The Automobile Girls at Newport: or, Watching the Summer Parade

But Barbara was walking quickly toward the gate. A moment later the automobile stopped before it, and Harry Townsend stepped out.

“Miss Thurston,” he began, soberly, “have you lost any money?”

“Oh, yes!” burst out Mollie, who was just behind, before Barbara could speak; “two twenty-dollar gold-pieces! We’ve hunted and hunted. We had them this afternoon – ”

“Then these must be yours,” said the young man, extending his hand to Barbara. In it were two golden double-eagles. “When the young ladies were getting out at the hotel these were found on the seat, and Miss Stuart was sure you had dropped them out of your pocket, Miss Thurston, during the few moments you were in the machine. I am very glad to be able to restore them to you.”

“Yes,” said Barbara, “but I – ” Then she stopped. “Thank you, Mr. Townsend,” she said, giving him a clear, direct glance. For some unknown reason the young man’s eyes wavered under it, and he climbed hurriedly into the automobile. “I am very glad,” he murmured again.

“Miss Stuart expects you to-morrow,” he added quickly, and the machine backed round and hurried off.

Barbara stood looking at it, the money still in her hand. But Mollie was laughing happily. Then she saw Barbara’s face. “Barbara, what is it, dear?” she demanded. “You look exactly as you did before Granny Ann appeared, and I asked you if you were thinking of something. What is it? Can’t you tell me?”

Barbara shook her head. “It really isn’t anything, Molliekins. I did have an idea in my head, but I must be mistaken somehow. You are sure you saw the money on the table after I left the room? It must have been there, then, when the crowd from the automobile came in. I thought I saw some one standing near the table with one hand resting on it, when I came back and called out: ‘Now, I’ve caught you!’ But I must not think anything more about it. Please don’t ask me any questions. Let us just be glad we have the money back. It is queer, though. Mr. Townsend says the money was found on the seat. I wonder who found it, and whether it was found on the front or back seat? Let’s ask Grace. I don’t understand it. But he brought the money back, and he’s Miss Stuart’s friend. Of course we will keep quiet, you and I, Mollie, whether the money was lost, strayed or stolen!”

“Well, I am sure, Barbara Thurston,” Mollie answered a little indignantly, “I am not likely to talk of what I know nothing about. If there is any mystery about the disappearance of that money, I am sure you have left me utterly in the dark.”

“Don’t be cross,” said Barbara, putting her arm in Mollie’s. “But do you know if Mr. Townsend is a special friend of Gladys’s?”

Mollie shook her head. “How should I know?” she said. “Let’s go in, it’s nearly dark.”

CHAPTER III – RUTH’S PERFECT PLAN

Wonderment over the mystery of the money, and excited anticipation of Ruth Stuart’s luncheon and “plan,” kept the Thurston girls from getting to sleep very early that night. They awoke bright and fresh next morning, nevertheless. Just before eleven they started on their two-mile tramp to the hotel. They were hardly out of sight of the house, however, when what should they see but the now familiar red car speeding toward them. “Look – yes, it is!” cried Mollie. “Ruth herself is making it go!”

The young driver waved a free hand for a second, as she neared them, then wheeled in a broad turn and stopped. “I was so afraid you might have started,” she protested tactfully, “for it is such a fine morning for a nice leisurely walk. I was so anxious to see you that I simply couldn’t wait, and I told Dad I’d take the ‘bubble’ and spin out to meet you. Now, won’t you please hop in, and ride back with me?”

The girls “hopped” with delighted celerity, and Ruth turned back to them for a moment. “I have reams to talk about,” she continued, “but, to tell you the truth, I want my father to be with us, when I begin. So, now, if you don’t mind, we’ll just ride.”

Neither Mollie nor Barbara will ever forget their first ride. “I felt as if I had chartered my own private flying machine, and I was sure the angels were jealous,” Mollie confessed, naïvely, at lunch.

They reached the hotel very quickly, and after a cosy chat on the private balcony belonging to Ruth’s tiny suite of rooms, found themselves seated around a little table in a cool, palm-shaded corner of the big dining-room. Between them, opposite Ruth, sat big, blue-eyed, open-hearted, Robert Stuart, Ruth’s “Dad.”

