The Automobile Girls Along the Hudson: or, Fighting Fire in Sleepy Hollow. Crane Laura Dent
to conceal his glances by the newspaper.
“That man is rather good-looking in a foreign sort of way,” whispered Mollie.
“Too much blacky face and shiny eye, to suit my taste,” replied Bab. “He looks like a pirate, or a smuggler, in that black leather suit.”
“Dear me, you are severe, Bab,” observed Ruth. “If he were not so young, I should take him for an opera singer on a vacation. He would do nicely dressed as a cavalier.”
“Be careful, my dears; you are talking much too loudly,” admonished Miss Sallie, for the young foreigner had evidently overheard the conversation, and had turned his face away to conceal an expression of amusement.
“I vote we adjourn to the porch,” said Ruth, “until we decide where we are going this morning. Come on, auntie, dear. There may be a rocking chair adventure waiting for you on that shady piazza. I saw a white haired gentleman giving you many glances of admiration, this morning, around the corner of his newspaper. Did you notice it, girls?”
“I did,” replied Grace, somewhat hesitatingly, for she was just a little fearful about entering into these teasing humors with Ruth.
“Don’t be silly, Ruth,” said Miss Sallie. But she glanced quickly over her shoulder, nevertheless, as she led the little procession from the dining room, her lavender muslin draperies floating in the breeze. She stopped in the office and bought a newspaper, then proceeded to the shady piazza, where she seated herself in a rocking chair and unfolded the paper.
The girls leaned over the railing and looked down into the street, while Ruth expounded her views on their morning’s ride.
“Suppose we have a lunch fixed up,” she was saying, “and spend the morning at Sleepy Hollow? It’s lovelier than anything you ever imagined, just what Washington Irving says of it, a place to dream in and see visions.”
A charming tenor voice floated out from an upper window, singing a song in some foreign language.
The girls looked at each other and laughed.
“He did hear us, and he is an opera singer,” whispered Grace.
“I knew it,” came Miss Sallie’s voice from the depths of the paper.
“Knew what?” demanded the four girls somewhat guiltily, as the singing continued.
“Knew that we would all be cremated if we came into these dreadful wild regions,” replied Miss Sallie, as she gazed tragically down the shaded street lined with beautiful old homes.
“But, Miss Sallie,” interposed Barbara in soothing tones, “the fires are up in the Catskills and the Adirondacks, aren’t they? It is only when the wind blows in this direction that we get the smoke from them. Even New York gets it, then; and certainly there is no danger of New York burning up from the forest fires.”
“Very well, my dears, if we do run into one of those shocking conflagrations, you may just recall my words to you this morning.”
The girls all laughed, and there is nothing prettier than the sound of the light-hearted laughter of young girls; at least so thought the tall, military-looking man they had seen at breakfast. He had strolled out on the piazza, and was walking straight toward Miss Sallie with an air of determination that was unmistakable even to the stately lady in lavender.
A few feet from her chair he paused as if a sudden thought had arrested him, and the two looked straight into each other’s faces for the space of half a minute. The girls were fairly dumb with amazement as they watched the little drama. Miss Sallie’s face had flushed and paled before it resumed its natural peachy tone. They could not see the face of the stranger whose back was turned to them.
“Is it possible,” asked Miss Sallie after a moment, in a strange voice, “that this is John Ten Eyck?”
She had risen from her chair, in her excitement, and the newspapers had fallen on the floor with her lavender silk reticule, her fan and smelling salts, her lace-edged handkerchief and spectacle case, all in a confused mass.
“You have not forgotten me, Sallie?” the man demanded, almost dramatically. “I am John Ten Eyck, grown old and gray. I never dreamed that any of my old friends would recognize me after all these years. But are these your girls, Sallie?” he asked, turning with a courtly air to the four young women.
“No, indeed, John,” replied Miss Sallie, rather stiffly, “I have never married. This is my niece, Ruth Stuart, my only brother’s child.” And she proceeded to introduce the others in turn. “Ruth, my child, this is Major John Ten Eyck, an old friend of mine, whom I have not seen for many years. I suppose you have lived in foreign lands for so long you have completely lost sight of your American friends.”
“It has been a great many years,” answered Major Ten Eyck, after he had taken each girl by the hand and had looked into her face with such gentleness and charm of manner as to win them all completely. “It’s been thirty years, has it not, Sallie?”
“Don’t ask me such a question, John Ten Eyck! I’m sure I have no desire to be reminded of how old we are growing. Do you know, you are actually getting fat and bald; and here I am with hair as white as snow.”
“But your face is as young as ever, Sallie,” declared the gallant major.
“Isn’t it, Major Ten Eyck?” exclaimed Ruth, who had found her voice at last. “She is just as pretty as she was thirty years ago, I am certain. Papa says she is, at any rate.”
“So she is, my dear,” agreed the old man as he gazed with undisguised admiration into Miss Sallie’s smiling face.
“Do sit down,” said Miss Sallie, slightly confused, “and tell us where you have been, and what you have been doing these last three decades.”
“It would take too long, I fear,” replied the major, looking at his watch. “I am looking for my two nephews this morning.”
“You mean Martin’s sons, I suppose?” asked Miss Sallie.
“Yes, they are coming down to stay with me at my old place, back yonder in the hills. They are bringing one or two friends with them, and we shall motor over this afternoon if the weather permits. But tell me, what are you doing here? Spending the summer? Don’t you find it a little dull, young ladies?”
“Oh, we are just on a motor trip, too,” replied Ruth. “We are birds of passage, and stop only as long as it pleases us.”
“And have you no men along, to look after you and protect you from highwaymen, or mend the tires when they are punctured?”
“My dear Major,” replied Miss Sallie, “you have been away from America for so long that you are old-fashioned. Do you think these athletic young women need a man to protect them? I assure you that the world has been changing while you have been burying yourself in Russia and Japan. Ruth, here, is as good a chauffeur as could be found, and Barbara Thurston can protect herself and us into the bargain. She rides horseback like a man.” Barbara blushed at the memory of the stolen horseback ride on the way to Newport. “Grace and Mollie are a little bit more old-fashioned, perhaps, and I am as helpless as ever. But two are quite enough. They have got us out of every scrape so far, the two of them.”
The girls all laughed.
Only Barbara, who was leaning on the railing facing the window, saw a figure move behind the curtain, which had stood so still she had not noticed it before.
“Since you are off on a sort of wild goose chase for amusement,” began the major (here the figure that was slipping away paused again), “couldn’t you confer a great honor and pleasure on an old man by making him a visit?”
“Oh!” cried the girls, breathless with delight, remembering the automobile full of youths that would shortly appear.
“Now, Miss Sallie, you see they all want to come,” continued the major. “Don’t, I beg of you, destroy their pleasure and my happiness by declining this request of my old age.”
“Oh, do say yes, Aunt Sallie!” cried Ruth.
And