“Well,” remarked Sid in a strange voice, “we’re alive, at any rate.”

“Yes,” added Bess sharply, “and no thanks to somebody, either.”

“If you mean me—­” began Sid, the color flaming into his face.

“Look at your radiator!” suddenly exclaimed Walter.  “It’s sprung a leak!”

A stream of water, trickling down from the front of the Streak testified to this.  A piece of the broken fence rail had jammed into the radiator, puncturing several coils and bending others out of place.

“No more go in her,” observed Sid ruefully.  “We’ll have to be towed back home.”

“Is your car damaged much, Cora?” asked Walter, for the girl had leaped out and was critically examining the auto.

“Only the mud guard,” she replied as she reached up to the steering wheel, touched the levers and shut off the engine.

CHAPTER VI

GETTING A TOW

For a few minutes every one seemed to be talking at once, and there was considerable confusion.  Sid and Ida came in for a number of rather angry glances, for the mishap seemed to be due entirely to their thoughtless conduct, and that their runabout had been the most damaged did not appear to lessen their offense.

Walter took the wheel of the Whirlwind, which Cora gladly relinquished to him, and soon had the car out of the ditch and upon the highway.  The Streak, of course, could not move under its own power for more than a short distance, as the water had all leaked out of the radiator, and, there being none to cool the cylinders, to operate it was to invite disaster.  Jack and Bess had alighted from the Get There.  Jack was very angry.

“Nice way to race!” he exclaimed.  “I’ve got a good mind to—­do something to you, Sid Wilcox!”

“Oh, you have, eh?” sneered Sid.  “Well, I don’t know but what I might like to take it out of you for your sister cutting so close across my course.  I guess I’m the one to get mad,”

“You sneak!  She did nothing of the sort!” cried Jack.

“Oh, Jack!  Please don’t!” begged his sister.  “If it was my fault, I’m ready to apologize.”

“Your fault!” exclaimed Walter.  “It wasn’t your fault at all.  It was—­er—­well, Sid and Ida were to blame.”

“That’s the way it looked to me,” declared Cora.

Ida stared at Jack’s sister for a moment, and then, with an open sneer on her face, turned deliberately away.

“Oh, I’m so glad we escaped, anyhow!” ejaculated Mary Downes.  Her voice attracted Sid’s attention.  He had not noticed the little work girl before.  At first he appeared to scowl, and then he smiled most pleasantly.  The action was not lost upon Belle, though Cora, puzzling over Ida’s manner, had not seen it.

“Come on, get in, girls,” called Walter from his seat in the touring car.  “No use standing there in the sun.”

“You’ve got to tow me,” ordered Sid in a peremptory manner.