Chapter VII: Showing Their Mettle

"Girls!" Aunt Sallie said solemnly next morning, as Mr. Cartwright and two footmen helped her into the motor car, while Barbara, Grace and Mollie stood around holding her extra veils, her magazines and pocketbook. "I feel, in my bones, that it is going to rain to-day. I think we had better stay in town."

"Oh, Aunt Sallie!" Ruth's hand was already on the spark of her steering wheel, and she was bouncing up and down on her seat in her impatience to be off. "It's simply a splendid day! Look at the sun!" She leaned over to Mr. Cartwright. "Do say something to cheer Aunt Sallie up. If she loses her nerve now, we'll never have our trip."

Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright both reassured her. "The paper says clear weather and light winds, Miss Stuart. You'll have a beautiful day of it. Remember we shall meet you in New Haven to-morrow, and you have promised to wait for us."

Aunt Sallie settled herself resignedly into her violet cushions, holding her smelling bottle to her nose. "Very well, young people, have it your own way," she relented. "But, mark my words, it will rain before night. I have a shoulderblade that is a better weather prophet than all your bureaus."

"You're much too handsome a woman," laughed Ruth, the other girls joining her, "to talk like Katisha, in the 'Mikado,' who had the famous shoulderblade that people came miles to see."

Ruth was steering her car through Fifth Avenue, so Aunt Sallie merely smiled at her own expense, adding: "You're a very disrespectful niece, Ruth."

"I'd get on my knees to apologize, Auntie," declared Ruth, "only there isn't room, and we'd certainly be run into, if I did."

Barbara was poring over the route book. Her duty as guide to the automobile party really began to-day, and she was studying every inch of the road map. What would she do if they were lost?

"You may look up from that book just once in every fifteen minutes, Guide Thurston," Ruth said, pretending to be serious over Barbara's worried look. "We promise not to eat you if you do get us a little out of our way. The roads are well posted. What shall we do if we meet some bandits?"

"Leave them to me," boasted Barbara. "I suppose it's my fate to play man of the party."

"And what of the chauffeur?" Ruth protested. "I wonder what any of us could do if we got into danger."

The day was apparently lovely. The girls were in the wildest spirits.

"I never believed until this minute," announced Mollie, "that we were actually going on the trip to Newport. I felt every moment something would happen to stop us. I even dreamed, last night, that we met a great giant in the road, and he roared at us, 'I never allow red motor cars with brass trimmings to pass along this road!' Ruth wouldn't pay the least attention to him, but kept straight ahead, until he picked up the car and started to pitch us over in a ditch. Then Ruth cried: 'Hold on there! If you won't let a red car pass, I'll go back to town and have mine painted green. I must have my trip.' Just as she turned around and started back, I woke up. Wasn't it awful?"

"You are a goose," said Grace, rather nervously. "It isn't a sign of anything, is it? You ought not to tell your dreams after breakfast. You may make them come true."

Barbara and Ruth both shouted with laughter, for Mollie answered just as seriously: "You're wrong, Grace; it's telling dreams before breakfast that makes them come true. I was particularly careful to wait."

The car passed swiftly through the town in the early morning. Soon the spires and towers of the city were no longer visible.

"Hurrah for the Boston Post Road!" sang Barbara, as the car swung into the famous old highway.

"And hurrah for Barbara for discovering it!" teased Ruth. "Now, clear the track, fellow autoists and slow coach drivers! We know where we're going, and we're on the way!"

It had been decided to make a straight trip through to New Haven, and to wait there for Mrs. Cartwright. Miss Sallie had insisted on some rest, and the girls were wild to see the college--and the college men.

"It will be sure enough sport," Ruth confided, "to have one dance with all the partners needed to go round." Men were as scarce at the Kingsbridge Hotel as they were in other summer resorts, and Ruth was tired of Harry Townsend and his kind, who liked to stay around the hotel, making eyes at all the girls they saw.

"Yes," said Barbara thoughtfully, "it will be fun. Yet, Ruth, suppose we are sticks and no one dances with us?" Barbara didn't like the thought of being a wall-flower. Ruth laughed and quickly replied, "Oh, Mrs. Cartwright is awfully jolly and popular, so we will have plenty of invitations to dance."

"Ruth," said Miss Sallie, a little after noon, when they had passed, without a hitch, through a number of beautiful Connecticut towns, and were speeding along an open road, with a view of the waters of Long Island Sound to the right of them, "I have not looked at my watch lately, but I've an impression I am hungry. As long as we have made up our minds to eat the luncheon the hotel has put up for us, why not stop along the road here, and have a picnic?"

