on your
honor not to mention it."

That promise I am glad to say I have kept until now, when the need of
secrecy is past, Tish herself having divulged the truth. But at the time
I was greatly agitated, and indeed almost fell into the rain barrel.

"Or try to find out what it is," Tish went on, sternly.

I promised, of course, and Tish relaxed somewhat, although I caught her
eye on me once or twice, as though she was daring me to so much as guess
at the secret.

"Of course, Lizzie," she said, as we approached Aggie, "it is nothing I
am ashamed of."

"Of course not," I replied hastily. I took my courage in my hands and
faced her. "Tish, have you an aeroplane hidden in that barn?"

"No," she replied promptly. She might have enlarged on her denial, but
Aggie took a violent sneezing spell just then, pressing herself between
paroxysms to see if she crackled, and we decided to go home at once.

Here a new difficulty presented itself. Tish could not drive the car! I
shall never forget my anguish when she turned to me and said:

"You will have to drive us home, Lizzie."

"Never!" I cried.

"It's perfectly easy," she went on. "If children can run them, and the
idiots they have in garages and on taxicabs----"

"Never," I said firmly. "It may be easy, but it took you six months,
Tish Carberry, and three broken springs and any number of dead chickens
and animals, besides the time you went through a bridge, and the night
you drove off the end of a dock. It may be easy, but if it is, I'd
rather do something hard."

"I shall sit beside you, Lizzie," she said, in a patient voice. "I
daresay you know which is your right foot and which is your left. If
not, I can tell you. I shall say 'left' when I want you to push out the
clutch, and 'right' for the brake. As for gears, I can change them for
you with my left hand."

"I could do it sitting in a chair," I said, in a despairing voice. "But
Tish," I said, in a last effort, "do you remember when you tried to
teach me to ride a bicycle? And that the moment I saw something to avoid
I made a mad dash for it?"

"This is different," Tish said. "It is a car----"

"And that I rode about a quarter of a mile into Lake Penzance, and would
likely have ridden straight across if I hadn't run into a canoe and
upset it?"

"You can always _stop_ a car," said Tish. "Don't be a coward, Lizzie.
All you have to do is to shove hard with your right foot."

Yet, when I did exactly that, she de