"You drive a lot, don't you?" flashed my companion.
"Then I expect you hate being driven by a stranger?"
"Not at all. Sometimes, of course----" I waited for us to emerge from between two motor-lorries and a traction-engine. As we were doing over forty-five, the pause was but momentary. "I mean----"
"Not to death. I've still got some feeling in my right arm." We dropped down one of the steepest hills I have ever seen, with two bends in it, at an increased speed. "You keep your guardian angel pretty busy, don't you?"
A suspicion of a smile played for a second about my lady's lips.
"The only thing I'm really frightened of is a hansom cab," she affirmed.
"Try and imagine that there are half a dozen round the next corner, will you?"
"You needn't tell me that," said I. "We should have been killed long ago if you didn't. Seriously, I don't want to abuse your hospitality, but we're going to have kidneys for breakfast to-morrow, and I should be sorry to miss them."
"Passionately. I used to go out and gather them as a child. In the morning and the meadows. Or were we talking of haddock?"
"I used to, too. But I was always afraid of their being toadstools. They're poisonous, aren't they?"
"Deadly. By the way, there are six hansoms full of toadstools at the cross-roads which I observe we are approaching."
I was wrong. But there was a waggon full of logs and a limousine full of children, which were rather worse.
We proceeded amid faint cries of indignation.
"What do you do," said I, "when you come to a level-crossing with the gates shut? "
I was still working this out, when my companion slowed down and brought the car to a standstill in front of a high white gate bearing the legend "Private," and keeping a thin brown road that ran for a little way between fair meadows before plunging into a swaying beechwood.
"Be an angel," she said in a caressing voice.
"Certainly," said I. "With or without wings?"
"I know," I cried, "I know. Don't tell me. 'So that the automobile may pass unobstructed between the gate-posts.' Am I right?"
"Instinct." I open the door and stepped backwards into the road. "I'm always like this before eating kidneys," I added.
"Now we can let her out," said Miss Childe contentedly. "It's such a relief to feel there's no speed limit," she added, with a ravishing smile.