Читать книгу The Motor Girls at Lookout Beach: or, In Quest of the Runaways - Penrose Margaret - Страница 7

Just how Cora did manage to run her car into Chelton, with a stiffened wrist and a twisted shoulder, she was not able to explain afterward to the anxious ones at home. Belle rode with her, and was sufficiently familiar with the machine to take a hand at the wheel now and then, but it was Cora who drove the Whirlwind, in spite of that.

It was now two days since the eventful afternoon at the strawberry patch, and the girls were ready again to make the trip to Squaton, in quest of the crate of berries promised to Mrs. Robinson.

Jack argued that his sister was not strong enough to run her car with ease, so he insisted on going along. Then, when his friends, Ed Foster and Walter Pennington, heard of this they declared it was a trick of Jack’s to “do them out of a run with the motor girls,” and they promptly arranged to go along also.

Ed rode with Walter, in the latter’s runabout, and the twins were, of course, together in the Flyaway, while Cora was beside Jack in the Whirlwind, for, although the girls were speedily turning into the years that would make them young ladies, they still maintained the decorum of riding “girls with girls” and “boys with boys,” except on very rare occasions.

As they rode along, an old stone house, set far back from the highway, attracted Jack’s attention.

“Let’s stop here,” he suggested, “and look over the place. I’ll bet it has an open fire place with a crane and fixings, for cooking.”

Word was passed to those in the other cars, and all were glad to stop, for the afternoon was delightful, and the ride to Squaton rather short.

As no path marked the grass that led to the old house it was evident that no one had lately occupied it. The boys ran on ahead to make sure that no ghosts or other “demons” might be lurking within the moldy place, while Cora, Bess and Belle stopped to pick some particularly pretty forget-me-nots, from near the spring that trickled along through the neglected place.

Just back of the house, over the spring, the boys discovered the inevitable house for cooling milk, and here they delayed to drink from their pocket cups.

“What’s in the other side?” asked Walter, peering through the broken boards into a second room or shed, for the shack was divided into two parts.

“More spring, I suppose,” replied Jack, taking his third drink from the small cup.

Walter and Ed had finished drinking just as the girls came up, and Jack attended to their various degrees of thirst for pure spring water.

“What a quaint old place,” remarked Belle. “What’s in the other little house?”

“We are just about to find out,” said Jack. “The other fellows couldn’t wait, and are in there now.”

Hurrying out, they all entered, through the battered door, into the “other side.”

“Well, I declare!” exclaimed Ed. “What does this mean?”

“I also declare, ‘what does this mean?’” added Jack, picking up from a queer sort of wooden platform in the place, the unmistakable blue bonnet of a child or young girl.

“And this!” exclaimed Cora, picking up a hat. “This is – Nellie’s hat! Nellie from the strawberry patch!”

“They have run away!” gasped Bess, without further investigation, “and here are the remains of their lunch!” The fragments of a very meager meal – some crusts of dry bread – and an empty strawberry box, told the story. “Surely this had been the lunch of the runaways.”