The pleasure of her society was worth some physical discomfort, and I couldn't complain if I did feel for a week or more as if I had been given a sound drubbing. One day, after we had finished a series of games—in which mine was second-best record—who should appear, laboriously rumbling by, but my well-nigh forgotten friend Antaeus.
“What an uncouth piece of mechanism that is!” she exclaimed, turning to look at him—“a sort of caricature of a locomotive, one might say. A veritable snail for traveling, too, isn't it?”
“Yes; his—I mean it's—best speed does not exceed five miles an hour, I am told. A man might walk as fast as that with a little exertion.”
“I wonder if it is a pleasant mode of riding—in a steam-roller?” she said, half musing, her gaze still resting on Antaeus. “At least one would have plenty of leisure for viewing the scenery along the way. I should rather like to try a short ride on it.”
“Should you, really,” I asked, doubting whether or not she was in earnest.
“Yes, indeed, I should.” If she had been half in jest before she was serious now. “It would be a new experience.”
“Hardly an agreeable one for a lady, though,” I commented.
“Oh, that would be a secondary consideration,” she returned with a shrug. “I should value the experience as an experience, and I should be glad to have it to put on my list.”
I looked inquisitive and she proceeded to explain.
“I keep a diary—not a regulation school girl's diary, in which one feels bound to write something every single day of the year, whether there is anything worth recording or not—but a collection of memoranda in which I take a good deal of satisfaction. Mine is a classified diary and is contained in about a dozen different books which began as mere covers with nothing between. By putting in leaves when there was occasion the volumes grew until now several of them have attained to a very respectable thickness.”