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CHAPTER I – BARBARA TO THE RESCUE

“Pink hair ribbons!”

Barbara Thurston’s brown, bright face seemed to twinkle all over, as she clinked a yellow coin on the marble top of the little sewing table.

“Silk stockings!” chorused Mollie Thurston gleefully. “Wasn’t it the luckiest thing that the hotel people wanted so many berries this year!” And she, too, sent a gold piece spinning over the smooth surface. “But, perhaps, we won’t be invited after all,” she sighed.

“Nonsense!” rejoined Barbara energetically. “When Grace Carter says she’ll fix a thing, you can wager she will. She’s known Ruth Stuart for three summers now, and she’s told us we’d be invited to Ruth’s party this year. I can read the invitations already. The only thing worrying me was what we’d wear. Now the strawberry crop has turned out so well, and mother’s a brick, and will let us use our money as we wish – I think we’re fixed. Then – who knows?”

“I am sure Ruth Stuart’s lots of fun when you get to know her,” interrupted Mollie eagerly. “If Cousin Gladys wasn’t boarding at the hotel with her, we’d have met her long before. Isn’t Gladys a stuck-up goose? Never mind. We’ll have the laugh on her when she sees us at the party. Let’s be de-lighted to meet her. I should love to watch her when she is fussed!”

“After all,” mused Barbara, thoughtfully, “her father was in partnership with papa. It’s mighty funny that uncle got all the money. I wonder – ” She stopped playing with her gold piece and gazed thoughtfully out of the sitting room window at the hot, empty, yellow road that ran so near the tiny cottage.

Barbara Thurston was sixteen, Mollie just two years younger, and nearly all their lives had been spent in that little cottage. John Thurston, the girls’ father, had died suddenly when Mollie was only three years old.

He had been at that time in the wholesale clothing business with his wife’s brother, Ralph Le Baron, and was supposed to be a rich man. But when his affairs were settled up, his brother-in-law, the executor, announced that a very small interest in the business remained to Mrs. Thurston. He hinted, darkly, at stock speculation on her husband’s part, and poor Mrs. Thurston, overcome by grief, had not wanted to question deeply.

She, herself, happened to own the little cottage, in Kingsbridge, in which she and her brother had lived as children. Acting on his advice, she settled there with her two little girls, and had remained ever since, subsisting on the small income her brother regularly transmitted to her from her dead husband’s tiny business interest. Le Baron and his wife, with their daughter, Gladys, usually spent the summer in Kingsbridge, at the one “summer hotel” in the place; but intercourse between the two families had come to be little sought on either side. Kingsbridge was a quiet little village in New Jersey, and, except for the summer visitors, there was little gayety. Gladys Le Baron, especially, had shown herself icily oblivious of the existence of her younger cousins, Barbara and Mollie.

These two were delightful examples of self-reliant young America. Barbara, the elder, looked a regular “nut-brown maid,” with chestnut hair that never would “stay put,” and usually a mischievous twinkle in the brown eyes beneath the straying locks. But there was plenty of genuinely forceful energy stored away in her slim, well-knit young body, and her firm chin and broad forehead told both of determination and intelligence.

Her sister, Mollie, was fair, with lovely curling blond hair, and a quaint drollery of speech that won her many friends. Both sisters had grown up quietly, helping their mother about the house, as they could afford no servant, going to the village school, and, when they wanted anything beyond the plainest necessities of life, earning it.

This summer both had set their hearts on “really-truly” party clothes, not “hand-me-downs.” Their friend, Grace Carter, daughter of Squire Carter, the village dignitary, had promised them invitations to “the event of the season,” the party to be given by her friend Ruth Stuart, a rich Western girl who quite recently had come to spend her summer at Kingsbridge. And didn’t Ruth Stuart live at the same hotel with Gladys Le Baron, the snobbish cousin?

To meet the enemy on her own ground, and to have the fun of a party besides, was certainly worth picking strawberries for, thought Barbara and Mollie. So they scoured the country round for the sweet wild ones the hotel visitors liked best. Now each of the girls was fingering gleefully her twenty-dollar gold-piece that meant many days’ work in the past, but pretty dresses in the future.

The prospect was too alluring for Barbara to spend much time in wondering about the real “why” of their fallen fortunes, though the question had come to her before, and would again. Now she was ready to join Mollie in eager planning as to “just what they’d get.”

“Go get a pencil and paper, Molliekins, and we’ll set it all down,” she laughed.

