Laura Crane - The Automobile Girls Along the Hudson - or, Fighting Fire in Sleepy Hollow

They were still laughing when the automobile came spinning up with Ruth, Grace Carter, Miss Sallie Stuart and her brother.

“On time, as usual, girls,” cried Ruth gayly. “And I am late as usual. But who cares? It’s a lovely day and we’re going to have a perfect time. I am so glad we’re going that I would like to execute a few steps on your front porch for joy.”

“Go ahead,” said Barbara. “We’ve just been having one exhibition from Miss Clare Vere de Vere Thurston, who is bursting with pride over her automobile coat, and we would be pleased to see another.”

“By the way, I should like to have a few words in private with the young party in the pink dress,” called Mr. Stuart, who was engaged in taking a last look at the inner workings of the automobile.

“Meaning me?” asked Bab. “Come in, won’t you, Mr. Stuart?”

“Now, what could they be having secrets about?” exclaimed Ruth, and even Miss Sallie looked somewhat mystified.

“I am dying to know what you two are confabbing about,” cried Ruth, as Mr. Stuart and Barbara returned. “Have you given Bab permission to tell us?”

“Miss Barbara Thurston is a young woman of such excellent judgment,” replied Mr. Stuart, “that I shall leave the secret entirely in her hands, and rely upon her to keep it or tell it as she thinks best.”

“Well!” exclaimed Miss Sallie, “here’s a nice mystery to commence the day on! But come along, girls; we had better be starting.”

Mr. Stuart, with Bab’s assistance, gathered up the bags and suit cases piled on the porch, packing the cases on the back with the others where they were secured with straps, and putting the small hand satchels on the floor of the car. Barbara seized her own satchel rather hastily and placed it beside her on the seat.

“Why, Bab, one would think you were a smuggler,” cried Ruth. “Don’t you want to put your satchel on the floor with the others?”

“Oh, never mind,” replied Barbara carelessly. “It’s all right here,” and she exchanged a meaning look with Mr. Stuart.

“Dear me!” exclaimed Ruth. “You and papa grow ‘curiouser and curiouser.’”

Then the good-byes were said, and the big automobile went skimming down the road in a whirl of dust, leaving Mrs. Thurston and Mr. Stuart at the gate waving their handkerchiefs, until it turned the curve and was lost to sight.

The travelers lunched at Allaire, as usual, in the little open-air French restaurant, and strolled about under the enormous elms of the deserted village while the meal was being prepared. But they did not linger after lunch. Ruth was hoping to make Tarrytown in time for dinner that evening, instead of stopping for the night in New York, which, she said, appeared to be suffering from the heat like a human being. “The poor, tired city is all fagged out and fairly panting from the humidity. If all goes well, I think we should get to New York by four o’clock, have tea at the Waldorf and start for Tarrytown at five. We ought to reach there by seven at the latest. It will be a long ride, but it’s lots cooler riding than it is sitting still. Once we get to Tarrytown we can linger as long as we please.”

They whizzed along the now familiar road, through the endless chain of summer resorts that line the Jersey coast, up the Rumson Road between the homes of millionaires, and finally struck the road to New York.

“It’ll be easy sailing now,” observed Ruth, “if we only catch the ferries.”

By a stroke of good luck they were able to do so, and actually drew up in front of the Waldorf at a few minutes before four o’clock.

“Well, Ruth, I must say you are a pretty good calculator,” exclaimed Miss Sallie, “harum-scarum that you are.”

There was a brief interval for face-washing and the smoothing of flattened pompadours; another longer one for consuming lettuce sandwiches and tea, followed by ices and cakes, and the party was off again, as swiftly as if it had been carrying secret government dispatches.

Up Riverside Drive they sped, past the Palisades which loomed purple and amethyst in the misty light. Then eastward to Broadway, which was once the old Albany Post Road; along the borders of Van Courtlandt Park, where, even on that hot day, the golfers were out; through Yonkers, too citified to be interesting to the girls just then; and, finally, along the river through the loveliest country Barbara and Mollie had ever seen. Still the crags of the Palisades towered on one side, while on the other were beautiful estates stretching back into the hills, and little villages nestling down on the river front.

Miss Sallie and Grace were both sound asleep on the back seat. Mollie had let down one of the small middle seats, and sat resting her chin on the back of the seat in front of her, occasionally pressing her sister’s shoulder for sympathy.

Ruth was in a brown study. She was very tired. It was no joke playing chauffeur for more than a hundred miles in one day.

“Bab,” whispered Mollie, awed by the lovely vistas of river and valley, “do you think the Vale of Cashmere could be more exquisite than this? Or the Rhine, or Lake Como, or any other wonderful place we have never seen?”

“Isn’t it marvelous, little sister? It’s like an enchanted country, and it is full of legends and history, too. During the Revolution the two armies were encamped all through here.”

“Oh, yes,” interrupted Ruth. “If I were not too tired, I might tell you a lot of things about this historical spot, but we must take another spin down here later and see it all again. This village we are now entering is Irvington, the home of Washington Irving. His house is no longer open to the public, however. Tarrytown is only a little distance down the river. We shall soon be there.”

It was not long before a tired, sleepy party of automobilists drew up in front of an old hotel shaded with immense elms.

“Wake up, Aunt Sallie, dear,” cried Ruth, giving her sleeping relative a gentle shake. “Bestir yourselves, sweet ladies, for food and rest are at hand and the hostelry is open to us.”

Supper was, indeed, ready, and rooms, too. For Mr. Stuart had notified the hotel proprietor to expect an automobile containing five women to descend upon him about sundown.

The five travelers mounted the steps to the supper room, and refreshed themselves with beefsteak and hot biscuits; then mounted more steps to their bedrooms, where they soon fell into five untroubled slumbers.

“Well, girls,” exclaimed Ruth, next morning at the breakfast table, “here we are ready for adventures. But they will have to be early morning or late evening ones. It’s already too hot to breathe.”

“For my part,” observed Miss Sallie, “the only adventure I am seeking is to sit on the shady side of the piazza, in a wicker chair, and read the morning paper.”

“But, Miss Sallie, even that might turn into something,” said romantic Mollie.

“Yes, indeed,” pursued Ruth, “you know the way mamma met papa was by staying at home instead of going to a ball.”

“Why, Ruth!” cried Miss Sallie.

“But it’s quite true, dear Aunt Sallie. Mamma was visiting at a house party in the South, somewhere, and she had a headache and stayed home from a ball, and was sitting in the library. Papa came a-calling on one of the others, and was ushered into the library, by mistake, and introduced himself to mamma – and she forgot her headache and he forgot he was due to catch a train to New York at nine o’clock. It was simply a case of love at first sight.”

“My dear, I am not looking for any such romantic adventures,” said Miss Sallie, bridling. “Your father was an intimate friend of the family at whose house your mother was stopping. It was perfectly natural they should have met, if not that evening, at least another one. I always said your mother showed extreme good sense in staying away from a party and nursing her headache. Not many others would have done the same.” Miss Stuart gave her niece a meaning look, while the four girls suppressed their smiles and exchanged telegraphic glances of amusement.