The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car | Page 8

have even less idea--she has repeated that several times," spoke Amy. "Oh, I do hope they find the doctor!"
"Dr. Brown is real good," was the woman's opinion. "He cured my rheumatism, and Hetty Blake--she lives over on the Melford road--she had jaundice something terrible--she was as yellow as saffron tea, and he brought her around when old Dr. Wakefield give her up. Yes, Dr. Brown is right smart."
Thus she entertained the girls with remarks on the country life around, until Betty ventured to remark:
"I wonder if we oughtn't to look in on her?" motioning to the room where they had left the girl.
"No, best let her be," said the woman--Mrs. Meckelburn, she had said her name was.
"Hark!" exclaimed Amy a little later.
"It's an auto!" said Betty, going to the window.
She saw Mollie and Grace in the car, a young man, with a professional air about him, at the steering wheel.
"That's Dr. Brown!" exclaimed Mrs. Meckelburn, "but I didn't know he could drive one of them things."
"I guess Mollie got too nervous," explained Betty.
The doctor caught up his bag and hurried toward the house, followed by Grace and Mollie.
"An accident!" he exclaimed in brisk tones, bowing to Betty and Amy, and taking in the woman in his greeting. "Where is she?"
"In my bedroom, Dr. Brown," said Mrs. Meckelburn. "I do hope there's nothing much the matter with the poor dear."
They clustered around as the physician pushed open the door. Then he turned to them with a queer look on his face.
"Must be some mistake," he said. "There is no one here."
"No one there!" cried Betty in strange tones. "Why----"
She looked over his shoulder. There in the bed was the imprint of a human form, but the girl herself had vanished!
CHAPTER IV
THE QUEER PEDDLER
For a moment after this surprising discovery had been made no one spoke. Dr. Brown looked oddly from one girl to the other, and at Mrs. Meckelburn.
"There is evidently some mystery here," he said. "I supposed there was really some one here who needed my services?" and he glanced questioningly at Mollie, who had summoned him.
"Oh, indeed there was," she said, quickly. "A girl fell out of a tree----"
"Out of a tree!" exclaimed the doctor, and for a moment it seemed as though he believed a joke had been attempted on him.
"Yes," went on Betty, taking up the story, "didn't Mollie tell you that? She really fell from a tree as our auto passed, and at first we thought we had struck her." Betty shot a glance of inquiry at Mollie.
"No, I didn't tell that part," confessed the owner of the new car. "I was so flustrated, and I guess Grace didn't say anything either."
"No," answered the willowy one.
"Well, I'm here, at all events, but there is no patient," said the doctor, with a smile.
"Oh, we'll pay you for your call!" exclaimed Betty, quickly taking out her silver mesh bag. "How much----"
"No, no!" said Dr. Brown somewhat sharply, "you misunderstand me. I never accept a fee in a simple accident case. What I meant about there being no patient was that she has evidently gone away, possibly in a delirium, and in that case we had better search for her, for she may be badly hurt, or do herself some injury. You say she was in this room?"
"Yes," answered Mrs. Meckelburn.
"And you sat here in view of the door all the while?"
"Yes," spoke Betty. "She never came out of that door, I'm sure." Amy said the same thing.
"Then the only other possible solution is that she got out of the window," went on the physician, "for there is no other door from the room. We must look outside," and he crossed the apartment to the casement. It had been raised, and the shutters were open when the unconscious girl had been left alone.
"The window is low--she could easily have dropped to the ground," said Dr. Brown. "It is not more than four feet."
He leaned out to look at the ground underneath, and uttered an exclamation.
"That is what she did!" he cried. "There are the marks of feet landing heavily--small shoes--and unless some of you young ladies have been indulging in gymnastics."
"And see!" added Betty, standing beside the physician, "here are some of her long hairs," and she picked some from the window sill. "Oh, she did have the longest, most glorious hair!" and Betty sighed in memory, for Betty loved long tresses and her own, while they became her wonderfully well, were not very luxuriant.
"But I don't see how she could have gotten away, unconscious as she was, and injured," said Grace, with a puzzled air.
"She may have regained consciousness," spoke Dr. Brown; "or, as I said, she may have wandered off in a delirium. In that case we must try to find her. Again, she may not have