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“Do you think you can keep up with us in that car?” asked Cora wickedly. “If not, I’ll give you a tow.”
“Listen to her rubbing it in!” moaned Paul.
“It wasn’t enough to beat us,” complained Walter.
“I guess that fellow was right,” remarked Jack, “who said that Indians and women were alike. They both scalp the dead.”
CHAPTER V
A GROUP OF VAGABONDS
The two cars rolled along smartly, for the various happenings of the day had put the Motor Girls behind the schedule they had hoped to make. But despite their best efforts, dusk was settling down and the stars beginning to peep out when they drove up to the Kimball’s Aunt Margaret’s door.
She greeted them affectionately, and after they had washed off the dust of travel they were seated at the sumptuous meal she had had prepared in anticipation of their coming. After dinner was over, a number of young people in the neighborhood who had been invited to meet the tourists dropped in, and there was music and dancing. But Aunt Margaret’s watchfulness over her charges prevented this from being prolonged to an unseasonable hour, and by eleven o’clock all the tired travelers were sleeping the dreamless sleep of vigorous, healthy youth.
They needed a good sleep, for the longest lap of their journey still lay before them. And it was at an early hour the next morning that, after a hearty breakfast and cordial thanks and good-byes to their gracious hostess, they climbed into their cars and drove off.
“Off at last for the Adirondacks!” cried Jack gaily, as he drew in great draughts of the fresh morning air.
“And for Camp Kill Kare!” added Paul.
The girls had started off a little ahead of them, but the boys soon drew alongside and Jack signaled for Cora to stop.
“I would have speech with thee, fair maiden,” he remarked, as his sister obeyed.
“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Cora in pretended vexation. “Here are those rude boys interrupting us just when we were having the loveliest talk.”
“I guess you weren’t talking about anything very important,” replied Jack.
“No,” said Bess, dimpling, “we were talking about you boys.”
“And saying what a lovely thing it was to be all by ourselves for a little while,” put in Belle.
“Girls,” exhorted Walter solemnly, “remember that if there was an Ananias there was also a Sapphira.”
“We’re not so keen on having a stag party ourselves,” explained Jack, “and we thought it would be a dandy thing if one of you girls would come into our car and one of us fellows go to yours. That would make life one grand sweet song.”
“It all comes from what Cora said yesterday about the refining influence of feminine society,” said Walter. “I feel the need of that. In fact, I have a consuming desire to become refined. And I can’t be, as long as I associate with these two low-brows. So you’d better let me ride in your car.”
“And leave us in our native coarseness?” queried Paul. “Not on your life, old man! I need refinement just as much as you do.”
“Peace, brethren,” interposed Jack. “We’ll do this thing on the level. My claims to coarseness are just as strong as either of yours, but do you see me engaging in unseemly brawls? Nay and again nay. We’ll pull straws for it and may the coarsest man win.”
“I don’t know that we want any of you,” said Cora. “We don’t take incurable cases.”
“Don’t be too harsh, Cora,” said Belle. “You know they say there’s a spark of good in the very lowest.”
“While the lamp holds out to burn
The vilest sinner may return,”
hummed Bess.
There were no straws at hand, but some matches served as well, and Walter proved to be the lucky one. Belle agreed to go to Jack’s car, and Walter took her place alongside of Bess.
“Hurrah!” cried Walter, as he availed himself of his good fortune. “I’m saved. I’m doomed to refinement.”
“Doomed?” laughed Cora.
“Did I say doomed?” Walter answered. “How careless of me! Of course I meant destined to refinement.”
“I suppose you’ll be eating lotus blossoms and water lilies before long,” called out Jack, as the cars started up again.
“Watch me when lunch time comes,” grinned Walter. “But I don’t mind what you fellows say. I’ve got two refining influences while you have only one.”
“You need all you can get,” was Jack’s parting shot.
With merry chaff and banter, the time flew by as though on wings. They had lunch at a quaint little inn by the roadside, and Walter proved that the charms of feminine society had not yet begun to affect his appetite. But then, as he explained, the cure would be all the more effective if it were gradual, and he had plenty of time yet to climb to higher planes.
