herself and, having, like a good suffragist, a contempt for male
prohibitions, took an honest pleasure in exceeding a man-made speed
limit.
One hesitates to apply the term 'joy-rider' to so eminent a leader of
contemporary thought as the authoress of 'The Dawn of Better Things,'
'Principles of Selection,' and 'What of To-morrow?' but candour compels
the admission that she was a somewhat reckless driver. Perhaps it was
due to some atavistic tendency. One of her ancestors may have been a
Roman charioteer or a coach-racing maniac of the Regency days. At any
rate, after a hard morning's work on her new book she felt that her
mind needed cooling, and found that the rush of air against her face
effected this satisfactorily. The greater the rush, the quicker the
cooling. However, as the alert inhabitants of ManhattanIsland, a hardy
race trained from infancy to dodge taxicabs and ambulance wagons, had
always removed themselves from her path with their usual agility, she
had never yet had an accident.
But then she had never yet met George Pennicut. And George, pawn of
fate, was even now waiting round the corner to upset her record.
George, man of all work to Kirk Winfield, one of the youngest and least
efficient of New York's artist colony, was English. He had been in
America some little time, but not long enough to accustom his rather
unreceptive mind to the fact that, whereas in his native land vehicles
kept to the left, in the country of his adoption they kept to the
right; and it was still his bone-headed practice, when stepping off the
sidewalk, to keep a wary look-out in precisely the wrong direction.
The only problem with regard to such a man is who will get him first.
Fate had decided that it should be Lora Delane Porter.
To-day Mrs. Porter, having circled the park in rapid time, turned her
car down Central Park West. She was feeling much refreshed by the
pleasant air. She was conscious of a glow of benevolence toward her
species, not excluding even the young couple she had almost reduced to
mincemeat in the neighbourhood of
annoyed her extremely at the time of their meeting by occupying till
the last possible moment a part of the road which she wanted herself.
On reaching
delivery wagon. She followed it slowly for a while; then, growing tired
of being merely a unit in a procession, tugged at the steering-wheel,
and turned to the right.
George Pennicut, his anxious eyes raking the middle distance, as
usual, in the wrong direction, had just stepped off the kerb. He
received the automobile in the small of the back, uttered a yell of
surprise and dismay, performed a few improvised Texas Tommy steps, and
fell in a heap.
In a situation which might have stimulated another to fervid speech,
George Pennicut contented himself with saying 'Goo!' He was a man of
few words.
Mrs. Porter stopped the car. From all points of the compass citizens
began to assemble, many swallowing their chewing-gum in their
excitement. One, a devout believer in the inscrutable ways of