Robert Stuart had made his fortune out West, in the mining country. That was how he started, anyway. For years, now, he had lived in Chicago, buying and selling real estate in the vicinity. There his wife had died, and there his eighteen-year-old daughter Ruth had spent nearly all her life. During the summers she had traveled more or less, and the last few years had frequently gone East. Her father’s sister, Aunt Sallie Stuart, had brought the girl up since her mother’s death, which had occurred when Ruth was a little girl. Aunt Sallie was not present at the luncheon, because of a bad headache. “Grace Carter has come over and is staying with her, like a dear,” Ruth explained. Later, if Auntie felt better, the girls were to go up to her room.

Ruth, as has appeared, was an extremely impulsive young person. Fortunately, most of her impulses were inspired by a natural kindliness, and a cheerful, youthful energy, with a stratum of good common sense at bottom. There was apt to be method in her madness. Her “plan,” for instance, had long been her desire, but before she had never seen the way.

Ruth couldn’t wait for the cold boullion to be taken off. “Father, I want to tell them now!” she exclaimed. After his cheerful, “Go ahead, daughter,” she burst out: “Barbara, Mollie, won’t you go on an automobile tour to Newport with Grace Carter and me, with Aunt Sallie for chaperon? Won’t you, can’t you come?”

While the amazed girls could only look at her and at each other, she hurried on: “Oh, yes, you probably think I’m crazy. But I’m not. You see it’s like this: all my life I have longed to travel by myself; at least, with the people I want, not in a train, or a big crowded boat. Dad knows the feeling; it’s what makes him run away from Chicago, and get out on the prairies and ride and ride and ride! I’m a girl, so I can’t do that or lots of things. But I can run an automobile. For two years I have just been waiting to get the right crowd. Grace is a dear, but I wanted two more. The other girls I know are all right to meet at dances and to see now and then; but they’d collapse at the thought of starting off on a lark like this. You two – you’re different, I knew it the minute I saw you. Besides,” she continued, “Grace has been telling me things about you. I always know right off whether I like anybody, and it doesn’t take long to find out how much I like them. I like both of you a whole lot – and I know we will have a perfectly delightful trip if you will go with me. If you don’t, I simply can’t go – that’s all. It would be absurd setting off in that great machine with only Grace and Aunt Sallie to rattle around like two peas in a pod. Daddie understands, and he likes you just the way I do – I can see it in his eyes. So it’s just up to you! Do you like me a little bit – well, say enough to visit me in my automobile for a month or so? Oh, please say you do!”

She stopped, her voice catching impulsively over the last words. Barbara’s eyes were shining. “I don’t believe we need to tell you that,” she said softly; “you must just know. But there’s mother. And we haven’t the money.”

“Now that’s not fair,” Ruth broke in. “The money is out of the question altogether. You are my guests. Why, it’s you who will do me the favor,” she pleaded, as she caught the look of dissent on Barbara’s face. “Remember, if you fail me, I can’t have my trip at all – and I have been looking forward to it for two whole years. As for your mother, if she will consent to it, Dad and I have a beautiful plan, to keep her and Dad both from being lonely. Poor Dad is sick and tired of hotel cooking and I told him all about your dear little cottage and the dandy tea and cookies your mother makes, and – and – do you suppose your mother would let Dad take his meals with her while we are away? Then he won’t be too wretched living all alone up here. Also, you wouldn’t have to worry about your mother, nor would I have to worry about Dad. Aunt Sallie has been with him so long that I don’t know what he’d do all by himself. He could get on very well, if only your mother would look after him at meals, I know that.

“Now I won’t say another word about it for the rest of our lunch. Then we’ll run in and call on Aunt Sallie. Afterward we will take the car out and see your mother, and get her to say yes! Then you’ll say it, too, won’t you? But don’t let’s spoil this good chicken salad, through worrying about it.”

In a more or less complete, yet altogether happy silence, the luncheon was finished. Ruth and her father did not try to force their guests to talk, realizing that the girls would want to think. From the smiling glances the two Stuarts exchanged now and then it was evident they hoped the thinking would have a happy outcome.

After the last course had been served, and the finger bowls, a sprig of rose geranium floating in each, had been pushed aside, Ruth said quietly: “Now we will go to see Aunt Sallie for a few minutes. Daddie, you’ll have the machine at the door?”

The girls filed into the elevator, and soon were speeding down a long hall to Aunt Sallie’s suite, just across from Ruth’s. The latter knocked softly, and Grace Carter came to the door. “Yes, ever so much better,” Grace murmured, in reply to Ruth’s whispered inquiry. “She wants you to be sure to come in with your friends before they go. Yes; I am sure she would be glad to see them now.”

