Various

By Emerson G. Taylor

“You drive so splendidly,” replied the girl, drooping her pretty head so that the big white hat quite shaded her face. “The way you beat Mr. Arnold was fine. He looked so silly when we passed him. You’re so brave and—and skillful. It makes one feel so safe to be with you.”

“Of course I’ve driven all my life,” Miss Herron admitted. “Your grand-uncle, the judge, my dear, always insisted that driving was part of a gentlewoman’s education, like household management or a knowledge of English history. A bit of a race is only amusing, but what with these automobiles, there’s no pleasure in horses at all nowadays.”

“They certainly are dangerous.”

“Dangerous! They should not be allowed on the roads at all. Any more than—than drunken men. The comparison somehow pleases me, Lucy. Did you observe it?”

“Yes, yes, Cousin Agatha.” The girl turned to the older lady a face very young and fair and eyes that shone. “I was laughing at it all the time.”

It was a great pleasure, so Miss Herron assured all her friends, to feel sure that her little cousin was for a few months at least to be brought under the influence which had shaped the lives of her New England forebears. For the child to live in Herron House, to grow in knowledge of her race, so splendidly patriotic, so consistently rich and cultivated from the days when Barham was part of a colony, seemed to the proud old lady a real necessity for Lucy. She must never forget that she was a New England gentlewoman; she must learn the traditions, stiffen with the pride of her race. And because these things might grow dim or be clean forgotten, did she spend all her days in the noisy, extravagant city or the lazy places abroad.

Miss Herron rejoiced when Lucy’s father laughed, and replied to her request by sending the child to her for a whole long summer.

“She is very dear to me,” he had whispered, looking across the room to where Lucy was chattering as she poured tea. “And very lovely, Agatha.”

“She has the Herron look,” she had answered, complacently.

“You’ll take ever so good care, of her?”

“I may be trusted, I think, not to abuse any member of my family.”

Quiet, sunny days followed. There were hours in the glowing garden, murmurous with bees, heavy with delicate perfume of box and verbena and mignonette; hours in the great old house, with its family treasures of plate and china and mahogany, where ancient Chloe and Sylvester still served as in the days when they had followed North that kindly Yankee major they had found helpless after the doings in the Shenandoah Valley. There were company at dinner, less formal gatherings on the piazza of a moonlight evening, when accredited youngsters from the summer colony amused and sometimes scandalized Miss Herron with their laughter and singing. And now and then Lucy would be carried off to other houses of Barham; whence she would return to render a supposedly exact account of all she did and said. Only twice since the first of June did Miss Herron fail in her promise to Lucy’s father and to herself. And these occasions had been within the last ten days, when her old neuralgia had laid her low. What her charge was up to at those times, Miss Herron did not care to inquire. It was ordered that not even Lucy should come near when cousin Agatha was in pain, and therefore uncertain in temper as well as a bit careless as to costume.

“Tell me,” the old lady asked, after they had driven some distance along the shady road, “are you really enjoying your stay here?”

“Yes, indeed. I think Barham’s just lovely.”

“And what’s most lovable in it?”

Lucy stole a look from under her broad hat brim, then retreated. “I don’t believe I know,” she said, simply. “It’s all——”

“Charming. Of course. I’m glad you think so. We could dispense with the strangers, however. They don’t belong here. They are vulgarly rich and parvenu.”

“Some of them are nice, Cousin Agatha,” the child protested, deferentially.

“Who, for instance?”

“All those who come to the house.”

“A pack of rascals!” the old lady replied, crisply. “Laughing like—hyenas, if that’s the animal. It’s a mercy that the boys and girls are sent to good schools. They learn some decent behavior, though of course they haven’t had your advantages, my dear. But I dislike their mothers. They are rich, but they have no poise. Poise, my dear, and the marks of long descent. But the children may develop. All but one of them.”

Lucy’s face grew gently mutinous. “Which is that, cousin?”

“That yellow-haired boy of——” She checked her reply abruptly to listen. The horses were reined in. “My dear,” she asked, resignedly, “what was that noise I heard?”

There was no mistaking that honk of the goose many times strengthened, and, following this, the low, steady sputter of a gasoline engine. The nigh horse’s ears pricked up, then were laid back; his honest mate stopped short to await developments.

“I’m afraid,” ventured Lucy, “that it’s an automobile.”

