Evidently the driver had sighted him, and, unsure of his intentions, was making a final effort at extrication before he reached the car; for, as he came within a few feet of it, the engine fairly bellowed with exasperation and the big coupé shuddered. There was a young woman at the wheel.
“My God, sister,” shouted Bobby, when the racket had subsided, “don’t do that any more!”
Sister accepted the admonition with wide eyes into which Bobby now gazed interestedly at close range. She smiled, and he reconsidered his earlier opinion of her. She was probably unaccustomed to driving in soft gravel; unacquainted with its treacheries; might be a most excellent driver almost anywhere else.
“Is it really down very deep?” she inquired, with anxiety.
There was a curious huskiness in her voice that gave it an intimate, just-between-us, confidential timbre.
Bobby walked to the rear and looked.
“Very!” he declared. “To the hub. Your differential is flat on the ground.”
Her face was perplexed. “I don’t know what that is,” she admitted, “but I’m sure it shouldn’t be.”
“No,” said Bobby paternally, “they do better when they’re up off the road.”
She sighed, and dabbed at a warm neck with a trifle of lace.
“It’s my fault, I suppose,” ruefully, “I was driving rather fast; and at that sharp turn a car came whopping toward me with the sort of lights they use on aviation fields. I turned out, slipped off …”
“And here you are!” finished Bobby. “Lucky you didn’t upset. You might have been badly hurt.”
She searched his shadowed face, slightly stirred by the note of concern for her safety … might be safer without it. What she saw caused her no anxiety.
“Well, at least we have no broken bones to worry about. All I have to do now is to get this car back on the road. Anything to suggest? I’m awfully helpless about such things. Not meaning,” she added quickly, “that I’m in the habit of ditching my car.”
“I’m sure you’re not,” said Bobby encouragingly. “This gravel is very slippery.”
“What do you think I’d better do?” she asked, in a tone that quite relinquished all further responsibility into his hands.
It was as if she had leaned her slight weight against him. For the past half hour, he had been thinking himself the loneliest, most utterly detached person on earth. His important resolution had quite cut him off from his habitual round of interests, but had not yet keyed him on to any new ones. Nobody had ever been so desperately in need of friendship.
He rested an elbow on the ledge of the open window and became whimsically didactic.
“In cases like this, when the local power-plant has proved insufficient, it is customary to seek aid. One calls in the neighbours. They, having suspected all along that their services might be required, have gone early to bed, and must be pounded out with loud noises and the offer of a king’s ransom. Having bathed, shaved, dressed and breakfasted, they come, growling, with a snorting tractor …”
“And when they are all ready to pull, the towline breaks, and they must drive the tractor to town for another.”
“Something like that,” agreed Bobby.
“Your advice seems clear,” she said, matching his mood. “First, one goes for the neighbours.” She tallied the item on her fingers. “But which one?”
“Which one of the neighbours?” Bobby countered with a chuckle. “Or which one of us? … I’ll go, of course, gladly. But,” he added commandingly, “you’re coming along! I won’t have you out here alone in a stalled car!”
It was spoken spontaneously. Doubtless it meant nothing more than an unintentionally peremptory way of saying he considered it unsafe for her to be left by herself on this unfrequented road. But the fervent phrasing of it, the implied possessorship he had put into his “I won’t have you out here alone” brought her a queer sensation. Nobody had ever used precisely that tone with her before. She felt … well … as if she were being absorbed … ever so little … just the tiniest mite of her; like the first almost invisible trickle of fine sand pouring through the needle-slim neck of an hourglass; nothing to be alarmed about, surely. She could easily enough reverse the glass, whenever she wished. For the moment, it was not unpleasant to let it run; just for the novelty of it. It wouldn’t be much. She would see to that. In a half hour, she and this delightful chap, with a clean-cut profile that might have graced a Grecian coin, would go their ways. If it pleased him to issue orders, she would humour him by coming to attention and clicking her heels.
Bobby opened the door and offered his hand. She took it without hesitation and stepped out upon the road.
“Should I have locked the gears?” she asked,
“No,” drawled Bobby, “it’ll be here when we come back.” They both laughed.
Leaving the highway, they entered a thickly-hedged narrow lane, cut through a dense tract of tall firs.
“I hope you know where we’re going,” she said, as Bobby strode forward.
“Can’t say that I do,” he confessed. “I never was in here before; but I think it must be the private road to the Foster estate. Doubtless we will find one of the farmers’ cottages presently.”
The girl trudged along beside him, taking two steps to his one on high heels not meant for hiking in country lanes. A sheep scuttled out of the left hedge and dashed frantically across the road, a few feet ahead of them. Instinctively she caught at Bobby’s sleeve.
“Oh—but that startled me!”
“Here! Take my hand!”
It was a small hand that she gave him, and he held it as if he were leading a little child. Absurd as he was bound to admit it, his attitude toward her was proprietary; and, incautious as she knew
