BLUFF POINT AT LAST
Very anxious the Outdoor Girls looked as the grouchy old farmer came
toward them. Mollie was making all sorts of noises under the car,
apparently tinkering with its mechanism, while the girls kept up a
running fire of questions.
"What is the matter, Mollie?"
"Can't you find the trouble?"
"Better let me get under and take a look."
"If we don't get started pretty soon, we'll not get to Bluff Point
before dark."
These and other remarks like them met the suspicious ears of the driver
as he jerked his team to a standstill.
"Hey, what's the matter with you?" he hailed them. "Have you got to
stand right in the middle of the road? Can't you move over some?"
At this Mollie wriggled out from under the car and stood up, facing him.
Her face was flushed from restrained mirth, but it might well have been
the flush of indignation.
"If we could don't you suppose we would?" she queried, rather
incoherently. "Do you think I'm doing this for fun?" Then she abruptly
disappeared from sight again. The abruptness was caused by the terrible
fear that if she stood looking at that sour old visage another moment
she would have to spoil everything by laughing.
As for the other girls, they were slowly turning purple in an effort to
maintain the solemnity demanded by the occasion. A strange noise from
beneath the car, promptly followed by a choked cough, didn't help them
any, and they were relieved when their victim turned his suspicious gaze
from them to the shallow ditch at the side of the road which was still
muddy from the rain of the night before. The only hope he had of getting
around them was to drive through this mud.
Without a word or a glance in their direction, he whipped up his team
and started for the ditch. This was something the girls had not
foreseen, and they were of no mind to let him get ahead of them again.
Grace and Amy flashed a distress signal to Betty, who stooped over
Mollie's feet, the feet being all that could be seen of her, and cried
with a peculiar inflection:
"I think you must have found the trouble by this time, Mollie, haven't
you?"
Mollie took the hint and scrambled hurriedly to her feet.
"I think so," she said, then as her eyes swiftly took in the
situation--the grim old man already struggling through the ditch intent
on getting ahead of them--she jumped to her seat and started the engine.
"All right," she cried gayly. "Come on, girls, jump in."
The girls jumped in with alacrity and Betty and Grace ran to the car in
front. Then while the man whipped up his horses and called to them in
terms far from gentle, the two cars sprang forward and were off down the
road.
They turned once, to find the man urging his team to the road and
shaking his fist after the "gasoline wagons." The girls waved to him
merrily, before the turn in the road shut him from sight.
"I guess that will teach him a lesson," said Grace, settling back
comfortably.
"Shouldn't wonder," agreed Betty absently, adding with a rueful little
smile. "It was great fun, of course, but I hope we shan't meet many more
of his kind, or we'll never get to Bluff Point."
"We're almost there now," said Grace. "All this part of the country is
almost as familiar to me as Deepdale. When I was a little kiddie, I used
almost to live with Aunt Mary."
"It's wonderful how little children love the woods and brooks and all
wild things," mused Betty, adding, as the picture of Dodo and Paul,
hiding in the machines and begging to be taken along, came back to her:
"I almost wish we could have brought the twins with us. They would have
so loved it."
"And we would have spent all our time trying to keep them from falling
into the ocean," added Grace dryly. "Besides," she added, "I don't
believe Mrs. Billette would have let them come. They are such little
mischiefs, and she is always afraid something will happen to them."
"Yes, and they're good company for her," agreed Betty thoughtfully;
"especially when Mollie is away."
After a few minutes of silence Grace suddenly clutched Betty's arm,
making the Little Captain jump.
"Betty," cried the former excitedly, "we're almost there. Just around
that curve--"
"Well, you needn't scare me to death," protested Betty, taking one hand
from the wheel to rub the arm Grace had clutched.
"But I love it so," Grace cried, standing up only to be jerked back into
her seat as Betty swung round the curve. "It's such a wonderful place!"
"Is that it up on the hill?"
"Yes," answered Grace, standing up in earnest now. "Turn up the
drive--it leads to the garage at the back. And, Betty, the house stands
on a little bluff looking out over the ocean. Do you hear it--the ocean
I mean, not the house, Silly!"
The road that they had traveled from Deepdale to Bluff Point had led
across country, Deepdale being in the interior, so that the girls had
scarcely realized how close they were coming to the coast.
Now, as Betty stopped the car at the back of the quaint little cottage,
that sound of romance and mystery, the soft lapping of water with the
deeper undertone of waves against rock came up to her and she threw back
her head with a little bubbling laugh.
"I don't wonder you love it, Gracie dear," she said. "I do already. It's
glorious."
They jumped out and ran back to meet Mollie's car, which was puffing
like an old man up the steep grade.
"The ocean! The ocean!" cried Betty ecstatically, as she opened the
doors and the girls tumbled out. "Do you smell it? Do you hear it? Oh,
girls, hurry up, I can't wait to feel it!"
"Goodness, are you going to commit suicide?" cried Mollie. "If that's
what you want, I don't see why you bothered to come away up here."
"Mother, Mother, give me the key, quick," demanded Grace, as they ran
around the side of the house and Betty made a face at Mollie. "You
haven't forgotten it, have you?"
"No, I tied it on a ribbon around my neck," said Mrs. Ford, with a
smile. "I had no intention of forgetting it. Here it is."
"Thank you."
Grace fitted the key in the lock and opened the door, but when she
turned, expecting to find the girls at her back, she found that they had
deserted her.
They were standing, gazing out over a gleaming white stretch of sand to
the shimmering water beyond, absolutely oblivious to everything but the
beauty of the scene.
The bluff on which they stood sloped gently down to the beach below.
Once down there, the girls knew they would feel as though they were
isolated from all the rest of the world, for the beach was in the form
of a semi-circle, surrounded on three sides by rocky bluffs and blocked
off in front by the ocean.
"How beautiful!" breathed Betty, as Grace stole up and joined them.
"We've seen a great many wonderful views, but I never saw one to equal
this. Just look at the reflection of the sun out there."
"Blood red," murmured Mollie. "That looks like a hot day to-morrow."
"All the more excuse for taking a swim," put in Amy, adding longingly:
"I wish it weren't too late now."
"I'm afraid it is," said Mrs. Ford, seizing her opportunity. "We still
have to put the cars away and get our provisions and cook supper--"
"Who said 'supper'?" Mollie demanded hungrily. "Mrs. Ford," she added,
as they started for the house, "won't you please make Betty make some
biscuits?"
"But you make as good biscuits as I do," protested Betty.
"No, I don't, Darling," denied Mollie, putting an arm about her chum.
"And, anyway," she added convincingly, "I can eat more when I don't have
to make them!"
The girls were almost as pleased with the interior of the house as they
had been with its surroundings. There were odd little passages and
unexpected window seats such as Betty had dreamed of having in her own
little home some day.
The thought brought back the picture of Allen as he had gone away,
gallant, hopeful, brave--oh, so brave--and involuntarily she uttered a
little sigh.
"Please don't do that," said Grace, as they entered the room they were
to have together. "I'm trying my best not to be as gloomy as I feel. But
if you begin to sigh, I'll just have to give up and spoil the party."
"I won't," said Betty, trying a little smile before the mirror and doing
it pretty successfully. "I didn't mean to that time, only, I was--just
thinking."
"I know," said Grace a little petulantly, as she pulled off her hat and
threw it on the bed. "It seems to me that's all I'm ever doing--'just
thinking.' If I could only really do something! Some time I'll scream
aloud!"
"Well, don't you think we're all pretty much in the same fix?" suggested
Betty gently, coming over and putting an arm about her.
"I suppose so," she answered, eyes fixed moodily on the floor. "Only the
rest of you have only one to worry about, while I--" she stopped,
flushed, and began letting down her thick hair. "If I could only cry!"
"I imagine that might help us all," said Betty wistfully, adding, with a
touch of her old gayety: "Perhaps I can arrange it after supper."
"What?" asked Grace.
"A cry party," she answered, and the absurdity of it made them both
laugh.
In spite of the shadow hanging over them, dinner that night was a great
success. Everybody pitched in, and, having acquired ravenous appetites
on their long ride, did the cooking in record time, and of course
everything tasted ambrosial.
After dinner they wandered out on the veranda, which was almost as big
as the rest of the house put together. It was a wonderful night, with
the moon so bright that it shed a magic silver radiance over everything
while the lapping of the water came softly up to them.
Suddenly Mollie's hand slipped into Betty's where they stood together
looking out.
"On such a night as this," breathed Mollie, scarcely above a whisper,
"there should be nothing but peace in the world."
"Should be--yes," agreed Betty, a little bitterly. "But things are not
always as they should be!"