The Automobile Girls at Newport: or, Watching the Summer Parade. Crane Laura Dent
be too wretched living all alone up here. Also, you wouldn’t have to worry about your mother, nor would I have to worry about Dad. Aunt Sallie has been with him so long that I don’t know what he’d do all by himself. He could get on very well, if only your mother would look after him at meals, I know that.
“Now I won’t say another word about it for the rest of our lunch. Then we’ll run in and call on Aunt Sallie. Afterward we will take the car out and see your mother, and get her to say yes! Then you’ll say it, too, won’t you? But don’t let’s spoil this good chicken salad, through worrying about it.”
In a more or less complete, yet altogether happy silence, the luncheon was finished. Ruth and her father did not try to force their guests to talk, realizing that the girls would want to think. From the smiling glances the two Stuarts exchanged now and then it was evident they hoped the thinking would have a happy outcome.
After the last course had been served, and the finger bowls, a sprig of rose geranium floating in each, had been pushed aside, Ruth said quietly: “Now we will go to see Aunt Sallie for a few minutes. Daddie, you’ll have the machine at the door?”
The girls filed into the elevator, and soon were speeding down a long hall to Aunt Sallie’s suite, just across from Ruth’s. The latter knocked softly, and Grace Carter came to the door. “Yes, ever so much better,” Grace murmured, in reply to Ruth’s whispered inquiry. “She wants you to be sure to come in with your friends before they go. Yes; I am sure she would be glad to see them now.”
As the girls entered the vestibule of the apartment, Grace gave Barbara’s hand a furtive squeeze, and whispered: “I’ll just never recover if you don’t come.” There was no chance for a reply, for a precise, though rather kindly voice called from the room beyond: “Ruth, please bring your friends in here.”
With some trepidation the girls advanced toward “Aunt Sallie.” She was a somewhat stout woman, who reclined on a couch in a handsome violet negligée. She scanned the girls sharply for a moment, then in her carefully enunciated syllables, which contrasted oddly with her smooth, plump face, she said: “So you’re the young ladies who stop runaway horses! Well, I never could have done it when I was young. But I’m sure I am indebted to you, and I am happy to know you, my dears. I hope and trust, since my madcap niece is bound to take her trip, that you will come along to keep her company.”
The girls smiled, and Ruth murmured to them: “You see, you really must come for the sake of my family!” Then Aunt Sallie stretched out two plump, jeweled hands and remarked: “I am sure I shall see a great deal of you very soon, my dears, and you will see all you want to of me. So, if you don’t mind, I’ll ask you to excuse me now, my head is so tired.”
“She likes to take a cat-nap pretty often,” explained irreverent Ruth, as soon as they were safely outside the door. “But Aunt Sallie is a good sort, just the same, and the best possible dragon for our trip. Your mother needn’t be in the least afraid to trust you to her. Now for your mother,” Ruth added as the girls entered the elevator.
In front of the broad piazza, the automobile waited on the driveway, with Mr. Stuart as chauffeur. “Pile in,” he smiled, and, in a trice, the girls were whirled homeward once more.
There a mighty conference was held. At first, Mrs. Thurston simply gasped. Then she dumbly shook her head. Barbara and Mollie both protested that nothing would persuade them to leave their mother against her wishes. As Ruth said afterwards, “Daddie did the whole thing.” He explained to the girls, and to their mother, how brief the separation would be. To the mother he expatiated on the delights and educational value of such a trip. To the girls he hinted, delicately, that perhaps the little mother would get a bit of a rest, all by herself, for a few weeks, even with him to take care of. To all present Mr. Stuart enlarged upon the duty of charity toward him, a homeless vacation visitor, starving from eating only hotel food, and toward his daughter, a sisterless girl with a longing for friends. Though the Thurstons shook their heads, between smiles and tears, at the absurdity of these arguments, they finally said a grateful “yes.”
“One really doesn’t need any clothes except veils and dusters for an automobile trip, and I have a big extra stock of those,” concluded Ruth. “I want to run up here for you people – let me see – to-day is Friday – next Monday morning. That’s such a nice day to start.”
“Yes,” again cried Mollie and Barbara.
The girls joined hands and made a low curtsey to Mrs. Thurston and Mr. Stuart. “Allow me to introduce you,” said Ruth in her most impressive voice, “to ‘The Automobile Girls’ on their way to Newport.”
“Long may they flourish!” concluded Mr. Stuart, turning to the girls’ mother. “I’ll come up with Ruth and help you start them off, Mrs. Thurston. Then, if I may, I will come back and have lunch with you later in the day.”
“Till Monday!” called Ruth, and the machine whirled off.
Barbara and Mollie watched it from the gate. “I wish – I wish I could do something for them,” mused Barbara, her chin sunk in her hand, her brown eyes showing that soft brightness that only came to them when she was greatly moved.
How well she was to repay the Stuart kith and kin she could not then guess.
CHAPTER IV – MOTHER’S SECRET
Mollie danced into the kitchen, waving the feather duster. “I’m so happy, I can’t keep still!” she declared, waltzing in a circle around her mother and Barbara, who were in the kitchen washing the breakfast dishes.
“It is just as well you don’t have to,” Mrs. Thurston laughed. “But, children, do be sensible a minute,” she urged, as Barbara joined in the dance, still polishing a breakfast tumbler. “I’ve been thinking, that going to Newport, if only to stay a few days, does mean more clothes than automobile coats and motor veils.”
“Now, you are not to worry, mother dearest,” interrupted Barbara, “or we won’t go a single step. Beside, have you forgotten the twenty-dollar gold-pieces? They are a fortune, two fortunes really.” Barbara had been doing some pretty deep thinking herself, on the clothes question, but it would never do to let her thoughts be known. As elder daughter she tried to save her mother from all the worries she could. “While there are no men around in the family, you’ll just have to pretend I’m older son instead of daughter,” she used to say. “When Mollie marries I’ll resign.”
“I’m through dusting,” Mollie called from the dining-room. “This time I am surely going to get paper and pencil to put down what clothes we most need, if Barbara won’t stop any runaway horses while I am away.”
Mollie’s golden head and Barbara’s tawny one bent anxiously over the paper.
“Ruth’s such an impetuous dear! Starting off on our trip Monday does not give us time to get anything new. Mother, will you go in to town shopping for us, and then send the clothes on later? I suppose we shall be on the road some time. Ruth says we are to stop in any of the places we like, and see all the sights along the way,” continued Barbara.
Gloves, ribbons, stockings, hair ribbons, and – oh, dear, yes! A pink sash for Bab and a blue one for Mollie. Forty dollars wasn’t such a fortune after all. Where was the money left over for the party dresses? Both girls looked a little crestfallen, but Barbara shook her head at Mollie as a signal not to say anything aloud.
Mother had come into the open dining-room door and was watching the girls’ faces.
“I’ve a secret,” Mrs. Thurston said, after a minute. “A beautiful secret that I have been keeping to myself for over a year, now. But I think to-day is the best time I can find to tell it.” Mrs. Thurston was fragile and blond, like Mollie, with a delicate color in her cheeks, and the sweetest smile in the world.
“It’s a nice secret, mother, I can tell by your face.” Mollie put her arm around her mother and pulled her down in a chair, while she and Bab sat on either side of her. “Now, out with it!” they both cried.
“Daughters,” Mrs. Thurston lowered her voice and spoke in a whisper, “upstairs, in my room in the back