"And it was Lee"
You never saw anything like Uncle's face! He seemed reparalyzed for a few seconds, and Lee kept shaking his hand and telling him how glad he was to see him, and how he must get right into the automobile and go on with them to Caen. My heart just about stopped beating, I was so anxious, but Lee never stopped shaking, and the other men took off their masks and got out, too, and told Uncle he really must do them the honor and give them the pleasure, and in the end we got him in, and Lee won out.
Oh, it was such fun! We had the most glorious trip back to Caen. They had an extra mask along, and Uncle wore it and sat on the front seat, and Mr. Peters, the man who owns the automobile, was really lovely to him. The other man and Lee and I sat behind, and the other man is Mr. Peters's mother's son by her second husband. His name is Archie Stowell, and I should judge that Mr. Peters's mother's second husband was a lot livelier than the first, but not so clever. Mr. Peters is really awfully clever, and the way he talked to Uncle was wonderful. Uncle said it was a very smooth-riding automobile, and Mr. Peters said it did him good all through to meet some one who recognized the good points of a good machine at once; he said not one man in a thousand had brains enough to know a good machine when he was in it, and that he was overjoyed to have accidentally met the one man who did discriminate. And Uncle said he should judge that automobiling was a very easy way of getting over the ground when one was traveling in Europe, and Mr. Peters said it was perfectly bewildering how the breadth and scope of Uncle's mind could instantaneously seize and weigh every side of an intricate proposition and as instantaneously solve it completely. By the time we reached Caen Uncle was so saturated with Mr. Peters that he even smiled on Lee as we got out and asked them all three to dine with us at eight. They accepted, and went to their hotel to dress, and Uncle went to his room without one word of any kind to me.
They came, and we had a very nice dinner in a little separate room, and the way Mr. Peters talked to Uncle was worth listening to surely. And when Uncle was talking, he leaned forward and paid attention as if his life depended on every word. By ten o'clock Uncle was happier than I have almost ever seen him, and Mr. Peters said it was no use, we just simply must join their party and go on in the automobile. Lee began to laugh when he said that, and said: "Now, Peters, you'll learn the sensation of getting turned down cold." It was an awful second for me, because I just felt Uncle's terrible battle between not wanting to go on with Lee and wanting to contradict him; but in the end the wanting to contradict overpowered everything else, and he said: "Young man, when you are as old as I am you'll be less ready to speak for other people than you seem disposed to do now."
"We passed Elfrida and her sister to-day, pedaling along for dear life"