“On the contrary. I should not feel called upon to make any explanation whatsoever as to the movements of myself and my wife.” Mr. Burrow spoke with some hauteur.
The young woman ignored the suggestion. “We will go on,” she said.
“The roads are very bad, and one tire is a little weak.”
“We will go on.”
“You are spoiling the most improved elopement that was ever devised,” sighed the Honorable Alexander mournfully. “It breaks my heart to witness such iconoclasm.”
“We will go on,” murmured Miss Asheton mechanically.
One hour and a half later, as the car turned a sharp curve, there came a loud report, a sudden jolt and a long-suffering sigh from Mr. Burrow.
“That,” he said in a voice of deep resignation, “was the rear, left-hand tire, and I should say that as a blow-out there was some class to it.”
CHAPTER VII
MR. RAT CONNORS, SAMARITAN
When Mr. Rat Connors dropped out of sight over the railroad embankment his ideas of procedure had been somewhat vague. In the United States were some eighty million people. It seemed a fair sporting proposition, and one worth a small bet, that out of that number at least a single individual must have residence in this neighborhood. If he sought hard enough he might find that habitation. Himself, he would have preferred a night’s lodging under the broad and starry skies to a quest of the sort he had undertaken. But the other gentlemen was “in bad” and the tenets of Mr. Rat Connors’ primitive knighthood precluded the possibility of “leavin’ him lay” suffering and unsuccored.