“The wretches, to choose this road! Are they coming? Go along, there!” cried Miss Herron to the horses, who sprang forward as she laid the whip on their fat flanks. “If we can get just beyond the woods I can turn out for it. But—oh, the wretches!”

“Honk-honk!” close behind now.

“Oh!” cried Lucy. She knelt up in the carriage seat, looking back along the road.

“Wave to him, my child.” Miss Herron leaned back on the reins. Her thin cheeks flushed up, and her gray eyes were like coal fires. “Signal the creature to slow up.”

“I am, Cousin Agatha. I am waving as hard as I can.” She was standing now, meeting with a lithe motion of supple knees and slender hips each plunge of the hurrying carriage, one little hand on the back of the seat. And with the other, Lucy, who looked at cousin Agatha and then laughed—just a little—signaled gayly if vaguely to the driver of the coming car. This was a young man, whose hair—for he wore no hat—shone in the sun like crisp gold wire.

“Honk!” spoke the horn, “honk!” and then three times more in quicker succession.

Lucy laughed aloud. “Isn’t he silly?” And then waved once more.

“Honk!”

“Whoa!” commanded Miss Herron, drawing her steeds to the side of the road. “Stand still, and don’t be so foolish. It’s only”—she hesitated, then pronounced the word as though it profaned her speech—“an automobile.”

“May I pass you?” came the driver’s voice from behind. The choking reek of the gas drifted down and enveloped them.

“It’s all right,” caroled Lucy. “Come ahead!” Then she dropped down to her seat beside her companion, light as a sparrow.

“Is it coming?”

The horses snorted, swerved, and plunged heavily. There swept by a vision of dark green and shining brass, the chuck-chuck-chuck of machinery.

“Oh, do be careful, Arch!” cried Lucy, for the ponderous machine ground through the soft bank that hemmed in the road on that side, and canted dangerously for a second or two. Then it whirled up the road, with the dust thick in its trail, and through the haze the driver’s yellow head shining. The fat horses shivered, and stood fast.

“The wretch! I knew it was young Fraser.”

“It wasn’t like him,” Lucy murmured, and a hint of a smile crossed her lips, “to have driven by us so fast.”

“I’d not expect it of him, certainly.”

“Nor I.” And Lucy sighed in spite of herself. She was not very old.

“Ha!” Miss Herron bestowed a lightning glance on her unconscious little passenger, and found it her turn to smile, but with a kind of grimness. “Indeed!” she remarked, and added, under her breath after a queer pause: “How very extraordinary!”

They drove along quietly after that for some minutes, for Miss Herron requested silence that she might compose herself the more readily after her fright. The road led them up a gentle incline, then turned sharp to the right, and a couple of hundred yards forked to lead around both sides of a hill. It was not till the horses approached this point that their driver opened her lips. She had worn, all the time that she was quieting her nerves, a look of anxiety into the midst of which would break every now and then the kindest and briefest of whimsical smiles.

“Which direction shall we take?”

Lucy started from her reverie. She, too, had said no word. “This is Steven’s Forks, isn’t it? Shall we go to the right?”

“Toward home, then?”

“Yes,” said Lucy, eagerly, “toward home. To the right, please.”

The talk brightened then. And Lucy in particular chattered away at desperate speed, exclaiming over the rolling landscape, telling her old hostess how much she had enjoyed Barham.

“That is very pleasant to hear,” replied Miss Herron, graciously enough. “I am only sorry that my indisposition last week prevented our——”

“Please don’t think of it, Cousin Agatha.”

“No? My dear, have you ever been visited by neuralgia?”

“I mean,” explained the child, eagerly and shyly together, “that it didn’t interfere with my good times at all.”

“I understand. Silly girl, why don’t they teach you to say things properly! But I know exactly what you mean.”

“Not really!” A quick dismay chased away the arch gayety.

“And I’m very glad if you had what you would call a good time.”

“Oh, I did! It’s all been delightful,” Lucy contrived to stammer, and then fell to scanning the road, which stretched away for a long half mile ahead of them, white and level.

“A good road for those wretched machines,” observed Miss Herron. “I see one has been along it.” And she pointed to the track of broad tires they were following.

“Wouldn’t a farm wagon leave those marks?”

“Possibly, but——” She rose slightly in her seat, and peered ahead. She laughed aloud as she gathered up her reins and touched the horses into a brisk trot. “This may be the workings of Providence, my dear.”

