"Likes him! He loves him. You know Lestrange lives with him; a bachelor household, cozy as grigs."
Just past here ran the road, beyond a high cedar hedge. While he was speaking, the irregular explosive reports of a motor had sounded down the valley, unmistakable to those familiar with the testing of the stripped cars, and rapidly approaching. Now, as Emily would have answered, the roar suddenly changed in character, an appalling series of explosions mingled with the grind of outraged machinery suddenly braked, and some one shouted above the din. The next instant a huge ma.s.s shot past the other side of the hedge and there followed a dull crash.
"That"s one of our men!" gasped d.i.c.k, and plunged headlong through the shrubbery.
Dazed momentarily, Emily stood, then caught up her skirts and ran after him. She knew well enough what the testers of the cars risked.
"d.i.c.k!" she appealed. "d.i.c.k!"
But it was not the wreck she antic.i.p.ated that met her eyes as she came through the hedge. On the opposite side of the road a long low skeleton car was standing, one side lurched drunkenly down with two wheels in the gutter. Still in his seat, the driver was leaning over the steering-wheel, out of breath, but laughing a greeting to the astonished d.i.c.k.
"A break in the steering-gear," he declared, by way of explanation. "I told Bailey it was a weak point; now perhaps he"ll believe me and strengthen it."
"You"re not hurt," d.i.c.k inferred.
"I think she"s not--a tire gone. Find anything wrong, Rupert?"
"Two tires off," said the laconic mechanician. "Two funerals postponed. That was a pretty stop, Darling."
"Very," coolly agreed Lestrange, rising and removing his goggles.
"What"s the matter, Ffrench?"
"You frightened us out of our five senses, that"s all. Do you usually practise for races out here?"
"_Us?_" repeated Lestrange, and turning, saw the girl at the edge of the park. "Miss Ffrench, I beg your pardon!"
The swift change in his tone, the ease of deference with which he bared his head and, motor caps not being readily donned or doffed, so remained bareheaded in the bright sunlight, savored of the Continent.
"It is too commonplace to say good morning," Emily replied, her color rising with her smile. "I am very glad you escaped. But that is commonplace, too, I"m afraid."
"Every one is commonplace before breakfast," rea.s.sured her cousin.
"Honestly, Lestrange, do you practise racing here?"
"Hardly. I"m trying out the car; every car has to go through that before it is used. Don"t you know that we"ve recently secured from the local authorities a permit to run at any speed over this road between four o"clock and eight in the morning? I thought all the country-side knew that."
"But we have a regiment of men to test cars."
Lestrange pa.s.sed a caressing glance over the dingy-gray machine in its state of bareness that suggested indecorum.
"This is my car, the one I"ll race this spring and summer. No one drives it but me. Besides, I have to have some diversion."
He stepped to the ground with the last word, and went around to where Rupert was on his knees beside the machine.
"Can you fix it here?" he demanded.
"Not precisely," was the drawled reply. "Back to camp for it with a horse in front."
"All right. You"ll have to walk down and get a car from Mr. Bailey to tow it home."
Rupert got up, his dark, malign little face twisted.
"If I"d broken a leg they"d have sent a cart for me," he mourned. "Now I"ll have to walk, and I ain"t used to it. Hard luck!"
"If you go around to the stables they will give you my pony cart,"
Emily offered impulsively. "You," her dimpling smile gleamed out, "you once put a tire on for me, you know. Please let me return the service."
Rupert"s black eyes opened, a slow grin of appreciation crinkled streaks of dust and oil as he surveyed the young girl.
"I"ll put tires on every wheel you run into control, day and night shifts," he acknowledged with sweet cordiality. "But I"m no horse-chauffeur, thanks; I guess I"ll walk."
"He is a gentle pony," she remonstrated. "Any one can drive him."
He turned a side glance toward the motionless car.
"That"s all right, but I"m used to being killed other ways. I"ll be going."
"Jack Rupert, do you mean to tell me that you will race with Lestrange every season, and yet you"re afraid to drive a fat cob?"
cried the delighted d.i.c.k.
"I"m not telling anything. I had a chum who was pitched out by a horse he lost control of, and broke his neck. I"m taking no chances."
"How many men have you seen break their necks out of autos?"
"That"s in business," p.r.o.nounced Rupert succinctly. "I"m going on, Darling; it"s only a two-mile run."
"Here, wait," d.i.c.k urged. "Emily, I"ll stroll around to the stables with him and make one of the men drive him down. You don"t mind my leaving you?"
"No," Emily answered. "I will wait for you."
She might have walked back alone, if she had chosen. But instead she sat down on a boulder near the hedge, folding her hands in her lap like a demure child. The house was so dull, so hopelessly monotonous contrasted with this fresh, wind-tossed outdoors and Lestrange in his vigor of life and glamour of ultramodern adventure.
"You and Mr. Ffrench are very good," Lestrange said presently. "I am afraid I appreciate it more than Rupert, though."
"Is he really afraid of horses?"
"I should not wonder; I never tried him. But he is amazingly truthful."
Their eyes met across the strip of sunny road as they smiled; again Emily felt the sudden confidence, the falling away of all constraint before the direct clarity of his regard.
"You won your race," she said irrelevantly. "I was glad, since you wanted it."
"Thank you," he returned with equal simplicity. "But I did not want it that way, so far as I was concerned."
"Yet, it was the next step?"
"Yes, it was the next step. I meant that one does not care to be victor because the leading cars were wrecked. There is no elation in defeating a driver who lies out on the course. But, as you say, it helped my purpose. You," he hesitated for the right phrase, "you are most kind to recall that I have a purpose."
It was the convent-bred Emily who looked back at him, earnest-eyed, exaltedly serious.