Chapter X: The Song of the Motor

Mr. and Mrs. Duffy enjoyed their own party so much that they concluded to give another one immediately. Accordingly at eleven o'clock the next morning, the Comet containing the Motor Maids and Timothy Peppercorn started off behind the Duffy motor in which sat those two ample souls, the master and mistress of the machine, Miss Helen Campbell and the chauffeur.

It was a picnic party, during which they were to visit Mr. Duffy's orange grove and his famous alligator farm.

As the motors passed the station, Billie saw a group of familiar figures standing on the platform. Mrs. Paxton-Steele, as usual, was flourishing her gold-headed cane, this time to point out pieces of luggage to the man and maid-servants who traveled with her. Nearby stood Edward, Clarence and Georgiana. Billie sounded the motor horn several times to attract the attention of the others. Clarence looked over his shoulder and turned around quickly without speaking. Georgiana waved her hand and her handkerchief both at once, and Edward flourished his cap and looked only at Billie, who thought regretfully:

"So, he did get back in time."

"Strange he didn't tell me last night he was going away," observed Elinor.

"I think Edward Paxton is a person of many moods," said Mary. "He is never the same from one day to the next. I don't think he is a bit like Edward l'Estrange in character. It's only his face."

"They are certainly alike in face," put in Billie. "I believe their nearest relatives could not tell them apart if they were dressed alike."

"I could," exclaimed Elinor with conviction in her tones. "There is such a difference in their expressions. Edward Paxton's face is so much more spiritual."

Billie could not help laughing at this, and Elinor was piqued.

"Well, I do think he is much more refined," she observed. "After all, Billie, it was rather familiar of Edward l'Estrange to call you by your first name."

"Nonsense," ejaculated Billie. "He's as good as I am, and I call him Edward. Besides, haven't we accepted his hospitality, 'eaten his bread,' as Papa says? It was quite right for him to call me Billie if he wanted to."

The girls were rather surprised at this little tiff between the two friends, who were never known to have had the shadow of a quarrel before. Billie made up her mind that she would tell the girls the truth about the two Edwards that very night, even if it were not her secret. She couldn't bear these small misunderstandings, though they disturbed the placid waters of their friendship ever so little.

"Why is it no one ever sees Virginia?" asked peacemaker Mary, changing the subject.

"I did see her in the corridor of the hotel not long ago," replied Nancy, "but when she recognized me she flew down a side hall. Miss Campbell wanted to ask her to luncheon with us and tried to catch her, but she had disappeared."

"Ever since you saved my life, Billie," here broke in Timothy, "I've been meaning to tell you something. I'm almost certain it was Clarence Paxton who yelled 'sharks,' that morning. Of course I couldn't testify in a court about it, because when you are chasing around in deep water you are not apt to examine people's lineaments. Anyway, it was not his face I recognized, but his laugh. The last time he pitched the ball he gave a jeering laugh, and that was why I kept on swimming farther out. I had a feeling he thought I couldn't."

"If it was Clarence, he was punished," said Nancy. "His Grandmamma beat him well with her stick; for I saw her do it and he saw me see her and I saw that he saw that I saw her----" she finished breathlessly, while the others laughed and clapped their hands.

"Bravo! Bravo!" cried Timothy.

They now entered a road which was not unlike a green tunnel. As a matter of fact, it was a tunnel, only it had been cut through vegetation and not through earth and rock.

"This must be the road to Miami," observed Billie. "You see it is cut through the jungle. Isn't it wonderful?"

On each side of them tropical trees had grown in such thick profusion and were so closely interwoven with vines and undergrowth as to form an impenetrable wall.

"This must be a dreadful place to be lost in," said Timothy seriously. "There are paths that lead through it, they say. But it is said that the people who ventured to find them were lost themselves and never returned."

"Criminals have hidden there----" Mary began, when the sound of another motor coming up behind at a tremendous rate of speed attracted their attention from the jungle. It was a gray racing car and as it flashed past them, Billie and Nancy exchanged a meaning glance.

The other girls had heard the story of their strange adventure that night at the l'Estranges, but they had half forgotten it already, since it was only a fight after all. However, it had been a very real occurrence to Billie and Nancy. They wondered if the gray car contained a man who thought he had committed a murder; and was that man Ignatius Donahue? Of course, there may have been other Ignatius Donahues in the world, but since that night, they had heard no more from Mr. Campbell's old friend.

Ten miles down one road and almost as many along another flew the Comet, flashing his red breast gloriously in the sunshine.