"Good for you, Aunt Sallie!" said Grace, emphatically. "This is a beauty place. Ruth can leave the car right here, and we can go up under that elm and make tea. What larks!"

The girls all piled out, carrying the big lunch hamper between them. On the stump of an old tree the alcohol lamp was set up and tea was quickly brewed. Then the girls formed a circle on the ground, while Miss Sallie, from her throne of violet silk pillows, gave directions about setting the lunch table.

No one noticed how the time passed. No one could notice, all were having such a jolly time; even Miss Sallie was now in excellent spirits. She had been in Newport several times before, and the girls were full of questions.

Mollie leaned her head against Miss Sallie's knee, so intimate had she grown in a day and a half with that awe-inspiring person. "Is it true," she inquired in a voice of reverence, "that every person who lives in Newport is a millionaire?"

"And are the streets paved with gold, Miss Sallie?" queried Grace. She was Mollie's special friend, and fond of teasing her. "I read that the water at Bailey's Beach is perfumed every morning before the ladies go in bathing, and that all the fish that come from near there taste like cologne."

Miss Sallie laughed. "There are some people at Newport who are not summer people," she explained. "You must remember that it is an old New England town, and there are thousands of people who live there the year around. My brother has persuaded some old friends of ours, who used to be very wealthy when I was a girl, to take us to board with them. There are very few hotels."

Several times during their talk Ruth's eyes had wandered a little anxiously to the sky above them. Every now and then the shadows darkened under the old elm where they were eating their luncheon, bringing a sudden coolness to the summer atmosphere.

"Aunt Sallie made me nervous about the weather with that story of her shoulderblade," Ruth argued with herself. So she was the first to say: "Come, we had better be off. What a lot of time we've wasted!"

"No hurry, Ruth," Aunt Sallie answered, placidly. "New Haven is no great distance. We shall be there before dark."

It was fully half after two before the automobile girls had gathered up their belongings and were again comfortably disposed in the car.

"It certainly is great, Ruth, the way you crank up your own car," Grace declared. "It must take an awful lot of strength, doesn't it?"

"Yes," admitted Ruth, as she jumped back into her automobile and the car plunged on ahead. "But I've a strong right arm. I don't row and play tennis for nothing. Father says it takes skill and courage, as well as strength, to drive a car. I hope I'm not boasting; it's only that father believes girls should attempt to do things as well as boys. Girls could do a lot more if they tried harder. 'Sometimes,' Dad says, 'gumption counts for more than brute force.'"

"Whew, Ruth! You talk like a suffragette," objected Grace.

"Well, maybe I am one," said Ruth. "I'm from the West, where they raise strong-minded women. What do you say, Barbara?"

"I don't know," replied Barbara. "I would not like to go to war, and I'm awfully afraid I'd run from a burglar in the dark."

"Who'd have thought Barbara would confess to being a coward?" Grace broke in, just to see what Bab would say. But Bab wouldn't answer. "I don't know what I would do," she ended.

"Anyhow," said Miss Ruth, from her position of dignity on the chauffeur's seat, "I should be allowed to vote on laws for motor cars, as long as I can run a machine without a man."

"My dear Ruth," interposed Miss Sallie at last, "I beg of you, don't vote in my lifetime. Girls, in my day, would never have dreamed of such a thing."

"Oh, well, Auntie," answered Ruth, "I wouldn't worry about it now. Who knows when I may have a chance to vote?"

Ruth was worried by the clouds overhead, so she ran her machine at full speed. It took some time and ingenuity to make their way through Bridgeport, a big, bustling town with crowded streets. By this time the clouds had lifted, and, for the next hour, Ruth forgot the rain. She and Barbara were having a serious talk on the front seat. Mollie and Grace, with their arms around each other, were almost as quiet as Aunt Sallie; indeed, they were more so, for that good soul was gently snoring.

"If we should have any adventures, Bab," said Ruth, "I wonder if we'd be equal to them? I'll wager you would be. Father says that when people are not too sure of themselves before a thing happens, they are likely to be brave at the critical minute."

The car was going down a hill with a steep incline. Ruth's hand was on the brake. Biff! Biff! Bang! Bang! A cannon ball seemed to have exploded under them. Miss Sallie sat up very straight, with an expression of great dignity; Grace and Mollie gave little screams, and Barbara looked as though she were willing to be defended if anything very dreadful had happened.

Only Ruth dared laugh. "You're not killed, girls," she said. "You might as well get used to that racket; it happens to the best regulated motor cars. It is only a bursted tire; but it might have been kind enough to have happened in town, instead of on this deserted country road. Oh, dear me!" she next ejaculated, for, before she could stop her car, it had skidded, and the front wheel was imbedded in a deep hole in the road.

