"Swell dame, Andy!" he commented, staring with heavy curiosity at the man pushing throttle and spark. "I guess maybe you're a swell, too, like a movie show I seen once?"
Adriance stepped down again, to go forward and crank the motor. He began to glimpse the possible complications if Mike recounted this adventure among his mates. He wondered, also, if Lucille had noticed the name on the truck. Altogether, he was in a vicious enough mood to lie, and he did so.
"No," he asserted flatly, when he had regained his seat. "Don't be an idiot, Mike. I—used to be employed by that lady."
"Drive her automobile?"
"Yes."
The explanation was accepted as satisfactory. An intimate acquaintance with the etiquette of intercourse between mistress and chauffeur was not one of the examiner's accomplishments. But the incident appealed to Mike as romantic, and for him romance flowed from one source only.
"She looks like one of them actresses from the movies," he averred, folding his huge arms comfortably across his breast. "I guess she is, maybe? I seen queens like her, there."
"It is a good way to see them, if they are like her," observed Adriance ruefully. He laughed in spite of vexation. "Better stick to the movie girls, Michael; it's safer! Now stop talking to me; if this brute of a truck swerves an inch in this slush, some pretty car is going to feel as if an elephant had stepped on it."
But the ill luck of that day was over. They made a fast trip up-town and just caught a ferry-boat on the point of leaving.
After all, they were not to be noticeably late. And since there would be no need of explanation, it occurred to Adriance that he might not recount to Elsie the tale of his discomfiture. He was keenly ashamed of the poor rôle Lucille Masterson had made him play. She had whistled him to heel, and he had come with the meekness of the well-trained. She had amused herself with him as long as she chose, then dismissed him, humiliated and helpless. He did not want Elsie to picture her husband in that situation, nor to find him still unable to say no to Mrs. Masterson.