The Motormaniacs | Page 7

he was the right man for the place. But he didn't know enough to run a phonograph and began to talk about getting towed home, and how if he ever bought a machine it would be electric. If I had been out of patience with him before, imagine what I felt then! He said he knew all the time I was driving too fast and hurting something, and thought he had proved it by the cylinders being hot--as though they aren't always hot. It was awful how stupid he was and helpless and disagreeable. He couldn't even crank properly and the engine back-fired on him and hurt his hand. Finally I got so desperate that I sat down and cried, while he nursed his hand and said we ought to desert the machine and go home, and that papa would be anxious if we didn't turn up to lunch. I knew all the time he was talking about his lunch. You don't know what an Englishman is if he isn't fed regularly, and it was now after one and we were eighteen miles from High Court.
"But I wasn't the girl to give up the ship. As long as there weren't any fractures or things stuck together I knew the expert could have made it go--and if the expert, why not I? If the captain hadn't flurried me with all the silly things he said, I believe I would have ferreted out the trouble all right. But I was so cross and tired and disgusted that my brain was stalled as well as the Manton, and so I gave up for a little while and wouldn't even answer the captain when he spoke to me.
"Oh, yes, we were pigs, both of us, he in his way and I in mine; and the sun went down and down, and it didn't make me feel any better to think that I was smudged all over with grease, and that my hands and nails were something awful--while if ever there was a galley-slave at the oar, it was the Honorable John Vincent Cartwright cranking.
"We went on in this way till nearly four o'clock, when what should we hear coming along the road but a buggy, and who should be in that buggy but Gerard Malcolm with an actressy-looking girl! I wasn't over-pleased at the girl part of it, but it did my heart good to see Gerard. He drew up alongside the Manton and leaped out of the buggy, so splendid and handsome and cool and masterful, with a glisten in his eye which said: 'Bring on your gas-engine!'--that I loved him harder than ever, and could have almost torn the captain's ring off my finger. He didn't waste any time saying how-do-you-do, but just asked this and that and dived in. Then he pegged away for about five minutes, wiped his hands, took his bat that the captain had been holding, and said: 'Gears!'
"'It'll take me about two hours to break them loose,' he said, 'and so if Miss Stanton wouldn't mind trading escorts, and if the captain would take the buggy, I think Miss Hardy and I had better stay by the machine.'
"Miss Stanton didn't look nearly so pleased as the captain; but when Gerard said again he positively couldn't manage it under two hours, and I snubbed her when she proposed towing, and when the captain brightened up and made a good impression--he was so excited, poor fellow, at the chance of getting away--that it all came right, and they drove off cheerfully together. When they had quite disappeared, Gerard threw down the wrench he had in his hand, and said we'd now have that talk he had been trying to get with me for the past month.
"'We'll do the gears first, thank you,' I said.
"'Gears!' he exclaimed, 'there's nothing the matter with the gears. I thought you were chauffeur enough for that'
"'But you said--' I began.
"I can make this car move in five minutes,' he said, climbing into the tonneau and motioning with his hand for me to take the other seat.
"Of course I obeyed him. I didn't want to, but somehow when Gerard wants a thing I always do it. They say every woman finds her master, and though I hate to admit it even to myself, I suppose Gerard is mine. But I hid it all I could and I dare say I was pretty successful. It care all the easier because Gerard himself was kind of embarrassed, and he colored up and stammered while I sat in the tonneau, waiting for him to begin.
"'I thought you said you were going to talk,' I said.
"'Jess,' he said, 'my sister is going to get married.'
"Now, this was news, indeed. She was lots old older than Gerard --forty years old,