d says I drive too fast. He says he doesn't blame folks for calling me
'Crazy Jane.' He says I'll meet with an accident one of these days. But
Dad has old-fashioned ideas."

Jane paused long enough to brush back two stray locks from her flushed
face. Her hair was all awry and her attire showed carelessness and haste
in dressing.

"Well, darlin's, if you won't go with me I think I'll go and get Harriet.
She isn't afraid to ride with me."

"Please don't do that," replied Miss Elting. "We are on our way to see
Harriet on important business."

"So long, then. I'm off, girls."

Jane sprang into her car and drove away with a sputter and a roar,
disappearing in a cloud of pungent blue smoke.

"Isn't she a crazy creature?" demanded Margery disdainfully.

"She means well," soothed Hazel.

"Yeth. Thhe meanth to kill thomebody well," corrected Tommy.

Jane McCarthy had acquired the name of "Crazy Jane" because of her
reckless driving, her harum-scarum ways and her complete ignoring of
public opinion. Not a few of the residents of the little New Hampshire
village feared that Jane might be brought home after one of her wild
drives, with broken bones, if not worse.

In spite of her reckless manner Jane was well liked. She was good hearted
and very charitable, though her charity was not always bestowed with
judgment Being motherless she had practically done as she pleased ever
since she began to walk, and her father, a wealthy contractor, had
indulged her every whim, believing that Jane could do no wrong. Jane was
prompt to take advantage of this paternal leniency, though her worst
offense was that of continuously terrorizing the neighborhood in which she
lived and the whole countryside as well, by her reckless driving with both
car and horse.

The narrow escape of Grace Thompson from being run over by the big touring
car had not shaken Jane's nerve in the least. It had shaken Tommy's only
briefly. Tommy, supple and alert, had leaped from the road just in time to
avoid being run down by the car. A second's delay on her part would
undoubtedly have proved serious if not fatal to Tommy Thompson.

But the three girls were to see more of Jane in the near future. She was
to play a more active part in their lives than she had ever before done.
Just now they were more interested in what they instinctively felt Miss
Elting had to say to them.

"Now, listen, girls," said Miss Elting after the roar of the car had died
away in the