"Get out, please," Ruth ordered. "Grace, will you find a stone for me? I must try to brace this wheel. Did I say something about skill, instead of strength, and not needing a man?" Ruth had taken off her coat and rolled up her sleeves in a business-like fashion.

"I have helped father with a punctured tire before." She tugged at the old tire, which hung limp and useless by this time. She was talking very cheerfully, though Aunt Sallie's woeful expression would have made any girl nervous. At the same time dark clouds had begun to appear overhead.

"You'd better get out the rain things," Ruth conceded. "I can't get this fixed very soon. Queer no one passes along this way. It's a lonesome kind of road. I wonder if we are off the main track?"

"It is a country lane, not a main road. I saw that at once," said Miss Sallie.

"Then why didn't you tell us, Aunt Sallie?"

"My eyes were closed to avoid the dust," replied Aunt Sallie firmly.

Poor Ruth had a task on her hands. If only the car had not skidded into that ugly hole, she could have managed; but it was impossible for her, with the help of all the girls, to lift the car enough to slip the new tire over the rim.

Mollie and Grace were taking Miss Sallie a little walk through the woods at the side of the road to try to make the time pass and to give Ruth a chance. Grace had winked at her slyly as they departed.

"Barbara," Ruth said finally, in tragic tones, "I'm in a fix and I might as well confess it. I know it all comes of my boasting that I didn't need a man. My kingdom for one just for a few minutes! Do you suppose there is a farmhouse near where we could find some one to help me get this wheel out of the rut? I'd surrender this job to a man with pleasure."

"I don't believe we are on the right road, Ruth, dear." Barbara felt so responsible that she was almost in tears. Ominous thunder clouds were rolling overhead, and Bab tried not to notice the large splash of rain that had fallen on her nose.

"Don't worry Bab, dear," urged Ruth. "I should have looked out for the road, too. It can't be helped."

"But I am going to help. You can just rely on that," announced Barbara, shaking her brown curls defiantly. She had taken off her hat in the exertion of trying to help Ruth. "We passed a sleepy-looking old farm a little way back, but I am going to wake it up!"

She heard Miss Sallie and the girls returning to the shelter of the car, for the rain had suddenly come down in torrents. Down the road sped Bab, shaking her head like a little brown Shetland pony.

Miss Sallie was in the depths of despair.

"Child," she said sternly to Ruth, "get into the car out of that mud. We will remain here, under the shelter of the covers until morning. Then, if we are alive, I myself will walk to the nearest town and telegraph your father. We will take the next train back to New York." Miss Sallie spoke with the extreme severity due to a rheumatic shoulder that had been disregarded.

"Please let me keep on trying, Aunt Sallie," pleaded Ruth. "I'll get the tire on, or some one will come along to help me. I am so sorry, for I know it is all my fault."

"Never mind, Ruth; but you are to come into this car." And Ruth, covered with mud, was obliged to give in.

"Where, I should like to know," demanded Miss Sallie, "is Barbara?"

Through the rain they could hear the patter, patter of a horse's hoofs.

"Cheer up, Ruth, dear," whispered Grace. "What difference does a little rain make? Here is some one coming along the road!"

Ruth's eyes were full of tears; Aunt Sallie's threat to stop their trip was more than she could bear; but she was soon smiling.

"Why, Barbara Thurston," the girls called out together, "it can't be you!" On came Barbara, riding bareback astride an old horse, the animal's big feet clattering, its mane and tail soaked with rain.

"Great heavens!" said Miss Sallie, and closed her eyes.

Barbara rode up to the automobile, her hand clasped tightly in the horse's mane.

"I'm as right as can be, Miss Sallie. I went back to that sleepy old farm, knocked and knocked for help, and called and called, but nobody would answer. Just as I gave up all hope, old Dobbin came to the porch and neighed, as if inquiring what I was doing on his premises. Like a flash I put out my hand, as though to pat him, grabbed him by the mane, hopped up here, and now you see the best lady bareback rider from Rinkhem's Circus. I led you into this mess; now I'm going to get you out. I shall ride old Dobbin into town and come back with help." Bab declaimed this, ending out of breath.

"Never mind, Miss Sallie," Mollie explained, seeing her consternation. "Bab never rode any other way than bareback when she was a little girl. Do let her go!"

"Very well; but she may be arrested as a horse thief. That is all I have to say in the matter." Miss Sallie sank back on her cushions, but Barbara had clattered off before she could be forbidden to go. She caught the words, "horse thief," as she rode as fast as old Dobbin would carry her.

"It's Barbara to the rescue again!" Ruth shouted after her.