“Perhaps, Cousin Agatha.”

“Is that thing yonder green?”

“There’s only one person in it, and—and he’s getting out now. It’s stopped.”

“Anything more?”

“Oh!” cried Lucy, and now it was hers to stand, “I think——”

“Indeed!” remarked Miss Herron. “I fancied I saw that yellow head of his.”

“The workings of Providence!” Lucy sighed.

“How perfectly absurd! Don’t be irreverent, miss.”

As they approached the machine, young Fraser was quite invisible; but when at last Miss Herron had coaxed her horses up to it, and made them stand, he crawled out from beneath it somewhere, red-faced, dusty and with black grease on his hands.

“The penalty of recklessness!” observed the old lady, surveying the boy as though he was inanimate stone. “Broken down.”

“How d’ye do, Miss Herron?” said Fraser, apparently much embarrassed. “Lucy——”

“Is that machine really broken?” The joyful hope in Miss Agatha’s voice was quite unconcealed. “Smashed?”

“There’s something wrong, certainly,” the boy confessed, ruefully. His regard sought Lucy’s. “But just what’s amiss I can’t see.”

The old lady shook her head warningly. Some outward manifestation she had to make in order to conceal the joy which, like a warm cordial, penetrated every fiber of her being as a certain plan shaped itself in her mind. This was the automobile which had frightened her horses and set her nerves twittering; and now it reposed by the roadside helpless. This was the reckless, handsome boy who had set her guests laughing on an occasion requiring a measure of decorum, since the bishop honored her house with his presence; who now, with every appearance of impotent anger, was tinkering with the vitals of a hot engine, dirty and perspiring. Miss Herron admired the idea which grew before her imagination as she would have admired a beautiful, unfolding flower.

“It ought to go now,” the boy announced, after some further bungling examination. What his testing and poking was supposed to accomplish did not appear. He spoke with an odd ruefulness, and seemed to try to deepen the impression his tone conveyed by another look at Lucy eloquent of regret.

“Try it,” said Miss Herron.

The boy threw over the balance wheel; there came forth a clank and some faint clicks from the engine’s interior; then cold silence settled upon it again.

“No go,” reported Archibald, and proceeded to explain what by rights should have come to pass. “But none of these engines are perfected,” he added.

“So there you must—remain? Two miles from any assistance?”

“Yes, Miss Herron.”

“I rather question the willingness of any of our Barham folk to aid a shipwrecked automobile. You drive them so heedlessly, young gentleman. I confess,” she continued, judiciously, “that I rather enjoy your plight.”

The boy grinned delightfully. “So do I. It isn’t often”—how express the light mockery that danced on his lips!—“that my accidents are so charmingly compensated as this is.”

“I am quite serious, Mr. Fraser.”

“I am equally so, Miss Herron.”

A moment they regarded one another in silence. “I am inclined to offer you some assistance, I think,” the old lady announced, deliberately. “Merely out of common humanity. I have read that the drivers of automobiles often depend on friendly or highly paid wagoners to—to tow them. Now——”

Archibald drowned the rest in thankful protestations. And——

“It would be awfully kind of you, Cousin Agatha,” said little Lucy, suddenly finding her voice. “I’m sure that Archie——”

“Eh?”

“It would be very nice indeed,” the child contrived to say, and tried to look unconscious.

“If you could help me a little,” explained Archibald, and his own cheeks flamed, though his eyes faltered not a bit. “The break isn’t very serious, I guess.”

A second time Miss Herron considered in silence. She turned deliberately and looked at Lucy, who returned her questioning glance with a stare of babylike innocence; her gray eyes interrogated the boy.

“If you can assure me that your machine can’t go,” said Miss Herron, “I’ll tow you.”

For a brief second Archibald hesitated. Then he fumbled among the levers; raised the hood again; returned to the driver’s seat, and fingered at something the ladies could not see. “She can’t be moved,” the boy reported.

From the fence along the roadside a loosened rail was wrenched; an honest cow, picketed at pasture, had her tether shortened a dozen feet in two strokes of the boy’s knife. In five minutes more, amid many warnings from Miss Herron against scratching the varnish, one end of the rail was made fast to the rear axle of the carriage, and the other to the automobile.

“Now jump in,” ordered Lucy, radiant with smiles; and she pointed to the back seat.

