"I am so sorry, Mother," Bab responded. "I would give anything in the
world to see Ruth. But I simply can't stop school just now, or I shall
lose the scholarship. Mollie, you can accept Ruth's invitation. You and
Grace Carter can go to Washington together. You won't mind going
without me."

"I shall not stir a single step without you," blue-eyed Mollie returned
firmly. "And Mother thinks you can go!"

Mollie and Mrs. Thurston, aided by Bab's teachers, at last persuaded
Barbara to take a few weeks' holiday. Bab could study to make up for lost
time during the Christmas holidays. For no one, except the young woman
herself, doubted Barbara's ability to win the desired Vassar scholarship.

And so it was arranged that Bab and Mollie should go with Ruth to
Washington. Bab had grown taller and more slender in the past few months.
Her brown braids are now always coiled about her graceful head. Her hair
was parted in the middle, although a few little curls still escaped in
the old, careless fashion.

Ruth Stuart, too, was looking sweeter and fresher than ever, and was the
same ingenuous, unspoiled girl, whose sunny disposition no amount of
wealth and fashion could change.

Readers of the first volume in the "Automobile Girls Series," entitled
"The Automobile Girls At Newport," will recall how, nearly two years ago,
Ruth Stuart, with her father and her aunt, Miss Sallie Stuart, came from
their home in far away Chicago to spend the summer in Kingsbridge, New
Jersey. The day that Barbara Thurston stopped a pair of runaway horses
and saved Ruth Stuart from death she did not dream that she had turned
the first page in the history of the "Automobile Girls." A warm
friendship sprang up between Ruth and Bab, and a little later Ruth Stuart
invited Barbara, her younger sister, Mollie Thurston, and their friend,
Grace Carter, to take a trip to Newport in her own, red automobile with
Ruth herself as chauffeur and her aunt, Miss Sallie Stuart, as chaperon.

Exciting days at Newport followed, and the four girls brought to bay the
"Boy Raffles," the cracksman, who had puzzled the fashionable world!
There were many thrilling adventures connected with the discovery of this
"society thief," and the "Automobile Girls" proved themselves capable of
meeting whatever emergencies sprang up in their path.

In "The Automobile Girls in the Berkshires," the second volume of the
"Automobile Girls Series," the scene is laid in a little log cabin on
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