He was not so cocksure, half an hour later, on an open road, when a siren whistle wailed behind him, and before the sound had died away, Eugene’s car, coming from behind with what seemed fairly like one long leap, went by the runabout and dwindled almost instantaneously in perspective, with a lace handkerchief in a black-gloved hand fluttering sweet derision as it was swept onward into minuteness—a mere white speck—and then out of sight.
George was undoubtedly impressed. “Your Father does know how to drive some,” the dashing exhibition forced him to admit. “Of course Pendennis isn’t as young as he was, and I don’t care to push him too hard. I wouldn’t mind handling one of those machines on the road like that, myself, if that was all there was to it—no cranking to do, or fooling with the engine. Well, I enjoyed part of that lunch quite a lot, Lucy.”
“The salad?”
“No. Your whispering to me.”
“Blarney!”
George made no response, but checked Pendennis to a walk. Whereupon Lucy protested quickly: “Oh, don’t!”
“Why? Do you want him to trot his legs off?”
“No, but—”
“‘No, but’—what?”
She spoke with apparent gravity: “I know when you make him walk it’s so you can give all your attention to—to proposing to me again!”