“Mr. Fraser,” her cousin amended, calmly, “will continue in his automobile. To—to steer, if necessary.”

“But——”

“I should prefer it, if you please.” The horses strained forward, the wheels turned; the triumphal procession was under way. “My dear,” said Miss Herron, “will you be good enough to hold your parasol over me? The sun is very uncomfortable.”

All the way home, the length of Barham Street, where the people stared and laughed, young Fraser repeated all the maledictions he could remember or invent. For the dust choked him, and the view of Lucy’s back as she sat holding the parasol over her cousin did not cheer.

“I’ll get even—oh, more than even!—with you, dear lady,” he promised, releasing his tiller to shake his fist at Miss Herron’s unconscious and unbending figure, “if it takes all summer. I wonder if she could have guessed. And it was planned so perfectly.”

Barham laughed over the story, laughed again when at the Richmonds’ dance Lucy came back into the glare of the lights with the Fraser boy, dazzled and bright-cheeked, after half an hour’s absence in the darkness of the great garden. And how many of the gossips would have given their ears to have heard the long talk between Miss Agatha and Lucy’s father on the night of his arrival? So the slow summer drifted by.

If the Revolutionary Daughters had not arranged their September meeting on the day that a freight wreck made the trains from Barham westward very late and irregular; if Miss Herron had not been waiting a fretful half hour in the dusty station for the means of reaching the meeting before it was over, when Archie Fraser drove his car thither in a search for an express package, the latter part of this story would have been very different. But as the boy stopped his panting, throbbing machine at the edge of the platform, Miss Herron looked out the window.

“I am waiting for a train,” she remarked, on the heels of her stiff little greeting, “for Oldport.”

Archie glanced at the old lady’s delicate dress and at the badge of gold and enamel she wore on her breast. “The R. D.’s?” he asked, respectfully.

“Exactly. I am one of the charter members, as you probably are aware. And to miss the meeting is distinctly vexatious.”

“I’m so sorry.” He turned to the station agent. “How late’s the train?”

“Half an hour or so. She won’t make up much comin’ this far. And she’s got to let the express pass her.”

Out by the platform the car murmured its steady, quiet song of power, and quivered with its singing. Archibald started, stung by a sudden hope. If only——

“That will bring you to Oldport very late, I’m afraid,” he ventured, feeling his way toward a compassing of his plan. The express package could wait. “I’m very sorry. I wish——” Here he broke off his speech to gaze pensively at the automobile.

“It’s very annoying,” said Miss Herron.

The station agent winced, as though she had laid a lash across his shoulders, and in his awkward fashion endeavored to apologize for his road’s remissness. Like a tradesman reproved by his best customer, he promised Miss Herron that “it shouldn’t happen again.” It was quite in keeping with her character that she was graciously pleased to accept the man’s excuses. And then the agent, fired into an expansive cheerfulness by her kindness, said that which won him the mysterious present he received the following Christmas.

“Why can’t you take Miss Herron over, Mr. Fraser—hey? I guess that there autobile——”

“That——”

“Autobile,” repeated the agent, sturdily. “She’ll beat most o’ the trains on this road.”

“The very thing!” He made a mental promise never to forget this man’s kindness and tact. “Oldport! It wouldn’t take us an hour; and it’s the best piece of road in the State.”

“The idea!” exclaimed Miss Herron, gently scornful. “In an—automobile!”

“Please come,” he begged. “It would be such an honor, and a pleasure, too.”

“I should prefer the train.” But the very fact that she let a note of argument and protest come into her voice gave Archibald instant encouragement.

The station agent, warned by a furious wink, came nobly to the fore. “I’m afraid the train ain’t goin’ to do ye much good, ma’am. Not for some time, anyway. I never see such a road’s this.”

“I’ll go very carefully,” Archie went on, recklessly promising.

“Of course, you know, I dislike those machines, but,” Miss Herron confessed, with a fair show of sincerity, “I am rather eager to be present at this meeting.” She surveyed with critical eye the deep-cushioned seats, the heavy springs, then the tiller and the various start-and-stop levers. “You think there’ll be no danger?”

“Not the least. I’m sure you’d not be afraid, Miss Herron.”

“I am afraid,” she replied, tartly, “of nothing that man can devise. Be so good as to lend me your arm, Mr. Fraser.”