In the early afternoon they were turning a bend in the road, when Cora gave a sudden exclamation.
“Look!” she cried, pointing to a little glade at the right of the road. “There’s a camp of some kind. I do believe it’s gypsies!”
“Guessed it right the first time,” declared Walter.
“That’s what it is,” agreed Bess. “Oh, Cora, don’t you think we might stop a few minutes? I’d dearly love to have a look at them, if you think we can spare the time.”
“I’m not so very keen about it myself,” said Cora dubiously, for as those familiar with her previous adventures will remember, her experiences with these picturesque vagabonds had not been devoid of unpleasantness and danger. “But I’ll see what Jack says about it, and if he thinks we have time, I won’t mind stopping.”
She hailed Jack, and, after consulting his watch, the latter agreed that they could easily spare a half-hour or so for a visit to the gypsy camp.
They drew their cars to the side of the road and picked their way through the woods to the little dell where the gypsy encampment lay.
It was a typical camp of those strange nomads in whose blood runs the “call of the wild,” and who in their mode of life are almost as far removed from other human beings as though they lived upon another planet.
There were perhaps a dozen vans, from which came strange smells of cooking, amid which onion and garlic predominated. Unkempt children in tattered clothing played with dogs that seemed to be legion, while wrinkled and slatternly women sat on the steps of the vans or made their way through the grounds, whining their requests to visitors to cross their palms with silver and learn in return all that pertained to their present and future. Swarthy men, some of them with huge ear-rings and with sashes and turbans that reminded one of the pirates of tradition, lay sprawled out on the grass watching the throng with eyes that were sometimes indifferent and again sullen and smoldering.
There were just two elements that redeemed the camp from its general aspect of squalor and forlornness. One was the fine horses that were scattered here and there, for the gypsy has the keenest eye for a good animal of any trader on earth. The other was the presence of several gypsy girls of a wild barbaric type of beauty, whose flashing eyes and gaudy trinkets contrasted with the prevailing ugliness of their surroundings.
There were a large number of visitors present, due to the proximity of a large town a mile or so away, through which the automobiles had passed just before reaching the camp.
“Here’s the place to have your future told,” said Jack.
“Lucky they can’t tell our past,” remarked Walter. “What a give-away that would be for some of us.”
“I hope you haven’t any deep dark secret that would ‘chill the young blood, harrow up our souls’ if it were told,” laughed Cora.
“Walter just wants to make himself interesting,” gibed Bess.
“Well, whatever I may have been, I’m all right now that you girls have undertaken to refine me,” replied Walter.
“I’m realizing more and more what a tremendous contract it is,” Cora came back at him. “But look at that girl over there? Isn’t she a beauty?”
“She isn’t hard to look at, for a fact,” said Jack judicially, as his eyes fell on the gypsy girl his sister had indicated. “I think I’ll get her to tell my fortune. I want to know whether I’m born to be hanged or drowned.”
“It’s safe to say that you’re booked for a long life anyway,” remarked Paul. “Only the good die young.”
The girl had seen that the party were regarding her with interest, and she came over to them.
“Do you ladies want to have your fortunes told?” she asked with a winning smile that showed two rows of beautiful white teeth.
The girls hesitated.
“Go ahead, girls, and show the sporting spirit,” urged Jack. “You can get the promise of a perfectly good husband for fifty cents. And that’s cheap in these days of high prices.”
“It’s more than some of them are worth,” laughed Belle.
“I hope that isn’t a shot at us,” said Paul. “I’d be a bargain at a dollar.”
“She must have been thinking of that Higby fellow over at Roxbury,” said Bess. “Why, what’s the matter?” she asked, as the gypsy girl started violently and turned deadly pale.
Cora sprang to the girl’s side and put her arm around her to steady her.
CHAPTER VI
A PERPLEXING PROBLEM
The gypsy girl regained her self-control in a moment and gently put Cora’s helping arm aside.
“It is nothing,” she said. “I just had an attack of dizziness. The heat of the sun, perhaps.”
It was evident that this last remark was only a pretext, for a pleasant breeze was blowing and they were standing under a great tree that shaded them completely.
