably, and his impudent assurance went down several degrees beneath her stare.
“What’s the use of being so stiff?” he expostulated. “I’m only trying to be friendly.”
“That’s just what we object to,” replied Cora. “We don’t want your friendship. My brother will be along shortly, and perhaps he will appreciate it more than we do.”
The young man cast a hurried glance up and down the road. It was evident that, however strong his craving for feminine society, he had no desire to meet the brother.
“Oh, well,” he muttered, as he made his way toward the buggy, “you needn’t be so quick to take offence. There are plenty of girls who would be glad of my company.”
And with this, that was meant to be a Parthian shot, but that only provoked a nervous desire to laugh on the part of the girls, he gathered up the reins and drove off.
They saw him go with immense relief, for there was no other man in sight, and his impudence had alarmed as well as offended them.
“Well, of all the nerve!” ejaculated Belle.
“You certainly can freeze when you want to, Cora,” laughed Bess.
“How lucky it was that you thought of Jack,” said Belle. “Did you see the frightened look that came into his eyes?”
“That sort of man always is a coward,” replied Cora. “Perhaps he won’t be so free and easy when he meets girls alone again. But let’s get busy now and hustle these things back into the car.”
They soon had the thermos bottle and the depleted lunch basket tucked snugly away. The twins settled down in the rear seat, Cora threw in the clutch, and the car started.
They had gone perhaps a mile, when they descried a car coming at a rapid rate from the opposite direction.
“That man seems to be trying to break the speed limit,” remarked Cora, as she drove her own car close to the right-hand side of the road so as to give plenty of room.
“Like Jehu, the son of Nimshi, he driveth furiously,” observed Belle.
Just then the gate of a near-by farmhouse was pushed open, and a little child about three years old toddled out into the road, right in the path of the onrushing car.
A shriek went up from the girls.
“Oh, girls,” screamed Bess, rising from her seat, “that child will be killed!”
CHAPTER II
QUICK THINKING
For one tense moment it seemed as though nothing could avert a terrible tragedy.
A woman burst out of the house and ran screaming toward her child. But it was clearly impossible for her to reach the little one in time to save it.
The child, startled by the screams, stood helplessly right in the path of the Juggernaut that seemed doomed to crush it.
The driver of the car had seen the danger, and he instantly threw out the clutch and put on the brakes. But he was too near to stop in time.
There was only one thing to do, and, like a gallant man, he did it. He whirled the wheel around, and the car, its speed diminished but still considerable, dashed into a tree by the side of the road. The driver, an elderly man, was thrown out and lay stunned and bleeding.
The mother rushed to the little one and gathered it up into her arms with sobs and exclamations.
The girls, who had been unable to move and had sat paralyzed with horror, breathed a huge sigh of relief.
“Thank God, the baby’s saved!” cried Bess.
“Yes,” exclaimed Cora, “but the man may be killed! Let’s see what we can do to help him.”
The three girls jumped from the car and rushed over to the injured man.
While the girls are giving first aid to the man, and the mother is crying and crooning over her child, it may be well for the sake of those who have not followed our Motor Girls in their previous adventures to state a little more fully just who they were and what they had been doing up to the time this story opens.
Cora Kimball and her brother Jack – the same Jack who had been brought in so handily in their encounter with the impudent young man – were the children of a wealthy widow living in Chelton, a New England village located not very far from the New York line. They were both healthy, normal, wideawake young people, and took vast delight in motoring. Either in a motor car or a motor boat they were equally happy and equally at home; and Cora was quite as expert in managing them as her brother.
Cora’s special chums were Belle and Bess Robinson, twin daughters of Mr. and Mrs. Perry Robinson, the former a well-to-do railroad man, living in the same town as the Kimballs. Belle, as we have seen, was tall and slender – “svelte” was the way she liked to put it. And Bess – well, Bess was “plump,” but a very pretty and charming girl nevertheless. Of the three girls, Cora was the natural leader, and the trio were almost inseparable.
Jack Kimball, Cora’s brother, was a manly, likable chap and devotedly attached to his sister, although at times he liked to “lord it” over her with truly masculine complacency. He was a student at Exmouth College, and his most intimate friend was Walter Pennington, who spent most of his vacations and whatever other spare time he had at the Kimball home. Perhaps Jack’s charming sister was the special magnet that drew Walter there so often – But there, it isn’t fair to delve too curiously into matters of that