He charmed her by his deferential escort across the platform; he protected the rustling silk of her skirt from any possible fleck of dirt as she mounted to her place; he was solicitous, as a gentleman should be, concerning the dust cloth, and deft as a footman in arranging it. Clearly, as Miss Herron perceived, the boy appreciated the honor she was doing him, and so far earned her approval. Nor were his manners wholly uncouth.

Archie drew on his gauntlets and settled himself, hands on tiller and throttle. “Are you quite ready?” He could not hide his smile. A sweet hour was to follow.

“I am waiting,” she answered.

“Go, then.”

The ponderous machine leaped forward as if released from a spring, gathering power and speed each half second. Miss Herron laid her hand on the driver’s arm.

“Not too fast—all at once,” she said. “I——”

“She’ll do better when we strike the good road,” the driver replied. “This sand checks her badly.”

It was so lovely a revenge that lay now in his hand to inflict. This old lady had towed him home once, the laughingstock of the village; she had brought to naught at the same time the scheme which had cost Lucy and himself such a deal of planning. The machine was to be abandoned, they had arranged in that runaway afternoon when Miss Herron kept her room; the carriage was to overtake him in his distress; he was to drive home with the two ladies, holding Lucy’s hand on the back seat, and convincing Miss Herron of his superior qualifications to marry into her family. But all this had in the sequel come to less than nothing. It was Miss Herron also who, Archie was convinced, had been at the bottom of his father’s sudden determination to attach him to the Paris branch of the Fraser business, and so banish him from all that was dearest and best in the world.

Now, by blessed good luck, Miss Herron was quite in his power to frighten soundly and to land at the gathering of the elect, blown, dusty and disheveled. If he had been more than twenty, he would have thought and acted otherwise than he did; but the likely outcome of his plan never troubled the boy, if indeed it entered his honest head at all. “I’ll scare her,” remarked Archie, grinning silently, “good and hard.”

But, even as he plotted, he wooed her with his politest phrases; laughed, but not too loudly, at the little sparkles of wit, accepted with naÏve delight her comments on the skill in driving that a boy of his age could show. For five minutes or so they ran quietly and steadily along a featureless road through barren pastures. There was time enough for his plan to blossom, for Oldport was nearly thirty miles away, and there intervened a village through which to drive at illegal speed.

But by slow degrees, without at all perceiving how it came about, Archie found that somehow his passenger was a very delightful old lady. What had become of the absurd starchiness, which before had so maddened him, of the stiff pride, which had condescended to him as though Fraser & Co. were creatures far beneath the regard of a New England old maid? She asked him questions, she was as interested as could be in his father’s plans for him.

“Where will you live in Paris?” asked Miss Herron.

“Oh, over in the Quarter, I hope. It’d be more fun there than in the other house.”

“The other house?”

“Ours, you know. Father likes to have his own place when he’s over.”

“Indeed?”

“We only lease it,” Archie explained, ingenuously. “It’s up near the Arch.”

“Indeed! That should be extremely pleasant.”

“I hate the idea of going,” the boy blurted out. He looked straight ahead; a slow flush darkened his fair skin.

“Yes?”

“Unless,” he murmured, suddenly inspired to madness, “unless——”

Miss Herron readjusted the dust cloth. The boy felt a quick irritation at her apparent inattention; but the purpose, born of her apparent readiness to hear and approve him, held. “I want Lucy to go, too, Miss Herron,” he announced, bluntly enough.

“Indeed!”

“Lucy!” he cried. “I do love her so! Please say that I can have her. Please say——”

“Do I understand,” she asked, and the boy could not comprehend why her old voice shook so, “that you are making a formal proposal for the hand of Miss Lucy Herron?”

“Yes,” he cried, jubilantly. “Oh, say I may ask her.”

“If you had intended so far to honor us,” the old lady replied, icily, “I should have thought that you would have approached the subject with some degree of formality.”

“Miss Herron!”

“To speak of such matters in an—automobile is to treat them very unbecomingly. It is not,” she continued, and all her unbending rigidity of demeanor was behind her words, “dignified.”

“Being dignified,” cried Archie, hotly, “hasn’t anything to do with being in love.” Was it a smile that lighted up her craggy features, like sunshine on granite. “You don’t understand.”

“Apparently not. I am quite unused to the ways of modern youth. The world’s moved very fast in recent years. In an—automobile—as it were.”

