"You thought I would mind?" He smiled whimsically. "Flavia, I've had a lot of nonsense knocked out of me. It took a bad shock to cure me of Isabel, but I'm well. There's nothing left of that. In fact, I feel all full of holes where ideas have been jolted out of me—I feel rather empty."
The beautiful foreign motor car had stolen along the road so silently that neither brother nor sister perceived its approach until the grind of applied brakes sounded beside the stopped carriage.
"I should have supposed that there'd be views in the countryside more pleasant to this family than that field," caustically observed Mr. Rose. "You can take the machine on home, Lenoir; I'll drive with Miss Rose."
He descended, the chauffeur stooping to open the door, while Corrie and Flavia looked on, too much surprised to find reply.
"Keep your seat," he curtly ordered, as his son rose to yield the place beside Flavia. "I'll get up here. Drive ahead, my girl."
He took the rear seat of the little carriage, resting his arm on the cushioned back so that his strong, square-set head was between the two who sat in front. The automobile obediently sped on, and only the beat of the ponies' hoofs interrupted the chill afternoon hush for the first half-mile.
"It's a long time since I found out that you had some points that I didn't just understand, Corrie," Mr. Rose stated, his matter-of-fact accents carrying a deliberate finality. "I didn't wonder, nor I didn't try to force you to fit my pattern; we were solid friends and I was willing to take on faith your ways of being different. Once in a while I'd bring you on the carpet when you got across the line, not often. You were given about everything you wanted and only told that you must keep straight. You haven't done it."
An odd shiver ran through Corrie, but he said nothing.
"This isn't a theatre; there won't be any talk of cutting you off with a shilling or any other kind of child's talk. What we have got to do is to make the best of a bad thing. You will have to go away for a year or two, keep apart from automobile racing and automobile people, and live gossip down. Poor Gerard did his best for you—God knows why—but there are rumors whispered around yet. It would have looked like running away to go before; now, Gerard is out of danger. Well?"