“Ye-as,” murmured Mercy.  “Running which way?”

“Treason!” cried Jennie.  “The only way the Germans have ever run forward is by crawling.”

“Oh!  Oh!  Listen to the Irish bull!” cried Helen.

“Oh, is it?” exclaimed Jennie.  “Maybe there is a bit of Irish in the McStones, or O’Stones.  I don’t know.”

She certainly was the life of the party.  Helen and Ruth had too recently bidden Tom Cameron good-bye to feel like joining with Jennie in repartee.  Though it might have been that even the fat girl’s repartee was more a matter of repertoire.  She was expected to be funny, and so forced herself to make good her reputation.

This trip by automobile in fact was a forced attempt to cheer each other up on the part of the chums.  At the Outlook, the Cameron’s handsome country home, matters had become quite too awful to contemplate with calm, now that Tom had gone back to France.  At least, so Helen stated.  At the Red Mill Ruth had been (she admitted it) ready to “fly to pieces.”  For naturally poor Aunt Alvirah and Jabez Potter, the miller, were pot cheerful companions.  And the two chums had Jennie Stone as their guest, for she had returned from New York with them, where they had all gone to bid Tom and Henri Marchand farewell.

The three college friends had picked Mercy Curtis up (she had been with them at boarding-school “years and years before,” to quote Jennie) and started on this trip from Cheslow to Longhaven.  On the outskirts of Longhaven a Wild West Show was advertised as having pitched its tents.

“And, of course, if there is anything about the Wild West close at hand our movie writer must see it,” said Jennie.  “Give you local color, Ruth, for another western screen masterpiece.”

“I suppose it is one of these little fly-by-night shows!” scoffed Mercy.  “Let’s see that bill.  Dakota Joe’s Wild West and Frontier Round-Up’ Mm!  Sounds big.  But the bigger they sound the smaller they are, as a rule.”

“I am glad I am not a pessimist,” sighed Jennie Stone.  “It must be an awfully uncomfortable feeling inside one to wear such a cloak.”

“Ow!  Ow!” cried Helen again.  “Another Hibernianism, without a doubt.”

She turned the car into a much-traveled road just then.  Not a mile ahead loomed the “big top.”  A band was playing, and what it lacked in sweetness it certainly made up in noise.

“Look at the cars!” exclaimed Ruth, becoming interested.  “We shall have to park before long, Helen, and walk to the show lot.”

“Right here!” returned Helen, with vigor, and turned her car into a field where already a dozen automobiles were parked.  A man with a whisp of whisker on his chin, and actually chewing a straw, motioned the young girl where to run her car.  He was evidently the farmer who owned the field, and he was surely “making hay while the sun shone,” for he was collecting a quarter from every automobile owner who wished to get his car off the public road.