The Motor Maids by Rose, Shamrock and Thistle Part 13

"Have you really forgotten me?" she cried, putting the flowers on the table and stretching out her hands.

They waited for one brief, embarra.s.sed moment. Then Nancy cried joyfully, "Mrs. Cortinas!"

"Not 'Mrs.'-'Maria,'" corrected the beautiful young woman. "Maria Ruggles Cortinas. Now, do you know?"

It was indeed Maria Cortinas, whose box of jewels Billie and Nancy had once so faithfully guarded.

Those of you who have read the first of these stories, ent.i.tled "The Motor Maids' School Days," will recall the adventures that befell the four young girls after they came into possession of that mysterious package. You will remember, too, Maria's mother, the wonderful old Spanish woman, Mrs. Ruggles, who kept the sailors' inn on the sh.o.r.e.

Maria was not only gifted with beauty. She possessed a splendid voice and was now an opera singer of much renown in Europe. But not Billie herself could have been more modest than was this fortunate young woman.

"Maria Cortinas!" they cried, enchanted with her graciousness and beauty.

"May I not kiss you all around?" she said, proceeding to do so and leaving a bouquet in the hand of each young girl as she embraced her warmly.

"How good it is to see you again," she said, "and how sweet to hear the voices of my own home people. Oh, but I am lonesome for West Haven sometimes, and for my old home. I never seem to remember that South America ever existed."

"And your mother?" asked Billie.

"Dear mother can hardly wait to see you," she answered. "I am homesick sometimes, but she is homesick always. Sometimes I try to make her go back and open her inn again and cook. You know she always loved to cook."

It seemed very fine to the girls and Miss Campbell, too, that Maria Cortinas was not ashamed that her mother had cooked many a big dinner for West Haven picnic parties which drove down to the inn. Would they ever forget that wonderful dinner they had eaten at the old inn during the famous Hallowe'en house party at the St. Clairs'?

"But where is your mother?" asked Nancy.

"She has been laid up with rheumatism for weeks. The London climate doesn't seem to agree with her, but she will stay here while I am singing."

"Are you singing in London?" they cried.

"In grand opera at Covent Garden," put in Miss Campbell solemnly.

"A grand opera singer?"

Maria Ruggles Cortinas actually blushed like a schoolgirl before their wondering faces.

"I hope you will forgive me," she laughed.

Elinor took her hand and looked reverently into her face.

"I have always wanted to know a grand opera singer," she said. "I always thought it would be like knowing a G.o.ddess. They seem so far above everything, so big--"

"They are certainly big, dear," laughed Maria, kissing her.

"And are we to hear you sing to-night?" asked Mary.

"No, not to-night. Some of the others. I never sing two nights in succession. That is why I could not join in the search for you last night. I was singing, and I knew nothing about what had happened until I got home and mother told me."

"Do you live here, too?" asked Billie.

"Yes. Mother loves this old house and I do, too. It's so much more private and quiet than a hotel. We have been coming here for years."

"And it was you who was singing this morning?" demanded Nancy.

"Very likely. I am always singing."

So it turned out that Maria Ruggles Cortinas, who had sung "Ada" before a brilliant audience the night before, was the near neighbor of the Motor Maids, and was entertaining them at dinner that very evening.

"Shall we sit down and wait here until the motor comes?" suggested Maria. "It's not quite time yet. I told them to call at half past seven.

People dine very late here."

The girls drew their chairs in a circle about the singer and watched her as if she were a curiosity. Certainly she was not their idea of what an actress was like. She was tall and quite slender through the hips, but with a singer's chest splendidly developed and a throat full and white like a column. Her black hair was arranged as plainly as possible in a low roll on the back of her neck. Her eyes were large and dark, her nose straight and well shaped; her mouth rather large, with a generous curve to the lips; her chin full and rounded. But it was not only her features that made Maria beautiful. There was something else, a certain graciousness and charm of manner, a lovely smile which radiated her face,-these things alone would have made almost any one beautiful. So Billie was thinking, when the motor car was announced.

Presently they found themselves rolling through the streets of London in a big touring car, in the late twilight which lingers in England long after the sun has set. They became part of a stream of carriages and motor cars filled with people in evening clothes. The whole world of London seemed to have dressed itself up for dinner. At last they drew up in front of a great hotel. A lackey opened the door of the car and they followed Maria into a splendid restaurant where all the women were dressed in decollete gowns and the men in evening clothes.

It was a brilliant scene to the young girls, the flowers and music and the soft-footed waiters gliding about. Miss Campbell and Maria exchanged smiling glances over their serious faces. An obsequious head waiter, who evidently knew Maria well, bowed them to a table as if they had been six royal princesses. Not one of our Motor Maids was free from a slight feeling of stage fright. But in a few moments they were eating their soup and talking as gayly and naturally as they ever had around Mrs.

Ruggles' own table in the Sailor's Inn near West Haven.

"Are there any Lords and Ladies here, Maria?" asked Nancy.

"Lots of them," said the singer, smiling. "The room is full of them. And there's a Russian Prince over at that table," she added, indicating a slender young man with a high pompadour and such brilliant black eyes that they gleamed like coals of fire as he glanced about.

All the party, even Miss Helen Campbell, craned their necks to see the Russian prince.

"Girls," exclaimed Mary suddenly, startling them by her unusual vehemence, "look, girls, the man with the Prince! Would you ever have known him in the world in those clothes?"

Sitting at the table with the Russian was a man strangely familiar and yet unfamiliar to Miss Campbell and the Motor Maids. He was very old, quite small and dressed in the most correct evening clothes. He had a large s.h.a.ggy head set on rather a small, delicate body.

"Mr. Kalisch!" they exclaimed, loud enough for Telemac himself to hear them across the room. He turned his head in their direction, recognized them instantly and hurried over to their table.

"It is good to see you again," he exclaimed cordially, shaking hands with each one, and giving Maria a low foreign bow. "I have been lonely for my young friends since I reached London. But I am always sorry when a journey is over. It's like reaching the end of a good book."

"Our journey has just commenced to be over," began Billie. "You didn't know that we were lost, Nancy and I, and spent the night at Miss Felicia Rivers' in the slums?"

Telemac's face suddenly turned perfectly crimson. Then the color faded as quickly as it had come. It was only for the mere fraction of an instant, but to Billie he appeared like a man who had received a shock, when he said slowly:

"You spent the night where?"

"At Miss Felicia Rivers' lodging house," repeated Billie.

Then, with Nancy's a.s.sistance, she related the history of their adventures.

"And you got safely away?" said Telemac.

"Yes," they answered, mindful of their promise to Marie-Jeanne.

"What an experience for two young girls just arrived in London!" he exclaimed. "And you saw nothing, heard nothing while you were there?"

"Yes, we saw and heard things, too," replied Nancy, "but nothing of importance."