“Are you all right, Mary?” asked Cora with a reassuring smile.

“Oh, yes,” replied the girl with a happy little laugh.  “This is—­just glorious!”

“Wait just a minute,” begged Bess.  “I want to tie my hat on more securely.  I do hope we get our auto bonnets soon.”

“Madam said they would be finished to-day,” remarked Mary.  “They are very pretty, I think.”  Madam Julia was Mary’s employer.

“Chug! chug!” sounded from the motor as it speeded up, momentarily, drowning all conversation.  Then, as Cora climbed in and adjusted the throttle and shifted the spark lever, she let in the clutch, and the car rolled gently away.

“Where were the boys to meet us?” asked Belle.

“At the turnpike junction,” replied Cora as she deftly threw in the high speed gear, and that without the terrific grinding of the cogs that betrays the inexperienced hand.  The Whirlwind leaped forward, and the girls clutched their hats.  “Jack promised he wouldn’t be a minute late,” went on Cora as she turned out to avoid a rut.

“Jack usually is on time,” murmured Isabel.  She almost lisped, yet the more you heard it the more you thought it was but a pretty little catch in her voice—­in the accent—­after the manner of babies, who seem to defer all they have to say to their listener.  Every one loved Isabel.

“Oh, you think so, do you?” asked her sister.  “Jack never makes any mistakes apparent to Belle,” she added with an arch glance at Cora, with whom she was riding on the front seat.

“Never mind,” murmured Belle.

Mary listened to the talk with evident pleasure.  She was not accustomed to this sort of perfectly frank jokes.

“There they are!” suddenly cried Cora as the Get There swerved into sight around the corner.

Jack, who was at the wheel of his car, with Walter beside him, swung in close to his sister’s machine.

“All right?” asked Jack, looking critically at Cora as she slowed up the big car, and noting her firm grip of the steering wheel.

“Fine and dandy!” exclaimed the girl, with the expression that makes that sort of slang a parody rather than a convenience.

“And if there aren’t Sid and Ida!” exclaimed Belle.  “Seems to me we run into them wherever we go.”

“As long as it’s only metaphorically and not mechanically speaking, it’s all right,” observed Walter.

The yellow Streak glided smoothly along.

“Quite a parade,” remarked Jack.

“Let’s make it a race,” suggested Cora, her dark eyes flashing in anticipation.

Jack glanced at Walter.  The relations between him and Sid were rather strained.  As for Ida—­well, Ida was credited with “running after Walter,” and the sentiment of lads toward such girls is too well known to need describing.

“Oh, yes!  Do let us race!” chimed in Bess.  “It would be such fun!”

“All right,” agreed Jack.  “That is, if Sid is, willing.”