Mr. and Mrs. Duffy enjoyed their own party so much that they concluded
to give another one immediately. Accordingly at eleven o'clock the next
morning, the Comet containing the Motor Maids and Timothy Peppercorn
started off behind the Duffy motor in which sat those two ample souls,
the master and mistress of the machine, Miss Helen Campbell and the
chauffeur.
It was a picnic party, during which they were to visit Mr. Duffy's
orange grove and his famous alligator farm.
As the motors passed the station, Billie saw a group of familiar figures
standing on the platform. Mrs. Paxton-Steele, as usual, was flourishing
her gold-headed cane, this time to point out pieces of luggage to the
man and maid-servants who traveled with her. Nearby stood Edward,
Clarence and Georgiana. Billie sounded the motor horn several times to
attract the attention of the others. Clarence looked over his shoulder
and turned around quickly without speaking. Georgiana waved her hand and
her handkerchief both at once, and Edward flourished his cap and looked
only at Billie, who thought regretfully:
"So, he did get back in time."
"Strange he didn't tell me last night he was going away," observed
Elinor.
"I think Edward Paxton is a person of many moods," said Mary. "He is
never the same from one day to the next. I don't think he is a bit like
Edward l'Estrange in character. It's only his face."
"They are certainly alike in face," put in Billie. "I believe their
nearest relatives could not tell them apart if they were dressed alike."
"I could," exclaimed Elinor with conviction in her tones. "There is such
a difference in their expressions. Edward Paxton's face is so much more
spiritual."
Billie could not help laughing at this, and Elinor was piqued.
"Well, I do think he is much more refined," she observed. "After all,
Billie, it was rather familiar of Edward l'Estrange to call you by your
first name."
"Nonsense," ejaculated Billie. "He's as good as I am, and I call him
Edward. Besides, haven't we accepted his hospitality, 'eaten his bread,'
as Papa says? It was quite right for him to call me Billie if he wanted
to."
The girls were rather surprised at this little tiff between the two
friends, who were never known to have had the shadow of a quarrel
before. Billie made up her mind that she would tell the girls the truth
about the two Edwards that very night, even if it were not her secret.
She couldn't bear these small misunderstandings, though they disturbed
the placid waters of their friendship ever so little.
"Why is it no one ever sees Virginia?" asked peacemaker Mary, changing
the subject.
"I did see her in the corridor of the hotel not long ago," replied
Nancy, "but when she recognized me she flew down a side hall. Miss
Campbell wanted to ask her to luncheon with us and tried to catch her,
but she had disappeared."
"Ever since you saved my life, Billie," here broke in Timothy, "I've
been meaning to tell you something. I'm almost certain it was Clarence
Paxton who yelled 'sharks,' that morning. Of course I couldn't testify
in a court about it, because when you are chasing around in deep water
you are not apt to examine people's lineaments. Anyway, it was not his
face I recognized, but his laugh. The last time he pitched the ball he
gave a jeering laugh, and that was why I kept on swimming farther out. I
had a feeling he thought I couldn't."
"If it was Clarence, he was punished," said Nancy. "His Grandmamma beat
him well with her stick; for I saw her do it and he saw me see her and I
saw that he saw that I saw her----" she finished breathlessly, while the
others laughed and clapped their hands.
"Bravo! Bravo!" cried Timothy.
They now entered a road which was not unlike a green tunnel. As a matter
of fact, it was a tunnel, only it had been cut through vegetation and
not through earth and rock.
"This must be the road to Miami," observed Billie. "You see it is cut
through the jungle. Isn't it wonderful?"
On each side of them tropical trees had grown in such thick profusion
and were so closely interwoven with vines and undergrowth as to form an
impenetrable wall.
"This must be a dreadful place to be lost in," said Timothy seriously.
"There are paths that lead through it, they say. But it is said that the
people who ventured to find them were lost themselves and never
returned."
"Criminals have hidden there----" Mary began, when the sound of another
motor coming up behind at a tremendous rate of speed attracted their
attention from the jungle. It was a gray racing car and as it flashed
past them, Billie and Nancy exchanged a meaning glance.
The other girls had heard the story of their strange adventure that
night at the l'Estranges, but they had half forgotten it already, since
it was only a fight after all. However, it had been a very real
occurrence to Billie and Nancy. They wondered if the gray car contained
a man who thought he had committed a murder; and was that man Ignatius
Donahue? Of course, there may have been other Ignatius Donahues in the
world, but since that night, they had heard no more from Mr. Campbell's
old friend.
Ten miles down one road and almost as many along another flew the Comet,
flashing his red breast gloriously in the sunshine.
