ht home to his stable: he'll be there a long while
before we will, because all we've got to depend on to get us home is
Gene Morgan's broken-down chafing-dish yonder."

They were approaching the machine as he spoke, and his friend, again
underneath it, heard him. He emerged, smiling. "She'll go," he said.

"What!"

"All aboard!"

He offered his hand to Isabel. She was smiling but still pale, and her
eyes, in spite of the smile, kept upon George in a shocked anxiety. Miss
Fanny had already mounted to the rear seat, and George, after helping
Lucy Morgan to climb up beside his aunt, was following. Isabel saw
that his shoes were light things of patent leather, and that snow was
clinging to them. She made a little rush toward him, and, as one of his
feet rested on the iron step of the machine, in mounting, she began to
clean the snow from his shoe with her almost aerial lace handkerchief.
"You mustn't catch cold!" she cried.

"Stop that!" George shouted, and furiously withdrew his foot.

"Then stamp the snow off," she begged. "You mustn't ride with wet feet."

"They're not!" George roared, thoroughly outraged. "For heaven's sake
get in! You're standing in the snow yourself. Get in!"

Isabel consented, turning to Morgan, whose habitual expression of
apprehensiveness was somewhat accentuated. He climbed up after her,
George Amberson having gone to the other side. "You're the same Isabel
I used to know!" he said in a low voice. "You're a divinely ridiculous
woman."

"Am I, Eugene?" she said, not displeased. "'Divinely' and 'ridiculous'
just counterbalance each other, don't they? Plus one and minus one equal
nothing; so you mean I'm nothing in particular?"

"No," he answered, tugging at a lever. "That doesn't seem to be
precisely what I meant. There!" This exclamation referred to the
subterranean machinery, for dismaying sounds came from beneath the
floor, and the vehicle plunged, then rolled noisily forward.

"Behold!" George Amberson exclaimed. "She does move! It must be another
accident."

"Accident?" Morgan shouted over the din. "No! She breathes, she stirs;
she seems to feel a thrill of life along her keel!" And he began to sing
"The Star Spangled Banner."

Amberson joined him lustily, and sang on when Morgan stopped. The
twilight sky cleared, discovering a round moon already risen; and the
musical congressman hailed this bright presence with the complete text
and melody of "The Danube River."

His nephew,