“Gracious, Laura!” gasped Lillie Nevins,
looking alarmed, “if you really have any gum
you had better swallow it before Miss March sees you.”
At this Laura merely chuckled delightedly.
“I really don’t like the way this man
is running the car,” Miss March said finally
to the conductor. “Tell him to have a care.
He will have us off the track.”
The interurban line was not a smooth, straight-ahead
road. They swung around turns that were somewhat
sharp. John stormed along as though he were running
on a perfectly straight track.
“I’ll see what I can do,” said the
conductor doubtfully, and he went forward and tapped
on the glass of the front door. But the motorman
only gave him an angry glance and would not even reach
around and lift the latch.
“He’s running away with us!” exclaimed
Lillie Nevins, who was always easily frightened.
“Oh, my dear!” laughed another girl.
“What an elopement!”
“I hate to do it,” said the conductor,
when he came back to Miss March. “But I’ll
report him to the inspector when we get to the end
of the route.”
The car topped the heights of the ridge of hills that
lay between Adminster and Freeling. On the Freeling
side of the ridge the slope to the valley was almost
continuous. But near the bottom was a sharp curve.
Here was a low stone wall along the edge of the road,
beyond which was a sheer drop of thirty or more feet
into a rocky gorge. It was a perilous spot.
More than one accident had happened there; but never
an electric car accident.
The rapidity with which the motorman ran the car,
and the jerky way in which he stopped and started
it, did not bother Nan Sherwood much, for she was
not nervous. Miss March, however, began to stare
ahead apprehensively, and the way in which she twisted
her pocket-handkerchief in her hands as the car started
down the long slope betrayed her feelings. Nan
was really sorry for Miss March.
The wheels pounded over the rail-joints and the car
began to rock threateningly. A small obstruction
on the track would very likely have thrown the car
off the rails.
“I do wish that man would have a care,”
sighed Miss March.
Nan jumped up. She feared that the teacher would
soon become hysterical. Also, Grace and Lillie
began to betray fear and more of the girls were anxious.
Nan stumbled forward to the end of the car. Rhoda
sat there, looking ahead, and betraying no emotion
at all.
Nan could see the shoulders of the motorman, who was
sitting on the one-legged stool on which he had a
right to rest when the car was out of town. The
rules of the company did not force him to stand all
the time. His head seemed to sag forward on his
breast. The car was running so fast that he pitched
from side to side on his seat—
Or was it from some other reason that his body swayed
so? The question shocked Nan Sherwood.
“Oh, Rhoda!” she exclaimed, turning to
the Western girl, “what is the matter with him?”