Mollie went into the further room and Barbara waited, eyes absent-mindedly fixed on the yellow stretch of road.

Suddenly she became conscious of a curious pounding. There was a queer, wild rhythm to it, and it seemed to be coming nearer and nearer.

Barbara put her head out of the open window. She could see nothing but a cloud of dust far down the road. Yet the pounding sounded louder every moment.

Then she knew. The noise came from the furious feet of runaway horses. And they were coming past the house with their helpless, unknown victims.

What could Barbara do? Her mother was asleep upstairs and there was no man about the place. There was no other house near. Besides, the slightest delay might prove fatal.

All this seemed to flash through Barbara’s brain in a second. She knew she must act. Swiftly and easily as a boy she vaulted the open window, pausing only to snatch a closed umbrella that leaned against the sill. How glad she was she had forgotten to put it away in the closet when she came in from the shower yesterday!

In an instant the girl sped through the gate and out into the road, opening her umbrella as she ran.

There she paused, squarely in front of the approaching dust cloud, very near now. She could hear the click of the stones, cast aside by the flying feet of the horses, and she caught a glimpse of two black heads, wild-eyed and foam-flecked, through the whirling dust.

Barbara strained her eyes to locate hanging bridles. But meantime, swiftly and mechanically, she was opening and shutting the big black umbrella.

“If they’ll only stop!” she murmured.

And they did. Fear-crazed already, their legs trembling after a terrific run, the horses dared not seek encounter with that horrible bat-like creature that seemed to await them.

Scarcely five feet away, their wild pace broke. They hesitated, and Barbara flung herself forward and seized the dangling bridles. For a moment she pulled on them with wrists of steel, but it was not necessary. The horses drooped their weary heads and gladly stood still.

Then, and only then, Barbara glanced at the carriage and its occupants.

It was an open four-seated carriage, and in it were Ruth Stuart, Grace Carter, Gladys Le Baron and a strange young man somewhat older than the rest of the party. The girls were leaning back, with closed eyes and white faces. The young man was staring straight ahead, with a blank expression, fear depicted on every feature.

Barbara dared not leave the horses even now. “Mollie! Mollie!” she called.

Mollie was already out of the house. From the window, terror-stricken, she had seen it all.

“Get the girls out,” Barbara directed. “I can’t leave these brutes, though I guess they’re all right now.”

In the meantime, Grace and Gladys had opened their eyes. Mollie now stood at the carriage step, her hand outstretched.

As they recognized their rescuers, Grace’s pale face lit up. Even Gladys, for once, tried to summon a gracious and grateful smile.

“We’re all right, Mollie,” spoke up Grace, “but I think Ruth has fainted. I’ll help you get her into the house.”

Suddenly the young man started up. “I beg your pardon,” he remarked in a smooth, pleasantly-modulated voice, “but you really must let me help. I have been utterly helpless so far,” and his glance wandered admiringly and a trifle shamefacedly toward Barbara.

In an instant, he had sprung over the wheel and gently half lifted, half dragged Ruth Stuart off the seat.

As her feet touched the ground, she too opened her eyes, only to close them again with a shivering sigh. Grace was at her side in a moment.

“Try to walk to the house, dear,” Grace urged. “It’s only a few steps.”

Mollie took the place of the young man, and, between the two girls, Ruth stumbled to the gate.

The young man stepped up to Barbara. “Can I help you?” he ventured, looking at the now quieted horses.

But a cold voice sounded from the carriage, where Gladys still sat. “I think you might think a little about me, Harry,” she exclaimed.

The young fellow bit his lip and hesitated.

“Please,” broke in Barbara, “please take her to the house. I can’t get these horses and this carriage through the gate. It isn’t big enough. But I’ll hitch them to the fence and stay with them for a few minutes. You must need rest, all of you!”

Harry Townsend bit his lip as he caught the sarcastic inflection in Barbara’s last sentence, but did as he was directed, and walked slowly toward the house with Gladys.

Left to herself, Barbara led the horses, still attached to the carriage, toward the fence, and hitched them by the reins in a clever way all country girls know. “Good boys! Poor boys!” she murmured, petting them, for they were still shivering pitifully with fright.

For several minutes she stood talking to them. Then Mollie’s anxious face appeared at the door, and in a moment she stood beside her sister.

