The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point Part 17

"That's easy," said Mollie. "One of us will get down underneath the machine and pretend to be tinkering--"

"Goodness, that lets me out," said Grace in dismay. "I wouldn't get down in the dirt for fifty idiotic wagon drivers."

"Well, n.o.body's asking you to," cried Mollie impatiently. "I fully intend to put on my overalls and do it myself."

"Better hurry up," cried Amy, who had been glancing uneasily down the road. "He may come along any minute now and we don't want him to catch us here."

So amid much hilarity and giggling Mollie got into the begrimed overalls and proceeded to wriggle her small self beneath the car.

"I hope he hurries," she cried in a m.u.f.fled voice. "It isn't exactly what you might call comfortable down here. Betty, get off my foot," as Grace wickedly stepped on her toes.

"Just hear her," cried Betty plaintively. "Everything just naturally gets blamed on me."

"Well, if you didn't, who did?" queried Mollie fiercely. "Tell me her name--"

"Betty, Betty, don't give me away," pleaded Grace, at which the girls laughed while a satisfied chuckle came from under the car.

"I knew I'd find the guilty one," Mollie was beginning when Betty cut her short with a warning cry.

"He's coming," she said, adding, as she vainly tried to straighten the corners of her mischievous mouth: "And please remember, girls, this is a very solemn occasion!"

CHAPTER XIV

BLUFF POINT AT LAST

Very anxious the Outdoor Girls looked as the grouchy old farmer came toward them. Mollie was making all sorts of noises under the car, apparently tinkering with its mechanism, while the girls kept up a running fire of questions.

"What is the matter, Mollie?"

"Can't you find the trouble?"

"Better let me get under and take a look."

"If we don't get started pretty soon, we'll not get to Bluff Point before dark."

These and other remarks like them met the suspicious ears of the driver as he jerked his team to a standstill.

"Hey, what's the matter with you?" he hailed them. "Have you got to stand right in the middle of the road? Can't you move over some?"

At this Mollie wriggled out from under the car and stood up, facing him.

Her face was flushed from restrained mirth, but it might well have been the flush of indignation.

"If we could don't you suppose we would?" she queried, rather incoherently. "Do you think I'm doing this for fun?" Then she abruptly disappeared from sight again. The abruptness was caused by the terrible fear that if she stood looking at that sour old visage another moment she would have to spoil everything by laughing.

As for the other girls, they were slowly turning purple in an effort to maintain the solemnity demanded by the occasion. A strange noise from beneath the car, promptly followed by a choked cough, didn't help them any, and they were relieved when their victim turned his suspicious gaze from them to the shallow ditch at the side of the road which was still muddy from the rain of the night before. The only hope he had of getting around them was to drive through this mud.

Without a word or a glance in their direction, he whipped up his team and started for the ditch. This was something the girls had not foreseen, and they were of no mind to let him get ahead of them again.

Grace and Amy flashed a distress signal to Betty, who stooped over Mollie's feet, the feet being all that could be seen of her, and cried with a peculiar inflection:

"I think you must have found the trouble by this time, Mollie, haven't you?"

Mollie took the hint and scrambled hurriedly to her feet.

"I think so," she said, then as her eyes swiftly took in the situation--the grim old man already struggling through the ditch intent on getting ahead of them--she jumped to her seat and started the engine.

"All right," she cried gayly. "Come on, girls, jump in."

The girls jumped in with alacrity and Betty and Grace ran to the car in front. Then while the man whipped up his horses and called to them in terms far from gentle, the two cars sprang forward and were off down the road.

They turned once, to find the man urging his team to the road and shaking his fist after the "gasoline wagons." The girls waved to him merrily, before the turn in the road shut him from sight.

"I guess that will teach him a lesson," said Grace, settling back comfortably.

"Shouldn't wonder," agreed Betty absently, adding with a rueful little smile. "It was great fun, of course, but I hope we shan't meet many more of his kind, or we'll never get to Bluff Point."

"We're almost there now," said Grace. "All this part of the country is almost as familiar to me as Deepdale. When I was a little kiddie, I used almost to live with Aunt Mary."

"It's wonderful how little children love the woods and brooks and all wild things," mused Betty, adding, as the picture of Dodo and Paul, hiding in the machines and begging to be taken along, came back to her: "I almost wish we could have brought the twins with us. They would have so loved it."

"And we would have spent all our time trying to keep them from falling into the ocean," added Grace dryly. "Besides," she added, "I don't believe Mrs. Billette would have let them come. They are such little mischiefs, and she is always afraid something will happen to them."

"Yes, and they're good company for her," agreed Betty thoughtfully; "especially when Mollie is away."

After a few minutes of silence Grace suddenly clutched Betty's arm, making the Little Captain jump.

"Betty," cried the former excitedly, "we're almost there. Just around that curve--"

"Well, you needn't scare me to death," protested Betty, taking one hand from the wheel to rub the arm Grace had clutched.

"But I love it so," Grace cried, standing up only to be jerked back into her seat as Betty swung round the curve. "It's such a wonderful place!"

"Is that it up on the hill?"

"Yes," answered Grace, standing up in earnest now. "Turn up the drive--it leads to the garage at the back. And, Betty, the house stands on a little bluff looking out over the ocean. Do you hear it--the ocean I mean, not the house, Silly!"

The road that they had traveled from Deepdale to Bluff Point had led across country, Deepdale being in the interior, so that the girls had scarcely realized how close they were coming to the coast.

Now, as Betty stopped the car at the back of the quaint little cottage, that sound of romance and mystery, the soft lapping of water with the deeper undertone of waves against rock came up to her and she threw back her head with a little bubbling laugh.

"I don't wonder you love it, Gracie dear," she said. "I do already. It's glorious."

They jumped out and ran back to meet Mollie's car, which was puffing like an old man up the steep grade.

"The ocean! The ocean!" cried Betty ecstatically, as she opened the doors and the girls tumbled out. "Do you smell it? Do you hear it? Oh, girls, hurry up, I can't wait to feel it!"