Part 7 (1/2)
”It's Mrs. Cartwright,” she said. ”I am so pleased! I didn't suppose you would remember me.”
”Of course I remember you, Ruth,” Mrs. Cartwright protested. ”It has been only two years since I saw you at my own wedding in Chicago. My memory is surely longer than that. Isn't that your aunt, Miss Stuart?”
Mrs. Cartwright moved across the aisle to speak to Miss Sallie and to introduce her husband. When they had shaken hands, Mrs. Cartwright asked: ”May I know what you are doing in this part of the world at this season?”
”I am playing chaperon to my madcap niece and her three friends, who are doing an automobile trip to Newport without a man. Ruth is her own chauffeur,” Miss Sallie explained, laughing.
”How jolly of you, Ruth, and how clever! I am so glad you are going to Newport. Did you know my summer place is down there? I am only in town for a day or two. My husband had to come on business and I am with him.
We shall be motoring home, soon, and may pa.s.s you if you are to take things slowly. Why not join me at New Haven? My husband's brother is a junior at Yale, and we've promised to stop there for a day. There is a dance on at Alumni Hall. I'd be too popular for words if I could take you four pretty girls along with me!”
Ruth turned to her aunt with glowing eyes. ”We did want to see the college dreadfully,” she said. ”I have never seen a big Eastern university. We didn't dream of knowing anybody who would show us around.
Wouldn't it be too much for you to have us all on your hands?”
”Certainly not,” said Mrs. Cartwright, ”but a most decided pleasure. I shall meet you in New Haven, say, day after to-morrow, and I'll telegraph to-night to my brother, whose name is Donald Cartwright, by the way, to expect us.”
The music was about to begin again, but, before Mrs. Cartwright went over to her seat, she put her hand on Mollie's curls. ”I must see this little girl often at Newport. Then I can thank her better for saving my lovely b.u.t.terfly for me. I hope to make all of you have a beautiful time.” She put the jewel into her hair again, and Mollie looked at it thoughtfully. She was to know it again some day, under stranger circ.u.mstances.
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 rea.s.sured 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 cus.h.i.+ons, 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 bra.s.s tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs to pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s, 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?”