Part 12 (1/2)

Then, just as the _Whirlwind_ was about to pass the second wagon, the driver halted his horse and stepped down directly in her path He waved for Cora to stop

”Don't!” called Miss Robbins, and Cora shot by, followed closely by Bess, who turned on ons had all stopped in the middle of the road

The automobiles were now safely out of the wanderers' reach

”That was the tihtest fear of stopping I thought he ht just want to ask some ordinary question”

”You are too brave,” said Miss Robbins ”It is not particularly interesting to stop on a road like this to talk to gypsies when our boys are out of reach”

”We ypsies”

Belle was thoroughly frightened Hazel did not knohat to make of the occurrence, but to Cora and to Bess, who had so lately learned soypsy ways, the matter looked more serious, now that there was time to think of it

”There they are!” shouted Bess, as she espied the two runabouts stopped at the roadside

”They are getting lunch,” said Hazel ”Look at Jack putting down the things on the grass”

”They certainly are,” confirmed Cora ”Now, isn't that nice of the us!”

Neither the ypsy wagons was about to lead to--serious trouble for some of the party

CHAPTER X

AN EXPLOSION

The rain came It descended in perfect sheets, and only the fact that our tourists could reach a mountain house saved the

They had just partaken of a very agreeable lunch by the roadside, all arranged and prepared by the boys, with endless burned potatoes down on the ave Daht do, and then our friends hurried away froht them some way on the direct road to the Berkshi+res, and in one of those spots where it would see or two, the young people found a small country community

The special feature of this co house, but a well-equipped hotel, with all the requisites and perquisites of a first-class hostelry

”Noto-day,” remarked Cora, as, after a wait of two hours, she ventured to observe the future possible weather ”It looks as if it would rain all there was above, and then start in to scoop up some from the ocean Did you ever see such clouds?”

Ed said he had not Walter said he did not want to, while the girls didn't just know They wanted to be off, and hoped Cora's observations were not well-founded

Miss Robbins found in the hotel a sick baby to take up her ti her, while the wornout and worried irl of four years, had taken cold, and had the most troublesome of troubles--an earache--so that she cried constantly, until Miss Robbins eased the pain

When the boys realized what a really good doctor the girls' chaperon was, they all wanted to get sick in bed, Jack clai the first ”whack”

But Walter had some claim onup he had eaten more stuff from the lunch basket than just one Walter could comfortably store away, and the headache that folloas not mere pretense

So the rainy afternoon at Restover Hotel was not idle in incident It was almost tea time when Cora had a chance to speak with her brother privately She beckoned him to a corner of the porch where the rain could not find thean, ”do you know that the people in the gypsy wagon really did try to stop us? All that prattle of Bess and Belle was not nonsense Only for Miss Robbins I should have stopped”

”Well, what's the answer?” asked her brother