The Corner House Girls on a Tour. Hill Grace Brooks
had thought to. Philly Collinger was going to take me. But if he doesn’t recover his car he’ll not take me auto riding very soon again.”
“Well,” said Ruth, having received a nod of acquiescence from Agnes, “I don’t see why you shouldn’t go there to-day just the same. Won’t you come with us? There’s room in the car.”
“Goody! Of course she can!” cried Agnes, clapping her hands.
“I think that would be real nice,” agreed Tess.
Dot moved over at once to make room. “She can sit beside me and the Alice-doll,” she proclaimed.
“Well, I declare!” exclaimed Mrs. Heard, her face alight with pleasure at this united invitation. “You are just the nicest girls I ever met. I wonder if I’d better?”
“Of course,” said Ruth. “You can find some place to leave the pony. Or Neale can, I’m sure.”
“Why, I know these people right in the very next house,” said Mrs. Heard. “Indeed I expected to call there if Jonas ever got that far.”
Neale got briskly out of the car again. “I’ll go and unharness him,” he said, cheerfully. “You just find out where I shall put him. He’d rather have you ride in an automobile than drag you himself,” and he laughed.
“Did – did he tell you so, Neale, when you were talking with him?” asked Dot, in amazement.
Then they all laughed.
CHAPTER III – WHAT MRS. HEARD TOLD
In ten minutes the Kenway car was moving again. Jonas had been put up at the barn of Mrs. Heard’s friends, near which the pony had balked, and Neale soon whisked them out of sight of the place.
“This – this is just delightful,” sighed Mrs. Heard. “Especially after sitting behind that brute of a pony. I do love an automobile.”
“So do I!” Agnes cried. “I’d rather ride in this car than in a golden chariot – I know I would.”
“I don’t know how they run chariots, nowadays,” said Neale, chuckling; “whether by horse-power or gas. But sometimes a car balks, you know.”
“Not so often as that Jonas,” declared Mrs. Heard. “I’ve been out with my nephew a lot. His is a nice car. I hope he’ll find it.”
“Why, of course the thieves will be apprehended,” said Ruth. “What good are the police?”
“When it comes to autos,” said Neale, slyly, “the police are mostly good for stopping you and getting you fined.”
“Well, don’t you dare drive too fast and get us fined, Neale O’Neil,” ordered Ruth, sternly.
“No, ma’am,” he returned. But Agnes whispered in his ear:
“I don’t care how fast you run it, Neale. I love to go fast.”
“You’ll be a speed fiend, Aggie,” he declared. “That’s what you’ll be.”
“Oh! I want to drive. I must learn.”
“You’ll have to ask Mr. Howbridge about that,” Neale told her.
“Oh!”
“Yes, ma’am! He told me that I shouldn’t allow anybody to run the car but a properly qualified person.”
“You don’t mean it?” gasped the eager girl.
“That’s right! A person with a license.”
“I can’t believe it, Neale O’Neil!” wailed Agnes. “How am I ever going to learn, then?”
“You’ll have to go to the garage as I did and take lessons.”
Agnes pouted over this. Mrs. Heard, meanwhile, was saying to Ruth:
“Yes, the stealing of my nephew’s auto was an outrage. Politics in this county are most disgraceful. If we women voted – ”
“But, Mrs. Heard! what have politics to do with your nephew’s auto being stolen?” cried Ruth.
“Oh! it wasn’t any ordinary thief, or perhaps thieves, who took his car. He is sure of that. You see, there are some politicians who want the plans and maps of the new road surveys his office has been making.”
“What sort of maps are those?” asked Tess, who was listening. “Like those we have to outline in the geography?”
“They are not like those, chicken,” laughed Ruth. “They are outlines – drawings. They show the road levels and grades. I guess you don’t understand. Don’t you remember those men who came the other day and looked through instruments on our sidewalk and measured with a long tape line, and all that?”
“Oh, yes,” confessed Tess. “I saw them.”
“Well, they were surveyors. And they were working for Mr. Collinger, I suppose,” said Ruth.
“Oh!”
“I saw them, too,” proclaimed Dot. “I thought they were photo – photographers. I went out there and stood with my Alice-doll right in front of one of those things on the three sticks.”
“You did?” cried Agnes, who heard this. “What for, Dottums?”
“To get our picture tooken,” said Dot, gravely. “And then I asked the man when it would be done and if we could see a picture.”
“Ho, ho!” laughed Neale O’Neil. “What did he say?”
“Why,” confessed the smallest Corner House girl, indignantly, “he said I’d be grown up – and so would Alice – before that picture was enveloped – ”
“‘Developed’!” cried Tess.
“No. Enveloped,” said Dot, stoutly. “You always get photograph proofs in an envelope.”
Ruth and Mrs. Heard were laughing heartily. Agnes said, admiringly:
“You’re a wonder, Dot! If there is a possible way of fumbling a thing, you do it.”
The little girls were not likely to understand all that Mrs. Heard said about the disappearance of Mr. Collinger’s automobile – no more than Dot understood about the surveyor’s transit. But they listened.
“You understand, Miss Ruth,” said the aunt of the county surveyor, “that Phil Collinger is responsible for all those tracings and maps that are being made in this road survey.
“If it gets out just what changes are to be made in grades and routes through the county before the commission renders its report, there is a chance for some of these ‘pauper politicians,’ as Philly calls them, to make money.”
“I don’t see how,” said Agnes, putting her oar in. “What good would the maps do even dishonest people?”
“Because with foreknowledge of the highway commission’s determinations, men could go and get options upon property adjoining the highways that will be changed, and either sell to the county at a big profit or hold abutting properties for the natural rise in land values that will follow.”
“I understand what an option is,” said Ruth. “It is a small sum which a man pays down on a place, with the privilege of buying it at a stated price within a given length of time.”
“You talk just like a judge, Ruthie,” giggled Agnes. “For my part I don’t understand it at all. But I’m sorry Mr. Collinger lost his car.”
“And it was stolen so boldly,” said Neale, shaking his head.
“But why did they steal the car, Mrs. Heard?” demanded Ruth, sticking to the main theme. “What has that to do with the surveyors’ maps?”
“Why,” said the lady, slowly, “they must have seen Philly come out of the court house and throw a package into the car. He covered it with a robe. They knew – or supposed they knew – that he carried the maps around with him. He could not