The Motor Girls on Crystal Bay or, The Secret of the Red Oar

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

A WORRIED GIRL

Four girls sat on four chairs, in four different corners of the room. They sat on the chairs because they were really too tired to stand longer, and the reason for the occupancy of the corners of the apartment was self-evident. There was no other available space. For the center of the chamber was littered to overflowing with trunks, suitcases and valises, in various stages of being packed, and from them overflowed a variety of garments and other accessories of a journey.

“Oh, dear!” sighed Cora Kimball, as she gazed helplessly about, “will we ever be finished, Bess?”

“I don’t know,” was the equally discouraging reply. “It doesn’t seem so; does it?”

“I’m sure I can’t get another thing in my suitcase,” spoke the smallest girl of all, who seemed to shrink back rather timidly into her corner, as though she feared she might be put into a trunk by mistake.

“Oh, Marita! You simply must get more in your suitcase!” exclaimed Cora, starting up. “Why, your trunk won’t begin to hold all the rest of your things unless you crowd more into the case.”

“The only trouble, Cora,” sighed Marita, “is that the sides and top aren’t made of rubber.”

“There’s an idea!” cried a plump girl, in the corner nearest the piano. “A rubber suitcase! What a boon it would be for week-ends, when one starts off with a Spartan resolution to take only one extra gown, and ends up with slipping two party dresses and the ‘fixings’ into one’s trunk. Oh, for a rubber suitcase!”

“What’s the sense in sighing after the impossible?” asked the girl opposite the plump one. “Why don’t you finish packing, Bess?”

“Why don’t you?” and the plump one rather glared at her more frail questioner.

“Now, sisters!” cautioned Cora, as she gazed at the Robinson twins, “don’t get on one another’s nerves. Let’s have another try at it. I’m sure if we go at it with some sort of system we’ll be able to get all the things in. And really we must hurry!” she exclaimed, looking at the clock on the mantel, which pointed to the hour of four. “I promised to have all the baggage ready for the man at five. That only gives us an hour——”

“Cora Kimball!”

“Only an hour!”

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

Thus the three girls exclaimed in startled tones as they fairly leaped from their chairs in their respective corners, and caught up various garments.

Then, as the apparent hopelessness of the situation overcame them again, they looked at one another, at the trunks and suitcases that already held their fair share of articles, at the accumulation on the floor, and then they sighed in concert.

“It’s no use,” spoke Bess Robinson. “I’m not going at all—at least not now. I’m going to take another day to sort out the things I really don’t need.”

“You can’t!” exclaimed Cora. “Our tickets are bought, the bungalow is engaged, and we leave for Crystal Bay on the morning train, if we have to ship this whole room by freight—just as it is!”

“Perhaps that would be the easiest way,” suggested timid Marita Osborne....