ered with.

When they had finished grovelling, he got in again, and Uncle John insisted
upon exchanging cards with the stranger. He got out his from some pocket,
but the American had not one. "By the living jingo," he said, "I've no bit
of pasteboard handy--but my name is Horatio Thomas Nelson Renour--and
you'll find me any day at the Nelson Building, Osages City, Nevada. This is
my first visit to Europe." Perhaps I am not repeating exactly the right
American, Mamma, but it was something like that. But I wish you could have
seen him, I know you would have liked him as I did. Wait till I tell you
what he did afterwards, then you will, anyway. "Anyway" is American--you
see I have picked it up already!

We waved a kind of grateful goodbye and went our different ways, and beyond
its raining most of the time we had a quick journey; but at last we felt in
the dusk we were off the right road. Like all chauffeurs ours had whizzed
past every notice of the direction--so carefully printed up as they are in
France, too. From the way they behave one would think chauffeurs believe
themselves to possess a sixth sense and can feel in some occult manner the
right turns, as they never bother to look at sign posts, or condescend to
ask the way like ordinary mortals. Ours did not so much as stop even when
the lane got into a mere track, until, with the weight of Uncle John, Aunt
Maria and me in the back seat, and the extra stones in the rumble, as he
made a sensational backing turn into a fieldish looking place, (it was dark
twilight) our hind wheels sunk in up to their axles,--and the poor
machinery groaned in its endeavours to extricate us! We had to get out in
the gloom and mud, and Aunt Maria looked almost pathetic in her elastic
side "prunella" boots, edged with fur, white silk stockings and red quilted
silk petticoat held up very high. But she was so good tempered over it all!
She said when one had been married happily for fifty years, and was having
one's honeymoon all over again--(she had forgotten the hysterics)--one
ought not to grumble at trifles.

Meanwhile the hind wheels of the car sank deeper and deeper. I believe we
should never have got out, and it would have been there still, if we had
not heard a scream from a siren, and our American friend tore up again! It
was pitch dark by now, and the valet, the chauffeur, and Uncle John were
shoving and straining, and nothing was happening. Why he was returning this
way, right out