The Motor Girls on a Tour Part 12

CHAPTER XII

THE GIRL IN THE DITCH

When all the machines had been stopped there was a wild rush to the rescue--Bess and Belle with Gertrude hurrying back to where Daisy and Maud had been left, while Cora, Ray and Hazel ran forward to the side of the strange runabout. The boys divided themselves--some going in each direction.

Presently Cora shouted

"Jack! Jack! Hurry! It's Clip! And she is unconscious!"

Jack was not far away, and at his sister's call he hurried to her. Ray had taken Cecilia's head in her lap, while Cora was trying to lift the unconscious girl from her bent-up posture in the narrow, roadside, gra.s.s-grown ditch.

"Oh, the poor dear!" sighed Cora. "To think that our sport should have--"

Cecilia was opening her eyes.

"Clip! Clip, dear!" whispered Cora. "Try to--wake up!"

Cecilia did try--she put her hand to her dazed eyes.

"Here! Let me lift her," commanded Jack, slipping down on the other side into the deep gra.s.s and without any apparent effort lifting Cecilia up. With one long step he reached the road. Then for a moment he seemed uncertain--should he lay the girl down, or carry her to a machine?

"Oh, I can stand," she said faintly. "I am much better now.

What--happened?"

"You happened," answered Jack, so dismissing the question. "Just keep still, and we will have you around directly. This is where you beat the motor girls." He was now helping her to her feet. "You may ride back with the motor boys."

"Are you better?" asked Ray anxiously, stroking Cecilia's white hand, which had been divested of its glove. "Wasn't it dreadful?"

"Very," sighed Cecilia. "And my poor little machine! Jack, how can I ever--"

"You can never," he insisted with a wink. "I never saw such a rambunctious ram. Didn't he ramify, though?"

"What in the world was it?" asked Cecilia. She was sitting on the gra.s.s and seemed almost prepared to laugh. "I thought I must be seeing things. Then I--"

"Felt things," said Jack. "That's the regular course of the disease.

Here come the others. h.e.l.lo, Daisy has the veil tied up, and Maud is limping."

"What happened to them?" asked Cecilia.

"Same thing that happened to you," replied Jack. "The ram. That was the most happening thing I have seen in some time."

Maud was limping, and had Ed's arm. Daisy kept her hand to her face, and she clung to Walter. Hazel flashed a meaning look to Cora. The girls might not be very badly injured, but they needed help--that sort of help.

"Well!" exclaimed Cora. "You look as if something did happen."

"Oh, I'm all scratched," fluttered Daisy. "That is, my face feels like a grater." She took her handkerchief from the abused face. A few harmless scratches were discernible.

"Not so bad," said Jack. "Just the correct lines, I believe, for--let me see--intellectuality."

"Oh, you needn't joke," snapped Daisy. "I suppose Cecelia--is--badly hurt!"

She said this with the evident intention of drawing attention to Jack's att.i.tude toward Cecilia.

"Now, Daisy," said Jack good-naturedly, "if you want to dump in the ditch again, and will only give me the chance, I will be perfectly delighted to fish you out: I fancy I would get you first shot."

"Oh, you need not bother," interrupted Walter. "I can take care of Miss Bennet."

At this he spread his handkerchief most carefully on the gra.s.s, and, with mock concern, a.s.sisted Daisy to the low seat.

Ed followed suit, adding to the handkerchief cus.h.i.+on his cap--to make the gra.s.s softer for Maud.

"But however did you happen along, Cecilia?" asked Belle, who now added her dainty self to the line of girls on the roadside.

"Now, here!" called Jack. "No more happenings! I beg your pardon, Belle, but we have had such a surfeit of this happening business that we intend, in the language of the poets, to cut it out."

Cecilia gave Jack a grateful glance. Cora broke in promptly with a new thought--to divert attention.

"And you are the girls who wanted 'No Boys!'" exclaimed Walter. "I should just like to know what you would have done without us?"

"There! Didn't I tell you?" said Cora. "They are actually claiming the glory of the whole thing. I suppose, Walter, you hired the ram to do the proper thing in initiating the motor girls in the art of touring?"

"Wouldn't he make a hit, though, at some of our college affairs!"

exclaimed Ed. "I wonder if we could buy the beast? Here comes the owner now."

The girls looked alarmed. Suppose the farmer should blame them for the disappearance of the ram!

"I'll do the talking," suggested Walter. "If you say anything, Jack, there might be a row."

"Humph!" said Jack. "I suppose you know just how to deal with ram owners."

The farmer was quite up to them now. He was not an ill-natured-looking man, and as he approached he touched his big straw hat.

"No one hurt?" he asked, much to the girls' relief.

"Oh, no, thank you," said Cora, before Walter could open his mouth. "I hope you have not lost the sheep."

"Lose him! Couldn't do that if you chucked him in the mill-pond and let the dam loose on him. Only yesterday the plagued thing went for my wife. Yes, sir, and he 'most knocked her down. When I seed your steam wagons comin' along I knowed there would be trouble. He's that pesky!"

The man looked at the disabled machine.

"Busted?" he asked.

"Some," replied Walter. "But I guess we can manage. Would you like to sell that ram?"

"Sell him? What for? To kill folks as try to feed him? I bought him from a fellow who always wore an overcoat, and, bless me, that ram got so used to it if I haven't had to put my ulster on the hottest days this summer to do down to the pasture where he was chewin'."