Automobiles -- Juvenile fiction; Detective and mystery stories; Girls -- Societies and clubs -- Juvenile fiction
"There's Cedar Grove over there!" she shouted; "and Aunt May's is only
four miles from the turn in the road."
"But we are going to lunch on the road," replied Cora. "The girls are
bent on camping out."
A cloud fell over Daisy's sensitive face. "I must telephone to papa
that I am all right," she remarked. "Aunt May expected us last night,
and if you girls do not want to come, Maud and I will go. We can meet
you farther on."
"Oh, of course," Cora hurried to say, "we must go on, since we are
expected. We can have the camping out to-morrow. I had actually lost
track of our plans in the mix-up."
"Isn't it too bad that Hazel had to turn back?" said Ray. "I do hope
her brother is not seriously ill."
"I heard last night that he was very much better," replied Cora. "It
seems that robbery unnerved him. Ridiculous as the situation appeared,
it was no fun to Paul. I don't wonder he broke down."
Bess, Belle and Adele were in the Flyaway, and they, like the others,
seemed to take new pleasure in flying over the roads since they had
realized what it meant to have to stand still.
Adele was all enthusiasm. She had not often been privileged to enjoy
automobile sport, and the prospect of the trip seemed like an unopened
wonder book to her--every mile revealed new delights.
Along the shady byways, through the Numberland Hills, past the famous
springs, where everybody stopped to drink and make a wish, the motor
girls took their way.
"Let me lead now, Cora?" asked Daisy. "I am just dying for Aunt May to
see us come up. And say, girls, I've got the dearest, darlingest
cousin--a young doctor!"
A scream went up from every throat. Daisy had not told of her
attractive cousin until the party were within very sight of him.
"Me first!" shouted Belle. "I have been a perfect angel ever since we
left Chelton; didn't even speak to the nice man with the short
thumb--Clip's friend."
At that moment an auto dashed by. Tillie seized Cora's arm.
"That's the man who talked about Hastings!" she exclaimed. "The man
who took tea in our house yesterday."
"And that's the very man we met on the road the day Paul was help up,"
Cora declared. "Oh, now I see the coincidence. Of course they heard
of the hold-up, they being on the road about the time it happened, and
when they were at your house they might have been discussing the latest
account of the affair--there was something in the daily paper about it,
you know."
Cora was not sure she believed herself, but at the moment she decided
it would be best for the happiness of the party to think lightly of the
meeting with the strange men. Rob Roland's voice still rang in her
ears like a threat, and while she was no coward neither did she invite
trouble.
There seemed now to be clearly some connection between the missing
papers from the mailbag and the missing promise book, but of the two
Cora's girlish heart considered the loss of the book the more serious.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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