So we started off in the car, going back to the highway and along a road which perhaps would not have seemed extraordinary if it hadn't been made surpassingly beautiful by men who lit the path of history with a shining light. I had a gay, irresponsible feeling, sitting beside Sir S. on the springy front seat of the luxurious motor-car, as if I were a neat little parcel clearly addressed to my destination, and going there safely by registered post. By this time even Mrs. James had ceased to "bite her heart" when she saw another motor dashing toward us, or a man sauntering across the road and filling the whole horizon. The car is so singularly intelligent that you feel it is a friend, too kind-hearted and chivalrous a creature to let anything bad happen. Of course, about every ten minutes something almost happens, but that is invariably the fault of other people's cars. You dash up to the mouth of a cross-road which you couldn't possibly have seen, because it is subtly disguised as a clump of trees or a flowery knoll; and you discover its true identity only because another motor—a blundering brute of a motor—bursts out at fifty miles an hour in front of your nose. If you'd reached that point an instant later, your own virtuous automobile and the wretch that isn't yours would certainly have telescoped, and you'd have been sitting in the nearest tree with your head in your lap. But already I begin to notice that you may pretty well count on reaching the danger point (produced by alien autos) at precisely the right instant, never the wrong one, and this gives you a beautiful confidence in your luck and your driver: although the real secret must lie in the acuteness of your guardian angel or patron saint. Vedder, who when young was a champion boxer, is very superstitious, and Mr. Somerled allows him a large gold medal of St. Christopher on the dashboard. St. Christopher, it seems, has undertaken the spiritual care of motor-cars, and as by this time he has millions under his guidance, his plans for keeping them out of each other's way must be as complicated as the traffic arrangements of a railway superintendent. When I contrasted the angelic behaviour of our car with the appalling perversity of other people's, Sir S. burst out laughing, and said that evidently I was born with the motor instinct: that he'd seen women who took days or weeks learning these great truths, whereas I came by them naturally. "It's remarkable what a lot of valuable knowledge can be picked up by an enterprising princess in a glass retort, when the dragon isn't looking!" said he.
"Princesses in glass retorts are perhaps forced to learn lessons tabooed by dragons," I replied to this; "so if I know things or have thought things that every other girl doesn't think or know, it's because they were forbidden fruit. They were my only fun."
"They've made you a splendid little 'pal,' if you know what that means," said he. "I'm not sure the glass-retort system hasn't some advantages for the bringing up of women. The proverb is that truth lies at the bottom of a well. I begin to think it may be looked for in glass retorts in the land of dragons."
"You mean that I'm truthful?" I asked.
"Yes. I'm inclined to believe, up to date, that you've remained as transparent as the glass of your late prison."
"What makes you think so?" I wanted to know.
"Observation—partly. And the way you talk to me."
"What way?"
"Well—that's a knotty question. I can hardly explain, but——"
"I wonder," I began to think out aloud, "whether you mean that I say what comes into my mind without being afraid you mayn't like it?"