As the girls entered the vestibule of the apartment, Grace gave Barbara’s hand a furtive squeeze, and whispered: “I’ll just never recover if you don’t come.” There was no chance for a reply, for a precise, though rather kindly voice called from the room beyond: “Ruth, please bring your friends in here.”

With some trepidation the girls advanced toward “Aunt Sallie.” She was a somewhat stout woman, who reclined on a couch in a handsome violet negligée. She scanned the girls sharply for a moment, then in her carefully enunciated syllables, which contrasted oddly with her smooth, plump face, she said: “So you’re the young ladies who stop runaway horses! Well, I never could have done it when I was young. But I’m sure I am indebted to you, and I am happy to know you, my dears. I hope and trust, since my madcap niece is bound to take her trip, that you will come along to keep her company.”

The girls smiled, and Ruth murmured to them: “You see, you really must come for the sake of my family!” Then Aunt Sallie stretched out two plump, jeweled hands and remarked: “I am sure I shall see a great deal of you very soon, my dears, and you will see all you want to of me. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll ask you to excuse me now, my head is so tired.”

“She likes to take a cat-nap pretty often,” explained irreverent Ruth, as soon as they were safely outside the door. “But Aunt Sallie is a good sort, just the same, and the best possible dragon for our trip. Your mother needn’t be in the least afraid to trust you to her. Now for your mother,” Ruth added as the girls entered the elevator.

In front of the broad piazza, the automobile waited on the driveway, with Mr. Stuart as chauffeur. “Pile in,” he smiled, and, in a trice, the girls were whirled homeward once more.

There a mighty conference was held. At first, Mrs. Thurston simply gasped. Then she dumbly shook her head. Barbara and Mollie both protested that nothing would persuade them to leave their mother against her wishes. As Ruth said afterwards, “Daddie did the whole thing.” He explained to the girls, and to their mother, how brief the separation would be. To the mother he expatiated on the delights and educational value of such a trip. To the girls he hinted, delicately, that perhaps the little mother would get a bit of a rest, all by herself, for a few weeks, even with him to take care of. To all present Mr. Stuart enlarged upon the duty of charity toward him, a homeless vacation visitor, starving from eating only hotel food, and toward his daughter, a sisterless girl with a longing for friends. Though the Thurstons shook their heads, between smiles and tears, at the absurdity of these arguments, they finally said a grateful “yes.”

“One really doesn’t need any clothes except veils and dusters for an automobile trip, and I have a big extra stock of those,” concluded Ruth. “I want to run up here for you people – let me see – to-day is Friday – next Monday morning. That’s such a nice day to start.”

“Yes,” again cried Mollie and Barbara.

The girls joined hands and made a low curtsey to Mrs. Thurston and Mr. Stuart. “Allow me to introduce you,” said Ruth in her most impressive voice, “to ‘The Automobile Girls’ on their way to Newport.”

“Long may they flourish!” concluded Mr. Stuart, turning to the girls’ mother. “I’ll come up with Ruth and help you start them off, Mrs. Thurston. Then, if I may, I will come back and have lunch with you later in the day.”

“Till Monday!” called Ruth, and the machine whirled off.

Barbara and Mollie watched it from the gate. “I wish – I wish I could do something for them,” mused Barbara, her chin sunk in her hand, her brown eyes showing that soft brightness that only came to them when she was greatly moved.

How well she was to repay the Stuart kith and kin she could not then guess.

CHAPTER IV – MOTHER’S SECRET

Mollie danced into the kitchen, waving the feather duster. “I’m so happy, I can’t keep still!” she declared, waltzing in a circle around her mother and Barbara, who were in the kitchen washing the breakfast dishes.

“It is just as well you don’t have to,” Mrs. Thurston laughed. “But, children, do be sensible a minute,” she urged, as Barbara joined in the dance, still polishing a breakfast tumbler. “I’ve been thinking, that going to Newport, if only to stay a few days, does mean more clothes than automobile coats and motor veils.”

“Now, you are not to worry, mother dearest,” interrupted Barbara, “or we won’t go a single step. Beside, have you forgotten the twenty-dollar gold-pieces? They are a fortune, two fortunes really.” Barbara had been doing some pretty deep thinking herself, on the clothes question, but it would never do to let her thoughts be known. As elder daughter she tried to save her mother from all the worries she could. “While there are no men around in the family, you’ll just have to pretend I’m older son instead of daughter,” she used to say. “When Mollie marries I’ll resign.”

