My Friend the Chauffeur | Page 8

essayed again, hope triumphing over experience.
"Yes, I'm just looking forward to that start," Mrs. Kidder caught me up. "We shall make a sensation. We're neighbours of yours, you know. We're at the Cap Martin Hotel. Isn't it perfectly lovely there, with that big garden, the woods and all? When we were coming to the Riviera, I told the man at Cook's that we wanted to go to the grandest hotel there was, where we could feel we were getting our money's worth; and he said all the kings and princes, and queens and princesses went to the Cap Martin, so--"
"We thought it might be good enough for us," capped Beechy.
"It's as full of royalties, as--as--"
"As a pack of cards," I suggested.
"And some of them have splendid automobiles. I've been envying them; and only this morning I was saying to my little girl, what a lot of nice things there are that women and children can't do, travelling alone--automobiling for one. Then, when I came on that advertisement of yours, I just screamed. It did seem as if the Hand of Providence must have been pointing it out. And it was so funny your home being on the Cap, too, within ten minutes' walk of our hotel. I'm sure it was meant, aren't you?"
"Absolutely certain," I responded, with a glance at Terry, who was not showing himself off to any advantage in this scene although he ought to have been the leading actor. He did nothing but raise his eyebrows when he thought that no one was looking, or tug at his moustache most imprudently when somebody was. Or else he handed the cakes to Miss Destrey, and forgot to offer them to her far more important relatives. "I'm so sure of it," I went on, "that I think we had better arrange--"
"Yes, indeed. Of course your ch--Mr. Barrymore (or did I hear you say Terrymore?) is a very experienced driver? We've never been in an automobile yet, any of us, and I'm afraid, though it will be perfectly lovely as soon as we're used to it, that we may be a little scary at first. So it would be nice to know for sure that the driver understood how to act in any emergency. I should hate to be killed in an automobile. It would be such--such an untidy death to die, judging from what you read in the papers sometimes."
"I should prefer it, myself," I said, "but that's a matter of taste, and you may trust Terry--Mr. Barrymore. What he doesn't know about a motor-car and its inner and outer workings isn't worth knowing. So when we go--"
"Aunt K--I mean Kittie, don't you think we ought to go home to the hotel?" asked Miss Destrey, who had scarcely spoken until now, except to answer a question or two of Terry's, whom she apparently chose to consider in the Martyr's Boat, with herself. "We've been here for hours, and it's getting dark."
"Why, so it is!" exclaimed Mrs. Kidder, rising hurriedly. "I'm quite ashamed of myself for staying so long. What will you think of us? But we had such a lot of things to arrange, hadn't we?"
We had had; and we had them still. But that was a detail.
"We must go," she went on. "Well, we've decided nearly everything" (this was news to me). "But there are one or two things yet we'll have to talk over, I suppose."
"Quite so," said I.
"Could you and Mr. Terrymore come and dine with us to-night? Then we can fix everything up."
"Speaking for myself, I'm afraid I can't, thanks very much," Terry said, hastily.
"What about you, Sir Ralph? I may call you Sir Ralph, may I not?"
"Please. It's my name."
"Yes, I know it. But it sounds so familiar, from a stranger. I was wondering if one ought to say 'Sir Ralph Moray,' till one had been acquainted a little longer. Well, anyway, if you could dine with us, without your friend--"
I also thanked her and said that matters would arrange themselves more easily if Barrymore and I were together.
"Then can you both lunch with us to-morrow at one o'clock?"
Quickly, before Terry could find time to object if he meditated doing so, I accepted with enthusiasm.
Farewells were exchanged, and we had walked to the gate with the ladies--I heading the procession with Mrs. Kidder, Terry bringing up the rear with the two girls--when my companion stopped suddenly. "Oh, there's just one thing I ought to mention before you come to see us at the hotel," she said, with a little catch of the breath. Evidently she was embarrassed. "I introduced myself to you as Mrs. Kidder, because I'm used to that name, and it comes more natural. I keep forgetting always, but--but perhaps you'd better ask at the hotel for the Countess Dalmar. I guess