The Motor Maids by Rose, Shamrock and Thistle Part 26

That night the Motor Maids had a serenade. A chorus of eight robust voices sang beneath their windows to an accompaniment of banjos and guitars. It began with "Nancy Lee" and the chorus of "Yo-ho-ho's" nearly rocked the old building on its ancient foundations; and it ended with "The Moon Is Rising Slow, My Love," sung with so much feeling and such wistful cadences that the four young girls kneeling at the windows, wrapped in shawls and dressing-gowns, shook with suppressed laughter.

One of them blushed at the disquieting thought that eight hearts could be beating for her own self in unison.

The next morning Miss Campbell and the Motor Maids achieved a triumphal departure from the ancient city of learning. Eleven students of the Universities of Oxford gathered in front of the hotel and waved them a last farewell.

CHAPTER XVII.-AN INCIDENT ON THE ROAD.

No rain came to mar their excursion to Stratford-on-Avon, the home of Shakespeare. All day they lingered in the quaint, charming town and, under the spell of traditions and memories, their own ident.i.ties seemed to fade into insignificance. Journeying thus, the most carefully brought up person may become a happy vagabond, without past or future and only a delightful present.

That night they slept in the town of Warwick and the next day explored the old city and the splendid castle, the ancient and stately home of the Earls of Warwick.

"It's so beautiful and so what a castle should be, it makes me feel like weeping," Mary exclaimed.

Feargus, who knew the country well, had conducted them to a bridge spanning the Avon, where just at sunset they took a last long look at the towers and battlements, the ma.s.sive b.u.t.tresses and walls of the historic place.

The next morning, turning their faces resolutely toward the North, they pushed on through a country of surpa.s.sing greenness and charm. And so for days they traveled, lingering or not as the spirit moved them, but always following the North Star, which they seldom saw, being weary when night came and ready for bed as soon as supper was over.

All through this happy time, the "Comet" conducted himself so admirably that the good fairy must have touched him with her wand. Not once did he show any indication of balking over his labors. But the worm will turn, even when it is a magnificent worm fitted with a gasoline engine and rubber tires, and the "Comet" at last indulged in what appeared to be a nervous breakdown.

It was while they were still in the "border country," and the road ambled along through a valley shut in by foothills on one side and a gurgling, busy little river on the other. First it was the rear tire that burst with a loud report, waking the echoes in that quiet region.

"What a nuisance," exclaimed Billie, "now we shall have to lose time while we put on another."

"We have plenty of time to lose, it strikes me," put in Miss Campbell.

"For my part, I've forgotten there was such a thing as time."

"But it's always loss of time when one has to mend broken things,"

answered her impatient relative, in whom the going-on fever was becoming a highly developed quality.

Out they scrambled and Billie and Mary went to work to replace the tire, Feargus, their courier, who had proved a light-hearted and agreeable companion, helping them all he could.

Miss Campbell, placidly watching them from her cushion on a green bank at the side of the road, felt that punctured tires were a small incident in the scheme of affairs. Several country vehicles pa.s.sed while they labored, and at last a country fellow driving a one-horse cart drew rein and regarded them with grave interest.

"Tha' wouldst do better wi' a horse that only casts a shoe once an' a while," he observed.

Feargus smiled.

"If you had your choice, my man, I'm thinkin' you'd take the car, surely, and buy ten horses with the money it would bring you."

"Come, come, now," exclaimed the country man, settling himself comfortably on the seat and preparing for argument, "answer me this question if tha' can. If I stick a pin in my horse's leg, he goes the faster for the p.r.i.c.k. If tha' sticks a pin in tha' steam horse's leg, he will not go at all, at all."

The young people laughed over this irrefutable statement.

"He certainly will not," said Billie. "He's completely disabled. But just you wait till I get this p.r.i.c.k mended and see how he flies. In two minutes he'll leave you and your old horse miles behind."

"I'll wait, then, ma'am, and gladly, for the sight so fine as tha' tells me. A red rocket he'll be, by jingo, a-shootin' through tha' air at such a rate."

"His name is 'Comet,'" remarked Mary proudly.

"Is it true, now?" asked the country fellow, his eyes twinkling with a subdued humor. "If tha' be goin' in a moment, I'll tak' the time to sit by the road side and see the grand spectacle."

The girls always believed that the carter had bewitched the "Comet."

Certainly, as he drew his horse to one side of the highway, there was an expression on his face of intense enjoyment of what was to come.

"It'll be a grand sight, ma'am," he called again while Billie cranked up the machine and proudly took her seat at the wheel. "An' a young lady the engineer, too!" he continued. "I never see the likes before in all me life. Tha' 'Comet,' now! A fine name and tha' be goin' to have a fine ride, I'm thinkin'."

Billie threw in the clutch and waited, intending to furnish that country fellow with a fit reward for his antic.i.p.ations. They sat in breathless expectancy. Another moment and they would be a scarlet speck on the landscape and the carter left by the roadside to consider the advantages of driving over automobiling. But the "Comet" never budged an inch.

With a roar of laughter that waked the echoes in the surrounding hills, the disconcerting individual in the cart touched his horse with his whip and ambled down the road, calling over his shoulder:

"Tha' be the fine comet, tha' be. Tha' be a real shootin' star in the fir-ma-ment, I'm thinkin'. Tha' flies, tha' does."

He roared again joyfully, as he jogged along, and Billie, half laughing and half exasperated, jumped out to see what the matter was.

"Everybody get out," she ordered, while Feargus, well-trained in his duties as a.s.sistant chauffeur, lifted the cushion from the front seat and opened the tool box.

"I hope it won't be a repet.i.tion of that awful night on the plains last summer, when the 'Comet' went to pieces so completely," Miss Campbell remarked.

"Now, Cousin Helen, you know you enjoyed the night in the open," called Billie, already enveloped in her repairing ap.r.o.n with the intention of crawling under the car.

But it did look as if history were going to repeat itself as time dragged slowly on; the shadows began to deepen; the air grew chilly and still the stubborn motor would not respond to treatment. Miss Campbell began to feel timid and anxious. Should she send Feargus for help at the next village or should they wait for a pa.s.sing carter to take them all in, leaving the "Comet" to its fate?

Suddenly the stillness was broken by a familiar whir, and another motor car hove into view in the distance. Feargus, crawling from under the machine, ran to the middle of the road and waved his arms for the car to stop; but it did not even slow up, in spite of the etiquette which requires one motorist to help another, and Feargus had just time to leap out of the road as the great machine whizzed past.

"I'm glad it didn't stop," he announced calmly. "Do you know who the man was next the chauffeur? It was the Duke of Kilkenty. I'd sooner ask help of a carter than of him."

"I wonder if he has found little Arthur yet?" observed Mary.

Somehow, their minds had been so filled with other things, that the kidnapping of the boy had been almost forgotten.

"Perhaps that's why he was in too big a hurry to help another car in trouble. He is on the track," suggested Billie.

"He's always been in too big a hurry for that," broke in Feargus bitterly. "But I don't think he's on the track."

"Why?"

"The paper this morning didn't say so."

"Do you mean to say you have been reading newspapers on the subject and not said a word to us?"

"I glanced over one this morning," he answered carelessly.

"I should think you might have told us the latest news," exclaimed Nancy irritably.

"Children, children, don't quarrel. It's growing late and we must be coming to some sort of decision," Miss Campbell expostulated. "How far are we from anywhere?"