“What shall we do?” she asked. “Miss Stuart is feeling very ill, and wants to go home at once. She and all the others refuse to step foot into that carriage again – and I can’t blame them; but, you know, it’s two miles to the hotel, if it’s a step, and we haven’t a telephone. Grace says Ruth’s father would send the au-to-mo-bile,” – Mollie pronounced the word with reverent care – “but what’s the quickest way of getting the message to them? Mother suggests running over to Jim Trumbull’s and seeing if he’ll hitch up and drive to the hotel. But it’s half a mile to his place, and he’s very likely to be away anyhow. What do you – ?”

Barbara interrupted her decisively. “I’ll just drive those horses back to the hotel myself, Mollie Thurston,” she said calmly.

“Barbara, you can’t! It’s risking your life!”

“Nonsense! There isn’t an ounce of spirit left in the poor, frightened things. I guess I haven’t broken Jim Trumbull’s colts for him without knowing how to handle horses. You go tell Miss Stuart that her automobile will be here in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. And see, Mollie,” the twinkle shone in Barbara’s eyes, “of course they’ll give me a ride back in the auto!”

Laughing at Mollie’s protests, the plucky girl untied the horses and turned them carefully.

“Stand at their heads, just a minute,” she cheerfully directed. Then Barbara gathered up the reins and climbed up to the high seat.

“Drop anchor, Mollie,” she called, and trotted slowly down the road behind the quieted blacks.

CHAPTER II – LOST, STRAYED OR STOLEN

“Mollie Thurston, has Barbara driven off with those awful horses?”

It was Grace Carter who spoke. She had reached the doorway of the cottage just in time to catch a glimpse of the departing equipage.

Without waiting for a reply, she turned from the open door to the group inside just as Mollie rejoined them, exclaiming:

“Barbara is driving the runaways to the hotel for the machine!”

Mrs. Thurston started. She had been downstairs for some time helping to make the victims of the accident comfortable. She was a slim, sweet-faced little woman, whose entire world lay in her two lively young daughters, in whom she had unlimited faith.

But, in a moment, she smiled and said, “I am not afraid to trust Barbara with anything.”

Ruth Stuart’s lately pale face was glowing. “I think that is regularly splendid of her!” she exclaimed, with more animation than she had shown since she had left the carriage.

“Oh, Barbara is used to taking care of herself,” Gladys Le Baron interposed with a supercilious smile.

Mollie looked at her cousin a moment. “Yes,” she answered steadily, “we think it is a pretty good thing in our family.”

Gladys flushed, and had no reply ready. Ruth looked surprised and Grace plunged into the breach.

“Oh,” she tried to murmur off-handedly, “Barbara and Mollie and Gladys are cousins, you know.”

“And you never – ” Ruth turned to Gladys, then stopped and smiled. “Well, it’s awfully jolly to have met you all in this nice, informal way. Grace has often spoken of you,” she said.

The girls had to laugh at this, so Ruth continued: “I’m well enough now to be proper and conventional, I suppose. I believe you know I’m Ruth Stuart. Mrs. Thurston, Mollie, have you met Gladys’s friend, Mr. Townsend?”

The young man came out from the corner near the window, where he had been seated, and bowed gayly. Ruth nodded in a satisfied fashion.

“There, doesn’t that finish it?” she sighed. “The rest of you are all acquainted, aren’t you? Now, won’t one of you, please tell me why those awful horses aren’t running still? I know some horrible white hay-caps started them, and Jones fell off the seat, and now we are here. Who stopped us?”

Everybody turned to Ruth at once. “Why, Barbara stopped them,” Grace managed to say first. “Barbara – ”

A gay laugh sounded in the doorway, and Barbara herself appeared before them.

“Now I’ve caught you!” she cried merrily, her bright eyes sweeping the circle. Then she turned to Ruth with a mock curtsey.

“Your ladyship’s chariot waits,” she declaimed, then continuing in quick explanation: “You see, your driver was scarcely hurt and he rushed back to the hotel at once and sent the automobile along the road where he had seen the horses disappearing. Before I’d gone a quarter of a mile, I met the machine with the chauffeur, and doctor and Jones himself. We sent Jones back with the horses, though they weren’t bothering me a bit, and I came back in the automobile. How are you feeling?” and the bright voice softened sympathetically, as she noted Ruth’s pale cheeks.