“But Lucy——”

“Well, Mr. Fraser?”

“I——”

“Let us not refer to her, I beg.”

“Not ever again?” he asked, but with no hint of disappointment.

“I am surprised that you so much as dreamed of it under the present circumstances,” she replied, tartly.

Archie laughed shortly. “Please forget that I so far forgot myself,” he begged. “It was wrong, under the present circumstances.” All the boy’s sunny malice shone from his clear eyes. “I ought to have remembered my real duty and pleasure.”

“And that,” Miss Herron asked, for once caught unawares, as it appeared, “is what?”

“Watch!” said Archie, briefly.

They had come by now to the beginning of the solid macadam road that runs across the county, to the joy of the chauffeur as to the corresponding dismay of the truck farmers for whom it was constructed. There was nothing ahead to break the long, hard track. Archie reached down beside him, though his eyes never left his course or one hand the steering wheel, and set his hand to some lever. The song of the great machine was for a second broken; then a new song of the road began, louder and fiercer than the first and in quicker measure. Miss Herron felt as she did the first time she descended in the express elevator of a high office building. She was conscious that her hat was tugging at its pins. She settled herself back deeper in the seat and braced her feet stiffly, only to bounce up as they ran over some stick.

“Oh!” she gasped. “Ahem!”

“Sit tight,” counseled Archie, suavely. “We’ll get there in time, all right, if nothing happens.”

“If anything breaks,” she remarked, “you can usually get somebody to tow the machine home.”

“People are very charitable. Yes, Miss Herron.”

“Up to a point.”

And to that Archie had no rejoinder. It was perhaps as well that he did not see the smile that his passenger wore. It might have taken the edge off his revenge.

The houses commenced to appear at more frequent intervals now, and took on a character a little different from the old weather-grayed dwellings of the open country. There showed a white, slim church spire above the trees.

“Scarborough,” said Archie, and made the horn speak.

“You’ll be careful?” she asked. “Through the village——”

“Honk! honk!” This for a couple of children, who, starting to run across the road, doubled back like rabbits. Miss Herron caught just a glimpse of their white faces, and the end of their father’s torrent of imprecation. Now it was the horse of a baker’s wagon that climbed the bank by the roadside in two leaps and pranced shiveringly. Some boys cheered and then flung stones.

“Dear me!” ejaculated Miss Herron. “I rather hope we’ll meet nobody I know.”

“The sheriff himself couldn’t stop us now.”

“But——”

“Honk! honk!”

“Oh, Mr. Fraser!” They missed by a foot a carriage that was beginning slowly to turn around, and was nearly straight across the road when Archie twitched the automobile aside as if it was a polo pony.

“The stupid creatures!” cried Miss Herron, indignantly, when her heart commenced to beat again, “to block the way!”

“That was a close shave,” commented Archie.

“Not too recklessly, Mr. Fraser.”

“I must get you to the meeting, ma’am.”

“But the risk——”

“If I can’t have Lucy,” the boy declared, sullenly, “I don’t care what happens.”

“Assure me,” demanded his passenger, after a brief moment, during which with no slackening of speed the great machine tore down Scarborough’s main street like a green tornado, “that you retain entire control of the thing.”

“Oh, yes.”

Another pause. “I suggested that you make no mention of Miss Lucy.”

“I can’t have her?”

“How fast can the automobile go?” asked Miss Herron, ignoring the boy’s question.

“Some faster than this. But Lucy can——”

“Let us not discuss the matter, please.”

“I can’t have her?”

“I beg, Mr. Fraser, I beg you to center your attention on driving your machine.”

“Well, I will, then. I’ll drive her,” said the boy, grimly, “good and fast.” They came again to the open, but the road continued hard and broad, with only long curves around the base of a hill now and then. The wind blew the old lady’s hair into disarray, her dress was gray with dust, her eyes smarted terribly; she gave from time to time a little gasp—or was it a laugh?—and clutched at Archie’s arm, which held so rigid and strong to the tiller wheel. “This’ll be her finish, all right,” he thought. “Cross old cat. Scared?” he asked of her.

“I beg pardon?”

“You’re not scared, I suppose?” he said, mockingly.

“I have been accustomed to fast driving, Mr. Fraser, all my life.”