“I’m through dusting,” Mollie called from the dining-room. “This time I am surely going to get paper and pencil to put down what clothes we most need, if Barbara won’t stop any runaway horses while I am away.”

Mollie’s golden head and Barbara’s tawny one bent anxiously over the paper.

“Ruth’s such an impetuous dear! Starting off on our trip Monday does not give us time to get anything new. Mother, will you go in to town shopping for us, and then send the clothes on later? I suppose we shall be on the road some time. Ruth says we are to stop in any of the places we like, and see all the sights along the way,” continued Barbara.

Gloves, ribbons, stockings, hair ribbons, and – oh, dear, yes! A pink sash for Bab and a blue one for Mollie. Forty dollars wasn’t such a fortune after all. Where was the money left over for the party dresses? Both girls looked a little crestfallen, but Barbara shook her head at Mollie as a signal not to say anything aloud.

Mother had come into the open dining-room door and was watching the girls’ faces.

“I’ve a secret,” Mrs. Thurston said, after a minute. “A beautiful secret that I have been keeping to myself for over a year, now. But I think to-day is the best time I can find to tell it.” Mrs. Thurston was fragile and blond, like Mollie, with a delicate color in her cheeks, and the sweetest smile in the world.

“It’s a nice secret, mother, I can tell by your face.” Mollie put her arm around her mother and pulled her down in a chair, while she and Bab sat on either side of her. “Now, out with it!” they both cried.

“Daughters,” Mrs. Thurston lowered her voice and spoke in a whisper, “upstairs, in my room in the back part of my desk is an old bank book. What do you think is pressed between the pages?” She paused a minute, and Mollie gave her arm a little shake. “In that book,” the mother continued, “are two fifty-dollar bills; one is labeled ‘Bab’ and the other is labeled ‘Baby.’” Mrs. Thurston still called her big, fourteen-year-old daughter “baby” when no one was near.

Mollie and Barbara could only stare at each other, and at their mother in surprise.

“Please, and where did they come from?” queried Barbara.

“They came from nickels and dimes, and sometimes pennies,” Mrs. Thurston replied, as pleased and excited as the girls. “Only a week ago, I went to the bank and had the money changed into the two big bills. Oh, I’ve been saving some time. I saw my girls were growing up, and I imagined that, some day, something nice would happen – not just this, perhaps, but something equally exciting. So I wanted to be ready, and I am. I will get the prettiest clothes I can buy for the money, and I’ll have Miss Mattie, the seamstress, in to help me. When you arrive in the fashionable world of Newport, new outfits will be awaiting my two girls.”

Mrs. Thurston’s face was radiant over the joys in store for her daughters, but Barbara’s eyes were full of tears. She knew what pinching and saving, what sacrifices the two banknotes meant.

Soon Bab asked: “You don’t need me any more, do you, mother? Because, if you don’t, I am going up to look in the treasure chest. I want to find something to re-trim Mollie’s hat. The roses are so faded, on the one she is wearing, it will never do to wear with her nice spring suit.”

There was a little attic over the cottage, and it almost belonged to Barbara. Up there she used to study her lessons, write poetry, and dream of the wonderful things she hoped to do in order to make mother and Mollie rich.

Barbara skipped over to the trunk, where they kept odds and ends of faded finery, gifts from rich cousins who sent their cast-off clothes to the little girls. “This is like Pandora’s chest,” laughed Barbara to herself. “It looks as if everything, now, has gone out of it, except Hope.”

Bump! bang! crash! the chandelier shivered over Mrs. Thurston and Mollie’s heads. Both started up with the one word, “Bab,” on their lips. It was impossible to know what she would attempt, or what would happen to her next.

Just as they reached the foot of the attic steps an apologetic head appeared over the railing. “I am not hurt,” Bab’s voice explained. “I just tried to move the old bureau so I could see better, and I knocked over a trunk. I am so sorry, mother, but the trunk has broken open. It is that old one of yours. I know it made an awful racket!”

“It does not matter, child,” Mrs. Thurston said in a relieved tone, when she saw what had actually happened. “Nothing matters, since you have not killed yourself.”