In the whir of his smoothly running motor engine they could hear a song of the joy of living.

"He's singing this morning," exclaimed Mary ecstatically. "He's got a little song all his own. Listen!"

They sat silently for a few minutes harkening to the music of the motor machine.

"I know exactly what he's singing," said Elinor. "I can distinctly hear him say:

'God's-in-His-Heaven-all's-right-with-the-world
God's-in-His-Heaven-all's-right-with-the-world.'"

"I don't hear him say that," put in Nancy.

"He seems to me to be singing:

'Begone-dull-care-begone-dull-care-begone-dull-care.'"

"What do you think he's saying, Mary?" asked Timothy.

"Something entirely different from the others," replied Mary. "Here's what his song sounds to me like:

'My-coursers-are-fed-with-the-lightning
they-drink-of-the-whirlwind's-stream.'"

"This sounds like a quotation party," laughed Billie. "It reminds me of Friday afternoon in the rhetoric class. It's my turn now, I suppose, and I'm afraid I haven't got the Oriental imagination that will make a motor car know verses from Shelley and Browning. All I can hear the old Comet sing is

'Punch-punch-punch-with-care--
punch-in-the-presence-of-the-passengere.'"

"You've none of you struck it right," said Timothy. "This is the song of the motor and once you catch it you never hear anything else:

'Ketch a nigger by the toe,
Ketch a nigger by the toe.
When he hollers, let 'im go,
When he hollers, let 'im go.'"

"Timothy!" protested the two most poetic souls of the party, Mary and Elinor. But having got that insidious verse in their minds they could not get it out, and for the rest of the journey they heard the motor singing joyfully to himself:

"Ketch a nigger by the toe;
When he hollers, let him go."

Before them stretched the road like a long white ribbon fading into the blue horizon. But they had left the tangled wildwoods far behind them, and were now passing orange groves hedged in with tall fences of arbor-vitae or bushes of the roses of Sharon in full bloom, their white blossoms gleaming in the sunshine like a line of new-fallen snow.

"This must be the Duffy grove," exclaimed Billie. "He told me he had built a board fence as high as the wall of China around his place, because next to his wife, he loved his orange trees."

It was the Duffy grove, for the rotund gentleman himself could now be seen frantically waving his Panama hat and pointing toward a whitewashed board fence, some twenty feet high, at the top of which branched rafters like the uncovered roof of an enormous building.

"He stretches canvas over it when the weather is cool, and he has stoves all about inside with wood fires to keep the baby oranges from catching cold. Isn't he a funny man?"

"In other words he has an orange asylum instead of an orphan asylum," put in Timothy, as they drew up at the gate of the two-acre enclosure wherein Mr. Duffy indulged his taste for an ideal orange grove.

The avenue itself did not enter the enclosure but took its unconsecrated way outside the great white wall. Tall palms, like a row of giant sentinels, seemed to keep guard over the secrets of the grove; but the inquisitive vine of the yellow jasmine had almost reached the top, and innumerable and brilliant flowers grew at its foot. At the end of the avenue was the Duffy lodge.

"Ladies, you must excuse these simple accommodations," he said as he helped them out of the motor. "Mrs. Duffy and I like to come here and camp out occasionally, but it's a little too primitive for the old woman. She prefers Palm Beach and society. And she's right," he added good-naturedly. "This is a fine place to motor to, but it's too far from people, and Mrs. Duffy and I like people, don't we, old lady? Especially young people, eh? I feel like blessing that current that carried you and Timothy against me that day, Miss Billie."

"We feel like blessing it, too," said Billie.

"It was a very well-bred and respectable current," exclaimed Timothy. "It not only saved our lives but it carried us into a moonlight dance and an orange grove."

Although the lodge was hardly the primitive affair Mr. Duffy had described, being a well-built and comfortable bungalow, it had only three rooms--a large living room, a bedroom and a kitchen.

"Take off your coats and hats, my dears," exclaimed Mrs. Duffy, "and put on these aprons, because when people eat oranges in a real grove they need protection, and I would not for worlds have you ruin your pretty frocks."

Thus enveloped in large white aprons, they followed Mr. Duffy, looking like a jolly fat comic opera pastry cook in that costume, to the entrance of the orange grove.

"Jason must have felt like this when he found the Golden Fleece," whispered Mary, while they stood in a group waiting for Mr. Duffy's man to unlock the small door in the wall.

As for their jolly host himself, he smiled mysteriously and beckoned them to follow.