“I hope it wasn’t anything I said that startled you,” said Bess curiously.
“How could it have been?” put in Belle incredulously. “You only referred jokingly to that Higby fellow who nearly got away with Cora’s purse when we were shopping yesterday. I’m sure there’s nothing in that to startle anybody.”
Cora had been watching the girl intently, and at this second mention of the young man’s name she saw a swift spasm – was it of pain or fright or a combination of both? – sweep over the girl’s face.
“Well, never mind,” said Cora briskly, “if you’re sure you’re all right now. Perhaps you’d better have a drink of water. Jack, suppose you go to the car and get one of the drinking cups.”
Jack started promptly to obey, but the girl objected so strongly that he stopped and stood irresolute.
“No, no,” she said, “please not. Only leetle deezy, but all right now,” she continued, dropping into the slipshod gypsy manner of speaking. “Let me tell pretty ladies’ fortunes.”
But just then one of the gypsy men, who had been watching the group sharply, stepped up to the girl and spoke to her roughly in a jargon that the girls could not understand. It was evidently a command, for the gypsy girl turned instantly and went away, disappearing into one of the vans, while the man, after a scowl that included all the party, sauntered away and dropped on the grass beside some of his comrades.
“Well, what do you think of that?” demanded Belle in amazement.
“Just when she had a husband picked out for each of you, too,” chaffed Paul. “But cheer up, girls. We’re here yet. Count on us to the last breath. You can’t lose us.”
“No such luck,” retorted Bess. “But what on earth made that man act that way?”
“It isn’t like gypsies to let good money get away from them,” said Jack, “and they must have seen from our open countenances that we were easy marks and ready to cough up.”
“Jack,” said Walter severely, “please pass up that line of chatter – I mean, please refrain from such vulgar slang. In my unregenerate days I could have stood for it – I mean, endured it – but since I have become refined it hits me on the raw – I mean, it affects me painfully.”
“Oh, stop your nonsense, you boys,” chided Cora. “Can’t you see I’m trying to think?”
“Cora’s trying to think!” exclaimed her irrepressible brother. “Heaven be praised that I have lived to see this day!”
Cora gave him a scornful glance, and Jack sagged down at the knees, pretending to wilt.
“Just how did that girl strike you?” asked Cora thoughtfully.
“A peach,” replied Jack promptly.
“A pippin – I mean, she was very good looking,” added Walter.
“I’m asking the girls,” said Cora witheringly.
“She didn’t seem to me like a gypsy at all,” answered Bess. “And yet I suppose of course she must be, since she’s here with them.”
“Did you notice the way she spoke when she was off her guard for a moment?” asked Belle. “She said that she had ‘an attack of dizziness.’ Later on, she was a ‘leetle deezy.’”
“Her eyes were blue,” remarked Cora musingly, “and that is something unusual in a gypsy.”
“But her complexion was as dark as any of the others,” objected Bess.
“That might be accounted for by the tan from the open-air life,” replied Cora. “And then, too, it would be easy to color it artificially.”
“I didn’t know girls ever did such things,” interrupted Jack with a pained expression.
“And then too,” went on Cora, unheeding, “when her sleeve fell back, I saw that her arm was white. But what I’m trying to get at especially is whom she looks like. She resembles some one that I’ve seen before, but I can’t remember who it is.”
“What do you suppose made her act so queerly when I spoke of the stealing of your purse?” asked Bess.
“It wasn’t the robbery itself that startled her,” said Cora. “It was the name of the man, Higby. He was mentioned twice, and each time she looked frightened.”
“I wonder if she knows him,” murmured Belle.
“He said there were lots of girls who would be glad of his company,” laughed Bess. “Perhaps she is one of them.”
“There was no liking in that look of hers,” replied Cora emphatically. “It was positive alarm.”
“If a mere man may break into this discussion,” said Jack humbly, “you fair detectives haven’t yet told us why that pirate over there took the girl away from us.”
“That’s easy,” interposed Walter. “He was jealous. It was my fatal gift of beauty that worried him. The girls all fall for it – I mean, are attracted by it.”