She bent over her trunk. The old lock had been loosened by the fall, and the top had tumbled off. On the floor were a yellow roll of papers, and a quaint carved fan. Mrs. Thurston picked them up. The papers she dropped in the tray of the trunk, but the fan she kept in her hand. “This little fan,” she said, “I used at the last party your father and I attended together the week before we were married. I have kept it a long time, and I think it very beautiful.” She opened, with loving fingers, a fan of delicately-carved ivory, mounted in silver, and hung on a curious silver chain. “Your great-uncle brought it to me from China, when I was just your age, Mollie! It was given him by a viceroy, in recognition of a service rendered. Which of my daughters would like to take this fan to Newport?”

Barbara shook her head, while Mollie looked at it with longing eyes. “I don’t believe either of us had better take it,” protested Bab, “you have kept it so carefully all this time.”

But her mother said decidedly: “I saved it only for you girls. Here, Mollie, suppose you take it; we will find something else for Bab.”

As Mollie and her mother lifted out the tray of the old trunk, Bab’s eyes caught sight of the roll of papers, and she picked them up.

“Hello, hello!” a cheerful voice sounded from downstairs.

“It’s Grace Carter,” said Mollie. “You don’t mind her coming up, do you, mother?”

Grace was almost a third daughter at the little Thurston cottage. Her own home was big and dull! her mother was a stern, cold woman, and her two brothers were much older than Grace.

“No,” said Mrs. Thurston, going on with her search.

“I couldn’t keep away, chilluns,” apologized Grace as she came upstairs. “Mother told me I’d be dreadfully in the way, but I just had to talk about our trip. Isn’t it too splendid! You are not having secrets, are you?”

“Not from you,” Mrs. Thurston said. “See what I have found for Bab.” Mrs. Thurston held out an open jewel-case. In it was a beautiful spray of pink coral, and a round coral pin.

“I think, Bab, dear,” she said, “you are old enough, now, for such simple jewelry. I will buy you a white muslin, and you can wear this pin at your throat and the spray in your hair. Then, with a coral ribbon sash, who knows but you may be one of the belles of a Newport party?”

Barbara flushed with pleasure over the gifts, but she looked so embarrassed at her mother’s compliment that Mollie and Grace both laughed.

“I declare,” Grace said, “you have less vanity than any girl in the world. Oh, wasn’t it fortunate I discovered your money yesterday? Just as we all jumped out of the car I heard something clink, and picked up one of your twenty dollars. Harry Townsend said he found the other tucked away in the leather of the front seat.”

“And I sat in the back seat all the time I was in the car,” reflected Barbara, under her breath.

When a turquoise blue heart on a string of tiny beads had been added to Mollie’s “going-away” treasures, she and Grace went down stairs.

Barbara still held the roll of papers in her hand and kept turning them over and over, trying to read the faded writing. She caught sight of her father’s signature. “Are these papers valuable?” she asked her mother.

Mrs. Thurston sighed deeply as she answered: “They are old papers of your father’s. Put them away again. I never like to look at them. I found them in his business suit after he was dead. He had sent it to the tailor, and had forgotten all about it.” Mrs. Thurston took the papers from Barbara’s hand and put them back into her trunk.

“Do you think they are valuable, mother?” persisted Barbara.

“I don’t think so,” her mother concluded. “Your uncle told me he looked over all your father’s papers that were of any value.”

After the two had mended the lock of the old trunk, and turned to leave the attic, Barbara was still thinking. “Dearest,” she said thoughtfully, “would you mind my going through those papers some time?” To herself Bab added: “I’d like to ask a clever business man, like Mr. Stuart, to explain them to me.”

But Mrs. Thurston sighed as she said: “Oh, yes, you may look them over, some day, if you like. It won’t make any difference.”

What difference it might make neither Mrs. Thurston or Barbara could then know.

CHAPTER V – THE GLORIOUS START

Before daylight, on the great day, Mollie’s two arms encircled a sleepy Barbara, and a soft voice whispered in her ear: “It isn’t true, is it, Bab, that you and I, two insignificant little girls, who never could have conceived of anything so glorious, are off to-day for Newport, escorted by Ruth’s distinguished friend, ‘Mr. A. Bubble’?”

Barbara was wide awake in a minute.

“I suppose it’s true,” she said, “because it was last night, before we went to bed. Otherwise I would think we had both dreamed it.”

The two girls talked in excited whispers. It wouldn’t do to waken mother any earlier than they must, for she was tired with their preparations, though her daughters had persuaded her to have a little country girl in to help with the work, now that she was to have so important a person as Mr. Stuart for “boarder.”

But at seven o’clock it was mother who called: