hild." Miss Herron leaned back on the reins. Her
thin cheeks flushed up, and her gray eyes were like coal fires.
"Signal the creature to slow up."

"I am, Cousin Agatha. I am waving as hard as I can." She was standing
now, meeting with a lithe motion of supple knees and slender hips each
plunge of the hurrying carriage, one little hand on the back of the
seat. And with the other, Lucy, who looked at cousin Agatha and then
laughed--just a little--signaled gayly if vaguely to the driver of the
coming car. This was a young man, whose hair--for he wore no
hat--shone in the sun like crisp gold wire.

"Honk!" spoke the horn, "honk!" and then three times more in quicker
succession.

Lucy laughed aloud. "Isn't he silly?" And then waved once more.

"Honk!"

"Whoa!" commanded Miss Herron, drawing her steeds to the side of the
road. "Stand still, and don't be so foolish. It's only"--she
hesitated, then pronounced the word as though it profaned her
speech--"an automobile."

"May I pass you?" came the driver's voice from behind. The choking
reek of the gas drifted down and enveloped them.

"It's all right," caroled Lucy. "Come ahead!" Then she dropped down to
her seat beside her companion, light as a sparrow.

"Is it coming?"

The horses snorted, swerved, and plunged heavily. There swept by a
vision of dark green and shining brass, the chuck-chuck-chuck of
machinery.

"Oh, do be careful, Arch!" cried Lucy, for the ponderous machine
ground through the soft bank that hemmed in the road on that side, and
canted dangerously for a second or two. Then it whirled up the road,
with the dust thick in its trail, and through the haze the driver's
yellow head shining. The fat horses shivered, and stood fast.

"The wretch! I _knew_ it was young Fraser."

"It wasn't like him," Lucy murmured, and a hint of a smile crossed her
lips, "to have driven by us so fast."

"I'd not expect it of him, certainly."

"Nor I." And Lucy sighed in spite of herself. She was not very old.

"Ha!" Miss Herron bestowed a lightning glance on her unconscious
little passenger, and found it her turn to smile, but with a kind of
grimness. "Indeed!" she remarked, and added, under her breath after a
queer pause: "How _very_ extraordinary!"

They drove along quietly after that for some minutes, for Miss Herron
requested silence that she might compose herself the more readily
after her fright. The road led them up a gentle incline, then turned
sharp to the