Page:Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car.djvu/94



and Amy were in each other's arms. Betty admitted afterward that she wished she had some one to lean on, but she gripped the steering wheel until her knuckles went white with the strain. Mollie clutched the sides of the seat in a grip of something like despair. The boys looked wonderingly at one another, and then at the strange figure that had tumbled out of the bushes.

"Oh, it's the hair-tonic peddler!" exclaimed Mollie a moment later, as she got a glimpse of the man. He had risen and was brushing the dust off his rusty black suit.

"The who?" asked Will.

"A man who sells hair-tonic," explained Betty in a low voice, for the stranger was looking at them now.

"At your service, ladies and gentlemen!" exclaimed the proprietor of Bennington's Hair-Tonic. "I see you remember me," and he smirked at the girls—that hard, and rather cruel,