In the whir of his smoothly running motor engine they could hear a song
of the joy of living.
"He's singing this morning," exclaimed Mary ecstatically. "He's got a
little song all his own. Listen!"
They sat silently for a few minutes harkening to the music of the motor
machine.
"I know exactly what he's singing," said Elinor. "I can distinctly hear
him say:
'God's-in-His-Heaven-all's-right-with-the-world
God's-in-His-Heaven-all's-right-with-the-world.'"
"I don't hear him say that," put in Nancy.
"He seems to me to be singing:
'Begone-dull-care-begone-dull-care-begone-dull-care.'"
"What do you think he's saying, Mary?" asked Timothy.
"Something entirely different from the others," replied Mary. "Here's
what his song sounds to me like:
'My-coursers-are-fed-with-the-lightning
they-drink-of-the-whirlwind's-stream.'"
"This sounds like a quotation party," laughed Billie. "It reminds me of
Friday afternoon in the rhetoric class. It's my turn now, I suppose, and
I'm afraid I haven't got the Oriental imagination that will make a motor
car know verses from Shelley and Browning. All I can hear the old Comet
sing is
'Punch-punch-punch-with-care--
punch-in-the-presence-of-the-passengere.'"
"You've none of you struck it right," said Timothy. "This is the song of
the motor and once you catch it you never hear anything else:
'Ketch a nigger by the toe,
Ketch a nigger by the toe.
When he hollers, let 'im go,
When he hollers, let 'im go.'"
"Timothy!" protested the two most poetic souls of the party, Mary and
Elinor. But having got that insidious verse in their minds they could
not get it out, and for the rest of the journey they heard the motor
singing joyfully to himself:
"Ketch a nigger by the toe;
When he hollers, let him go."
Before them stretched the road like a long white ribbon fading into the
blue horizon. But they had left the tangled wildwoods far behind them,
and were now passing orange groves hedged in with tall fences of
arbor-vitae or bushes of the roses of Sharon in full bloom, their white
blossoms gleaming in the sunshine like a line of new-fallen snow.
"This must be the Duffy grove," exclaimed Billie. "He told me he had
built a board fence as high as the wall of China around his place,
because next to his wife, he loved his orange trees."
It was the Duffy grove, for the rotund gentleman himself could now be
seen frantically waving his Panama hat and pointing toward a whitewashed
board fence, some twenty feet high, at the top of which branched rafters
like the uncovered roof of an enormous building.
"He stretches canvas over it when the weather is cool, and he has stoves
all about inside with wood fires to keep the baby oranges from catching
cold. Isn't he a funny man?"
"In other words he has an orange asylum instead of an orphan asylum,"
put in Timothy, as they drew up at the gate of the two-acre enclosure
wherein Mr. Duffy indulged his taste for an ideal orange grove.
The avenue itself did not enter the enclosure but took its unconsecrated
way outside the great white wall. Tall palms, like a row of giant
sentinels, seemed to keep guard over the secrets of the grove; but the
inquisitive vine of the yellow jasmine had almost reached the top, and
innumerable and brilliant flowers grew at its foot. At the end of the
avenue was the Duffy lodge.
"Ladies, you must excuse these simple accommodations," he said as he
helped them out of the motor. "Mrs. Duffy and I like to come here and
camp out occasionally, but it's a little too primitive for the old
woman. She prefers Palm Beach and society. And she's right," he added
good-naturedly. "This is a fine place to motor to, but it's too far from
people, and Mrs. Duffy and I like people, don't we, old lady? Especially
young people, eh? I feel like blessing that current that carried you and
Timothy against me that day, Miss Billie."
"We feel like blessing it, too," said Billie.
"It was a very well-bred and respectable current," exclaimed Timothy.
"It not only saved our lives but it carried us into a moonlight dance
and an orange grove."
Although the lodge was hardly the primitive affair Mr. Duffy had
described, being a well-built and comfortable bungalow, it had only
three rooms--a large living room, a bedroom and a kitchen.
"Take off your coats and hats, my dears," exclaimed Mrs. Duffy, "and put
on these aprons, because when people eat oranges in a real grove they
need protection, and I would not for worlds have you ruin your pretty
frocks."
Thus enveloped in large white aprons, they followed Mr. Duffy, looking
like a jolly fat comic opera pastry cook in that costume, to the
entrance of the orange grove.
"Jason must have felt like this when he found the Golden Fleece,"
whispered Mary, while they stood in a group waiting for Mr. Duffy's man
to unlock the small door in the wall.
As for their jolly host himself, he smiled mysteriously and beckoned
them to follow.