ll I stop?"

"It looks terribly dull," was the doleful verdict.

"Then come with me," flashed the other unexpectedly; for a fractional
instant his eyes left the road and turned to his companion's face.
"Did you ever see race practice at dawn? Come try a night in a
training camp."

"You'd bother with me?"

"Yes."

A head bobbed up by Ffrench's knee, where Rupert was clinging in some
inexplicable fashion.

"Once I rode eight miles out there by the hood, head downward, holding
in a pin," he imparted, by way of entertainment.

Ffrench stared at the reeling perch indicated, and gasped.

"What for?" he asked.

"So we could keep on to our control instead of being put out of the
running, of course. Did you guess I was curing a headache?"

"But you might have been killed!" exclaimed Ffrench.

Even by the semi-light of the lamps there was visible the
mechanician's droll twist of lip and brow.

"I'd drive to hell with Lestrange," he explained sweetly, and settled
back in his place.

Ffrench drew a long breath. After a moment he again looked at the
driver.

"I'll come," he accepted. "And, thank you."

It was Lestrange who smiled this time, with a sudden and enchanting
warmth of mirth.

"We'll try to amuse you," he promised.

II

It was a business consultation that was being held in Mr. Ffrench's
firelit library, in spite of the presence of a tea-table and the young
girl behind it. A consultation between the two partners who composed
the Mercury Automobile Company, of whom the lesser was speaking with a
certain anecdotal weight.

"And he said he was losing too much time on the turns; so the next
round he took the bend at seventy-two miles an hour. He went over, of
course. The third car we've lost this year; I'm glad the season's
closed."

Emily Ffrench gave an exclamation, her velvet eyes widening behind
their black lashes.

"But the driver! Was the poor driver hurt, Mr. Bailey?"

"He wasn't killed, Miss Emily," answered Bailey, with a tinge of
pensive regret. He was a large, ruddy, white-haired man, with the slow
and careful habit of speech sometimes found in those who live much
with massive machinery. "No, he wasn't killed; he's in the hospital.
But he wrecked as good a car as ever was built, through sheer
foolishness. It costs money."

Mr. Ffrench responded to the indirect appeal with more than usual
irritation, his level gray eyebrows contracting.

"We ought to have better drivers. Why