It was because she made that reply that Archie, quite desperate by now, dared what finally did occur. And this was occasioned by his spying in the distance another big car headed as he was, but moving less rapidly. In a minute he was alongside, and jammed on the brakes. The other driver, who was heavily mustached, red-faced and had three airy young damsels stowed in the tonneau, looked up in surprise.

“Hello, Isidore!”

“Hello! Hello, Mr. Fraser!”

“I’ll race you to the bridge.”

“Go on, now! Watcher think I got here?” But the girls chorused delightedly, and teased their driver—all but one, and she leaned forward to whisper confidingly, with her arms around his fat neck. Miss Herron surveyed the landscape.

“’Fraid cat!” giggled the girl. “You’re afraid, Mr. Mayer.”

“I ain’t, only——”

“One!” cried Archie, releasing his steed again. “Two!”

“Leggo, May!” grunted the other.

“And——”

“Three!” yelled Mayer. “To the bridge!”

By mere good luck the highway was empty, for to think that any cart or carriage could be passed was absurd. Side by side the huge machines, scarlet, green, alive with shining brass, tore along with the roar of express trains between the ditch and the bank. The slightest swerve at such speed meant death. The chatter of the careless girls dwindled, the faces of the rival drivers grew pale and tense.

“Oh, be careful!” murmured Miss Herron. “It’s very dangerous.”

“Very,” replied Archie. “Promise me Lucy and I’ll slow up.”

A sudden little shriek of joy and some handclapping from Mayer’s tonneau interrupted what the old lady might have answered. Glancing over, Miss Herron perceived that their rival had drawn ahead a yard or more, that the girls were crying taunts at her. Not far away now there showed a gleam of the river. And then Archie encountered the greatest surprise of his life.

“Saucy things!” remarked his passenger, and fell silent again.

“Come on!” called the prettiest of the three, through her hollowed hands. “Old freight car!”

“Archie!”

“Yes, Miss Herron?”

“Can’t you—— Oh!”

“What, ma’am?” From the tail of his eye he was aware that Miss Agatha was wringing her hands.

“Archie, they mustn’t beat us!”

“I guess I’ll crowd him.”

“Oh!”

The time was ripe, he thought. “Give me Lucy,” he repeated, doggedly, “or I’ll foul him.”

He had expected to frighten her. He had told himself what fun it would be to hear her give her agitated assent, with the fear of death on her if she refused. It was to be a fine revenge. But Miss Herron only raised a warning forefinger.

“Archie Fraser,” she said, in trembling tones, “if—if you take the dust from those common young women and that vulgar man, I’ll never forgive you.”

“Great heavens, Miss Herron! I—I——”

“Beat ’em!” she ordered truculently.

He stuck blindly to his point: “Lucy?”

“Beat ’em! Show me,” she declaimed, in trumpet tones, “that the man who wants to marry a Herron has some courage in him. Now!”

The road narrowed just ahead, where it led through a cut in the hill and then down to the bridge. On either side the banks rose eight or ten feet, and very steep, and beyond was a sharp curve. Archie made his horn speak angrily, as once more he came abreast of his rival, favored by the fact that Mayer had struck a strip of newly repaired and soft roadway some yards long. A second later he was leading.

“Pull up!” he bellowed hoarsely, crouching forward over his tiller still lower. He dropped his hand to the emergency brake. The cut was not six rods off. Once more the girls cried out, but this time in shrill fear. Miss Herron remained calm as the Sphinx.

“Honk!” from Mayer, and the click of levers. His machine slid along in a cloud of dust. “You win!”

It was ten minutes before the victors exchanged a single word. They rattled over the long bridge, steered up the streets of Oldport to the place where the Daughters were in session. Then Archie lay back with a sigh.

“You weren’t scared a bit!” he exclaimed, frankly doleful.

The old lady straightened her hat, lightly brushed off the top layer of dust from the front of her dress, then gave the briefest of queer little laughs. “It is one of the traits of my family,” she said, “never to be surprised at anything. And another,” she added, descending majestically from the automobile, “is to make the best of circumstances which appear to be inevitable.”

The boy blinked. “I don’t understand,” he stammered.

Miss Herron touched him on the arm. “I trust, then, that Lucy will express herself to you more clearly. In case—if you should venture to ask her a question.”

And with that the old lady minced her way up the steps of the house to disappear within doors.

“Good Lord!” exclaimed Archie, as the light began to break.