For answer the girl arose quickly, and held out both hands to Barbara. “You’re a brick,” she said simply. “I fainted, like a goose, and they’ve just told me what you did. I am so glad I know you, and I guess my father will be glad, too – not to say thankful! Now, please won’t you and your sister dine with us to-morrow? No? Make it lunch; then I’ll see you sooner. I won’t take no for an answer, because I have a very important plan. Dad decides as quickly as I do. So if you’ll only say yes – but I can’t tell you about it now. Perhaps, if I make you curious, you’ll be more interested when the time comes!” Ruth laughed mischievously.

“What have you up your sleeve now, Ruth Stuart?” asked Grace, curiously. “I never saw such a girl as you are for chain-lightning projects!”

“You’ll see,” laughed Ruth. “You’re in it too, you know. You must be one of my lunch party to-morrow. I know you and Mr. Townsend have another engagement, Gladys, so you will pardon my delivering my invitation before you. Now, I won’t say another word.

“Come,” she continued, addressing the party, “we must be off at once. If the news of this runaway circulates through the hotel and reaches either your father or mine, Gladys, they’ll be wild with fright. Good-bye, Mrs. Thurston, and thank you. You’ve been awfully good to us. As for you two” – holding out her hands to Barbara and Mollie – “wait till tomorrow at lunch!”

Drawing the two Thurston girls with her, she stepped outside the door and to the gate, the rest of the party following. The machine was waiting in the road, and out of it hurried the hotel doctor toward Ruth.

“Aren’t you hurt, Miss Stuart?” he cried. “I would have come in, but Miss Thurston said she would go in first and see how you were.”

“I’m perfectly well, doctor,” smiled Ruth. “It’s too bad you had to come way out here. I hope father will not hear you have been sent for!”

She patted affectionately the nearest tire-rim of the big automobile. “Bless the ‘bubble’s’ heart,” she murmured. “He wouldn’t run away with his missus. Barbara, Mollie, this is my best friend, Mr. A. Bubble. I think you’ll get better acquainted with him before long. I wish you could come with me now, but I’m afraid neither you nor ‘Bubble’ would be quite comfortable. And you three must get along well together from the start.”

The doctor helped Ruth into the big red touring car and Gladys and Grace followed. The two men and the chauffeur crowded together in the front seat.

“Au revoir,” chorused the autoists, and “see you tomorrow,” nodded Ruth emphatically to the girls. Then, in a whirl of dust, the big machine sped out of sight.

“Isn’t she a dear?” burst forth Mollie, as the sisters turned to go back to the house. “How her eyes shine when she talks! I wonder if I could do my hair that way. I was sure she’d be nice – but what do you suppose she means by that plan? Barbara, for heaven’s sake, how did you happen to think of that umbrella stunt? It was great, but you did look so funny – like a sort of desperate, feminine Darius Green with his flying machine! No wonder you stopped the horses!”

“Oh, I heard of a man who stopped a stampede of cattle that way out West once,” Barbara answered abstractedly. There was a puzzled look on her face. “Mollie,” she said abruptly, as they entered the house, “you didn’t take our money with you, when you went into the bedroom for pencil and paper?”

“Why, no,” replied Mollie wonderingly. “It must be over there on the table now. I remember I noticed it as I came into the room. I wondered, for a second, why you’d gone away and left it so near the open window. That was before I looked through the window and saw what you were doing. It must be there,” and Mollie hurried over to the window.

The next moment she turned an astonished face to her sister. “Barbara!” she exclaimed, “it isn’t here, anywhere!” Indeed, the marble top of the little table was absolutely bare. There was no sign of either of the gold pieces.

“Let’s look on the floor,” said Barbara, quietly. “One of our guests may have unconsciously brushed them off.”

Both girls stopped and began a careful survey of the carpeted floor, under the table, and near the window. Their search was unrewarded.

“Let’s look in the grass outside,” suggested Mollie. “You might have brushed them off as you went through the window.”

“But didn’t you say you saw them on the table, when you came back into the room and found me gone?” queried Barbara, thoughtfully.

“I was sure I did,” Mollie replied. “But sometimes one remembers imaginary things. And if the money had been in the room when I came in, it would be there now. I’ll ask mother – ”

“No, don’t,” said Barbara quickly; “at least, not yet.” Mrs. Thurston had gone into the kitchen directly after her return from the gate, and had heard none of the conversation. “There’s no need to worry mother about it now. Of course we must find it somewhere. Money doesn’t walk off by itself. We’ll go out and look in the grass under the window.”

