The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea Part 21

McCarthy pulled him up with disconcerting suddenness. He looked dazed and a little sheepish.

"It's that mad girl Jane of mine," he explained.

Mrs. Livingston's face was flushed, her eyes snapped; then her angry expression softened and she burst out laughing.

"O Jane, Jane! You will be the undoing of all of us before you have done."

Jane, with her hair disheveled, stood ruefully surveying the scene.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Livingston, that you went over. I didn't want to make you fall down, but I just had to show Daddy how glad I was to see him."

"You showed me all right, young lady. Lucky, for us all that we had soft ground under us. Mrs. Livingston, I suppose you'll be telling me to take this mad-cap daughter of mine home with me. I shouldn't blame you if you did, and I don't think I'd cry over it, for I want her. No, I don't mean that--"

"Daddy!" rebuked Jane.

"I mean that she is better off here, and you are doing her a heap of good, Mrs. Livingston, even if she did give way to one of her old fits of violence just now."

"Certainly not, Mr. McCarthy," answered the Chief Guardian promptly.

"We all love Jane. She is a splendid girl and we should miss her. I certainly did miss her last summer, and now I should miss her more than ever. I hope we shall have her with us for many summers; then one of these days, when she is older, she, too, will have a camp of girls to look after."

"I feel very thorry for the camp," broke in Tommy.

"You will have to buy a new camp stool, Daddy," reminded Jane. "I'm glad I'm not so stout that I break up the furniture every time I sit on it."

"Yeth, Buthter doeth that," said Tommy, nodding solemnly.

"And you, young lady, you've got some strength in those arms," he said, turning to Harriet. "The way you bounced me to my feet was a wonder. Tommy, you haven't shaken hands with your old friend. Come here, my dear, and shake hands with me."

"You were tho mixed up that I couldn't tell which wath the hand to thhake," replied Grace promptly. "That wath what Jane callth a meth, wathn't it?"

"It was. Why, how do you do, Hazel--and Margery, too? Well, well! this is a delightful surprise. How fine you all look. And I hear you had a swim the other night, Harriet, and you, too, Tommy. Well, well! And you like the water, eh?"

"It is glorious," breathed Harriet, instinctively glancing out to sea, where a flock of gulls were circling and swooping down in search of food.

"You won't have to swim any more unless you wish to. I've made different arrangements about that."

"You mean you have bought me a new car, Daddy?" interrupted Jane.

"I haven't said. I reckon you don't need a car here. You must have learned, from your recent experience, that an automobile doesn't travel on water half as well as it does on land."

"Ourth did. It traveled fine until it got to the bottom," Tommy informed him.

"No, I haven't bought another car yet. I have some men who are going to get the old one up to-morrow. We shall see what shape she's in. Of course, if she isn't workable any more, I will have another for you by the time you get home. Tell me how it happened. I couldn't make much out of your telegram. By the way, when you send a telegram, don't forget that you aren't writing a letter. That telegram you sent cost me nine dollars and thirty-seven cents."

"Isn't it worth that much to hear from your daughter?" Jane's eyes were dancing.

Mr. McCarthy took off his hat and wiped the perspiration from his forehead.

"What would you do with her, Mrs. Livingston?" he laughed.

"I should love her, Mr. McCarthy; she is worth it," was the Chief Guardian's prompt reply.

"She is," he agreed solemnly, "and I do. But you haven't told me, Jane, darling."

"Oh, let Harriet do it. I never was strong on telling things so any one could understand what I was talking about."

"There isn't much to tell about the accident, except that we turned off on a side road according to directions. Jane wheeled down it at a slow rate of speed--for her," added Harriet under her breath. "We ran out on an ice pier and plumped right into the pond."

"You went down with the car, then?" stammered Mr. McCarthy.

"Right down to the bottom," Tommy informed him.

"That did not amount to much," continued Harriet. "The top was not up.

We had little difficulty in getting out--"

"But Harriet was drowned in getting the trunk free from the rear end,"

declared Jane earnestly.

"Drowned?" exclaimed the contractor.

"Yes, nearly drowned," corrected Miss Elting. "We had a pretty hard time resuscitating her. I am beginning to think that the Meadow-Brook Girls bear charmed lives, Mr. McCarthy."

"So am I. But you don't mean to tell me that Harriet really was all but drowned?"

"Yes."

"It does beat all, it does," reflected Mr. McCarthy, mopping his forehead again and regarding Harriet with wondering eyes. "It is a guess as to whether she or Jane can get into the most trouble. They are a pair hard to beat."

"We do not try to find excitement, Mr. McCarthy," expostulated Harriet. "We cannot always help it if trouble overtakes us the way it did when the car went into the ice pond."

"Certainly not. I know you, at least, are wholly to be depended upon, but Jane isn't always the most prudent girl in the world. Now, will you dears run along and enjoy yourselves. I have several things to discuss with Mrs. Livingston, then we will have an afternoon together.

I wish Jane and Harriet to drive down with me and show me the place where they lost the car later on in the afternoon. You remember you interrupted our conversation here a short time ago, Jane," reminded the visitor.

"May I try the car, Dad?" questioned Jane.

"Yes. But look sharp that you don't wreck the thing. I have no fancy to walk all the way back to Portsmouth this evening," he chuckled.

"Come along, Meadow-Brooks. I can't take any more this trip, but if Dad's buggy goes all right, I'll take the rest of you out on the instalment plan."

"I don't want to go," decided Tommy. "I want to thtay here and retht.

I never get any retht at all."

The others were eager to go. Jane already was cranking up the car. Her companions, with the exception of Grace Thompson, piled in, and a few moments later the car rolled from the camp, headed for the highway some little distance from the camp. There was no road leading to the camp, but the way was reasonably smooth, provided one dodged the trees, both standing and fallen.

In the meantime the other girls went about their duties and recreations. Mr. McCarthy and Mrs. Livingston again sat down and continued their conversation. Tommy, now being without a guardian, Miss Elting having gone with Jane and her party, started down toward the beach, her eyes very bright, her movements quick and alert. Some of the girls whom she met asked where she was going. Tommy replied that she might go fishing, but that she couldn't say for sure until she found out whether she could catch anything. The little girl kept edging farther and farther away from her companions, until finally, finding herself beyond sight of them, began running with all her might. They saw no more of Tommy Thompson for several hours.

While all this was going on, Jane McCarthy was racing her father's car up and down the road at an ever-increasing rate of speed. Those in the camp could hear the purr of the motors, and now and then a flash of red showed between the trees as the car sped past the camp.

"Must be doing close to fifty miles an hour," observed Mr. McCarthy, grinning.