wasn't any good, and I had it in my mind to take
him off to supper at a little place I knew on the Boulevards, when what
should happen but that Maisa Hubbard appeared suddenly in the promenade
where we stood, and immediately came up to him with such a smile as
might have brought a saint out of a picture to say "Good evening" to
her.

"Why, it's Ferdy!" she cried, "and he's trying to turn his back on me.
Oh, my dear boy, whatever do you look like that for?"

He shook hands with her quite civilly, and made some excuse about the
show and his not feeling very funny about it. She had another girl
with her, and her brother, Jerome Hubbard, the "whip" who used to drive
with Mr. Fownes. When I had been introduced, she asked me to come to
supper at a place I'd never heard of, and declared that her brother
would have a fit if we didn't disburse some of his savings immediately.
The little girl who was with her (I shan't write her name down) was a
lively bit of goods, and I was ready enough to go if only to cheer up
"Ferdy," who, to be sure, had become a different man already, and was
talking and laughing with Maisa just as though they had been first
"cousins" for a twelvemonth or more. In the end we ate Mr. Jerome's
supper, and got back to our little beds at two in the morning: not an
over-good preparation for a great race, as any driver will admit; but
my friend seemed himself again, and I would have eaten half a dozen
suppers to bring that about.

This was two days before the meeting, I should tell you, and I saw
little of Ferdinand until that memorable June morning, when, at
half-past three precisely, Girardot got away on his C.G.V., and was
followed two minutes later by Fournier on his Mors. I have taken part
in many a big race since, but never one which excited me more than that
famous dash from Paris to Vienna, which was to make the fortune of more
than one English house, and to bring the Gordon Bennett Cup to England
for the first time in the motor story.

I firmly believed my friend Ferdinand was to win the race, and
presentiment goes farther in this world than many folks think. Such a
dashing, daring driver I never saw. His car was a wonder. I took
several trips with him before the race, and I do believe that we made
eighty or ninety miles an hour upon her--a miracle for those days,
though not thought so much of in this year 1909. What was more, he
seemed to have forgotten all about that little devil of a Mais