The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point Part 9

"Oh, please don't," she begged. "Don't you see--there are only two of them to our three. And you want to give them half the lunch!"

They laughed at her, and Betty offered a solution.

"Far be it from us to rob you, Honey," she said soothingly. "We'll sit right here on this rock--"

"Oh, goodness! who cares where we sit as long as we get something,"

groaned Grace. "Mollie, I'm dying."

"Well as long as you die out there it's all right," retorted Mollie unfeelingly. Nevertheless, she handed the sufferer a ham sandwich and a hard boiled egg, which the latter came as near to grabbing as her good breeding would permit.

However, when they had finished the lunch, burned up what odds and ends remained, and had once more started on their way, they found that the shadow of unhappiness which the excitement of the race had almost banished, was returning again.

In front with Betty, Grace sighed so dolefully that the Little Captain looked at her inquiringly, an action which almost brought about a collision with a tree by the wayside.

"Betty, what are you doing?"

"Trying to kill us," replied Betty serenely. "And if you give any more sighs like that, I'll do it."

"I didn't know I sighed," said Grace gloomily. "But it wouldn't be any wonder if I did. I feel as if I were made up of them--sighs, I mean."

Betty was silent a moment, then she asked suddenly:

"When does your father expect to hear from Washington?"

"Not before the end of the week, anyway. And by that time," Grace paused to control the trembling of her lips, "n.o.body knows what may have happened. For all we know Will may be--dead."

CHAPTER VIII

RED RAGS

"Well, we've been making pretty good speed for the last three hours,"

said Mollie, taking first one hand, then the other, from the steering wheel and stretching her cramped fingers experimentally. "Now if nothing else happens--"

The sound of an explosion cut short the rest of the sentence, and she put on the brakes, at the same time tooting a signal to Betty. The latter stopped her car and came running back to see what had happened.

"Tire," said Mollie laconically, forestalling the inevitable questions.

"I knew our luck had been too good to be true. Well," with the air of a martyr accepting the inevitable, "I suppose there's nothing to do but get busy and fix it, though, of course, this spoils our chances of getting to Bensington to-night," Bensington being the town midway between Deepdale and Bluff Point where they had planned to spend the night. It was also the only town for miles around that boasted a hotel.

"Oh, I don't know," said Betty in reply to Mollie's gloomy prediction.

"It won't be the first time we've accomplished the impossible."

"But it will soon be dark."

"Goodness! it won't be dark for hours and hours," Betty laughed at her.

"And this oughtn't to take us more than half an hour at the longest.

Come on now, let's get busy."

Thus inspired, the girls "got busy," but they were tired with the long drive and everything seemed to go wrong. Their usually skillful fingers fumbled, the tire was "too big or too little or something," to quote Amy, and at the end of a quarter of an hour's useless struggle their tempers were worn to a frazzle and they were ready to cry.

"Well, I never had anything act like that before," cried Mollie irritably. "I'd like to give the person that wrote about the 'depravity of inanimate things' a medal. The old tire's got a mean disposition, that's all."

"Well, it isn't the only one," Grace was beginning, when Mollie turned and glared at her.

"If you mean me--"

"I meant all of us," Grace explained. "As long as we have been going together, this is the first time I can remember when all of us have been in the doleful dumps at once."

This brought a reluctant smile even to Mollie's gloomy countenance, and Betty laughed merrily.

"Perhaps it's just as well," said the Little Captain, adding with a chuckle: "It's the same way with onions--if everybody eats 'em, no one can notice the unpleasantness in the other fellow."

This brought a real laugh, and Mollie said fondly:

"I always knew you were a 'philosophiker,' Betty, dear. But," she added, vindictively kicking the tire that lay at her feet, "all the philosophy in the world won't put this tire on for us. And we can't very well get to Bensington on three wheels and a rim."

"No!" cried Grace, sarcastically. "Who would have guessed it?"

Mollie started to retort, but the threatened resumption of hostilities was cut short by the sound of a motor in the distance.

"Hark!" cried Mollie, a dramatic hand raised to a listening ear. "Do I hear the approach of an angel?"

"If you do, he has a pretty earthly means of transportation," laughed Betty. "To me, it sounds like a machine or a motorcycle."

"How can you?" cried Mollie, still dramatically poised. "It is an angel, I tell you, come to help us out of our predicament."

"It is a motorcycle," cried Amy excitedly. "The engine is making too much noise for an automobile."

"Well," suggested Mrs. Ford quietly, "whoever it is, I think it might be a good idea to get out of the middle of the road."

"But if we do," Grace protested, "he'll go right past us."

"And if we don't we'll get run over," added Mrs. Ford.

The girls looked at each other helplessly.

"I tell you," cried Betty suddenly, her eyes sparkling with a new idea.

"Give me that old red rag we use for a duster, Mollie, and I'll go and signal your angel."

"Betty, you'll do no such thing," cried Amy, shocked, while Mollie dug under the seat for the improvised signal flag. "Think of signaling a strange man!"

"But you forget he's an angel in disguise," laughed Betty, s.n.a.t.c.hing the dust cloth Mollie held out to her. "Anyway," she added, over her shoulder, "desperate cases require desperate remedies," and was off round the turn of the road.

There wasn't much time to spare either, for when she had clambered up on a rock by the side of the road, the motorcyclist was only a few hundred feet away.