On hands and knees the girls worked through the closely cropped grass underneath the sitting room window. Not two days before, they themselves had clipped this bit of lawn with big shears, and it was so close that there seemed no possibility of anything being hidden in it. Certainly nothing was to be found. The girls even looked over the short path, and ground near it. “Your skirts might have switched those small things a long way,” observed Mollie, wisely. Yet, as before, the result was – nothing.

Giving it up, at last, the girls sat down in a little garden seat at one side of the tiny yard, and looked at each other ruefully.

“I am so glad I feel sure Miss Stuart will invite us to her party, now,” commented Mollie dryly. “Our new gowns and the pink hair ribbons and the silk stockings will be so awfully fetching! But where, where, where, by all that’s mysterious, can those double-eagles have flown?”

Suddenly she looked curiously at her sister. “Barbara, you are thinking of something!” she exclaimed. “Have you any nameable idea?”

“No,” said Barbara, quickly; “it isn’t nameable.”

“All right; you never would talk when you didn’t want to,” complained Mollie. “And I know you want that money back as badly as I do. Tell you what – I’ll say the fairies’ charm. Don’t you remember the one the old gypsy woman taught us? Wish she were here to say it for us! She promised to do all sorts of things for me when I found her in the field with a sprained ankle and helped her back to camp. Why! why! Barbara, this is uncanny– she’s coming now!”

In truth, down the road a queer little bent figure was seen approaching. “I know her,” continued Mollie eagerly, “by that funny combination of red and yellow handkerchiefs she wears on her head. Do let’s go and meet her and tell her – it can’t do any harm.”

“What nonsense, Mollie!” laughed Barbara. But she followed her younger sister, who had already started down the road toward the quaint, little, gaudily-turbaned dame.

Between them, the girls brought her into the yard, Mollie meanwhile busily explaining their predicament. “You’ll help us, won’t you, Granny Ann?” she coaxed childishly. “You said, that time that I helped you home, you’d always be near when I wanted you.”

Granny Ann sat on the garden seat, looking gravely down at the half-laughing, half-serious girls huddled at her feet.

“I knowed,” she began in a high, cracked voice, “I knowed my little fair one,” lightly touching Mollie’s curls, “would need me to-day. Far away I was, when I heard the shadow of her voice callin’ out to me – and miles I have traveled to reach her. Granny Ann is thirsty, and she has had no food since morning.” The old woman looked reproachfully at her listeners.

Barbara’s eyes twinkled at Mollie’s rather crestfallen face, when the sybil voiced this most human request. But she said cheerily: “All right, Granny; supper isn’t ready yet, but I know mother’ll have something.” Then Barbara hurried into the house, the gypsy dame waiting solemnly until she reappeared, a moment later, with sandwiches, doughnuts and a big glass of milk.

Granny Ann smiled, but she didn’t speak until the lunch had quite disappeared. Then the old woman rose impressively. “There’s one sure magic for fetching back money that has gone,” she declaimed. “Because you have been good to me, ‘Little Fair One,’ you and your sister, I will say the golden spell for you.” With her hands crossed, Granny Ann began to croon dreamily:

 
Gold is gladsome, gold is gay,
  Here to-night and gone to-day,
  Here to-day and gone to-morrow,
  Guest of joy and host of sorrow.
  Gold of mine that’s flitted far,
  Forget me not, where’er you are.
  Mine you are, as Pluto wrought you,
  Mine you are, whoever’s sought you,
  Come by sea or come by land —
  Homeward fly into my hand!
 

Three times Granny Ann repeated this. Then, with a queer dignity, oddly assorting with her variegated raiment, she turned to the girls. “It will return,” she said; “now, I must go to my own people.”

“But I thought you said you came here for us by yourself!” protested Mollie.

The gypsy dame drew herself up. “I travel not alone!” she said, stiffly. “Good-bye.”

“Oh, good-bye, and thanks ever so much, Granny Ann!” cried both of the girls.

But Granny Ann did not turn her head. Barbara looked at Mollie, her eyes dancing. “The blessed old fraud!” she teased; “her people decided to camp somewhere about, and she thought she’d come over for a call and a lunch, and whatever else she could get! I believe she actually expected us to cross her palm with silver for saying that little rhyme. But I wish I knew really – ”

All at once a faint chug-chug sounded in the distance. In a moment a big red touring car appeared, enveloped in dust. “Why, it looks like Ruth’s car!” exclaimed Mollie, excitedly. “Yes, I do believe that young man seated beside the chauffeur is the Mr. Townsend who was with them. Barbara – ”

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.”