The Motor Maids Across the Continent Part 3

At last Miss Campbell burst out:

"I don't believe it. That nice brown-eyed boy!"

"Neither do we," echoed the others. "It's impossible."

This somewhat relieved their feelings, and when they reached the town where they had planned to spend the night they were talking cheerfully.

While they were freshening up for supper half an hour later, Miss Campbell felt in her black silk reticule for her purse, Billie having paid all bills that day with the ready change with which she had provided herself.

"My dears," gasped the poor little lady, "where is it?"

"What, Cousin Helen," cried Billie, frightened at the expressions of doubt and agitation which chased themselves across her relative's face.

"My purse, child! My silver-mounted Morocco purse. I thought I had it in my reticule, but where is it?"

They emptied the reticule. They looked in their own handbags and even went to the garage and searched the Comet. But Miss Campbell's purse containing fifty dollars was gone.

"At any rate, Billie," whispered Nancy that night when they had stretched themselves wearily on the hardish bed in the hotel, "at any rate, he had the nicest, kindest brown eyes I ever saw."

"Even now," answered Billie, "there may be some mistake."

CHAPTER III.-IN SEARCH OF A DINNER.

"This is a.s.suredly a land of peace and plenty," observed Miss Campbell, somewhat sleepily, as she leaned back in the seat and half closed her eyes.

"Meaning 'too much of a muchness,' Cousin Helen," teased Billie. "Are you beginning to yearn already for something to happen?"

"My dear, how can you suggest such things?" cried her relative opening her blue eyes wide in an innocent protest of such an accusation. "An aged spinster like me craving excitement! What an idea!"

"But Iowa is not thrilling," admitted Elinor. "These endless cornfields are like a sea without ship and what could be duller than a sail-less ocean?"

"But there are farm houses," put in Mary.

"Just stupid wooden buildings," answered Elinor scornfully.

The truth is our five tourists still felt the inevitable homesickness which rarely fails to come during the first few days of a long journey before one is settled into the groove of traveling. The hard beds and uninteresting food of the small hotels of the Middle West had not helped to dispel their vision of West Haven seated on its bluff looking out across the bay. Its hilly streets and comfortable old houses mellowing each year into a softer, deeper gray came back to them now with a pang.

Nancy yearned infinitely to be sitting at that moment before the driftwood fire in their sitting room while her father smoked an old black pipe and blinked at the crackling flames and her mother hummed softly to herself over her mending basket. Even Americus, her teasing brother, would have gladdened her eyes just then.

Mary was thinking of her pretty mother standing at the door of the Tea Cup Inn in a trim gray chambray dress with its white muslin fichu.

Elinor was too proud to admit even in the secret chambers of her mind the voice from home which kept calling to her across the s.p.a.ces. As for Miss Helen Campbell she could not efface from her mind a dainty little vignette of herself seated at her own breakfast table; on her head was her favorite lace breakfast cap trimmed with knots of blue ribbon and separating her from her beloved Billie across the table was the steaming silver coffee urn. This enticing picture persisted in pa.s.sing before her mental vision, perhaps because breakfast that morning had been unspeakable.

Billie also was silent. She was trying to explain to herself why this wave of homesickness had come over them. Was it the flatness and monotony of highly cultivated farm lands which they ought to admire and be proud of seeing since this vast territory had once been the home of the buffalo and the prairie dog?

"I know what's the matter with us," she cried suddenly, breaking the long silence which had fallen on the company.

"There's nothing in the world the matter with me, child," interrupted Miss Campbell guiltily.

"I'm sure there is, dearest cousin. You know you can't hide anything from your most intimate relative. We are all of us in the dumps and have been for more than a day. We are desperately homesick! Aren't we now, as man to man?"

"Yes," admitted the others in a gloomy chorus.

"On this the third day of our voyage, while we are still in shallow water, as papa would say, there is not one of us who would not be glad to turn back again to the next railroad station, ship the Comet home by freight and take the first train to West Haven. Isn't it the truth?"

This frank declaration was greeted in silence.

"Oh, it's not quite as bad as that, dear," said Miss Campbell at last.

"But almost," added Nancy.

"Think of what we've got before us. Think of the splendid great West-think of the broad plains--"

"Plains," interrupted Elinor in a tone of weariness.

"Yes, plains," went on Billie, summoning all the eloquence she could command, "not like this, but marvelous great stretches of country filled with beautiful color; think of the ranches we wanted so much to see--"

"And the cowboys," suggested Nancy.

"Yes, and the Indians, and the forests and-and the Rocky Mountains, and last of all, California!"

Billie paused for breath.

"Well, I'm thinking of them," observed Miss Campbell.

"And doesn't the prospect please you, Cousin Helen?"

Billie had slowed down the car and now turned to look at her cousin's face.

"Don't you think it will be thrilling, exciting, wonderful to have the Comet take us across all of this interesting country?"

The corners of Miss Campbell's lips drooped and she gave a pathetic smile.

"It would, dearest Billie, I am sure it would appear to me in all its true glory if I wasn't so-so very hungry."

Hungry! Here was a solution of this great depression. They were all of them famished with hunger. Not a decent meal had they eaten for two days. It was hunger gnawing at their vitals that had plunged them into the very depths of homesickness.

In the automobile was a complete outfit for cooking, a little alcohol stove and various dainty little utensils made of aluminum, all a rather costly present from their old friend, Mr. Ignatius Donahue, which he had sent, on being informed of the great journey of the Motor Maids across the continent.

"Have a piece of chocolate and a graham cracker, Miss Campbell?" Mary was asking in a tone of sympathy.

"Heavens, no, child," replied the little lady as near to being cross as she had ever been in her life. "Don't offer me such rubbish, as a subst.i.tute for good beefsteak and coffee that's really coffee?"

"Let's set up housekeeping," cried Billie, "and start in ten minutes by stopping at the next farm house for supplies!"

"Why not?" echoed her disciple, Nancy. "We've got the alcohol stove with two burners and Elinor's tea basket and some china besides."