“That sort of man always is a coward,” replied Cora. “Perhaps he won’t be so free and easy when he meets girls alone again. But let’s get busy now and hustle these things back into the car.”
They soon had the thermos bottle and the depleted lunch basket tucked snugly away. The twins settled down in the rear seat, Cora threw in the clutch, and the car started.
They had gone perhaps a mile, when they descried a car coming at a rapid rate from the opposite direction.
“That man seems to be trying to break the speed limit,” remarked Cora, as she drove her own car close to the right-hand side of the road so as to give plenty of room.
“Like Jehu, the son of Nimshi, he driveth furiously,” observed Belle.
Just then the gate of a near-by farmhouse was pushed open, and a little child about three years old toddled out into the road, right in the path of the onrushing car.
“Oh, girls,” screamed Bess, rising from her seat, “that child will be killed!”
For one tense moment it seemed as though nothing could avert a terrible tragedy.
A woman burst out of the house and ran screaming toward her child. But it was clearly impossible for her to reach the little one in time to save it.
The child, startled by the screams, stood helplessly right in the path of the Juggernaut that seemed doomed to crush it.
The driver of the car had seen the danger, and he instantly threw out the clutch and put on the brakes. But he was too near to stop in time.
There was only one thing to do, and, like a gallant man, he did it. He whirled the wheel around, and the car, its speed diminished but still considerable, dashed into a tree by the side of the road. The driver, an elderly man, was thrown out and lay stunned and bleeding.
The mother rushed to the little one and gathered it up into her arms with sobs and exclamations.
The girls, who had been unable to move and had sat paralyzed with horror, breathed a huge sigh of relief.
“Thank God, the baby’s saved!” cried Bess.
“Yes,” exclaimed Cora, “but the man may be killed! Let’s see what we can do to help him.”
The three girls jumped from the car and rushed over to the injured man.
While the girls are giving first aid to the man, and the mother is crying and crooning over her child, it may be well for the sake of those who have not followed our Motor Girls in their previous adventures to state a little more fully just who they were and what they had been doing up to the time this story opens.