"'Nothing more and nothing less,'" Corrie repeated, unconsciously exact. "Well," his dancing smile flashed out, "we don't want any more than that, do we? I'll be content with the life I earn."
"It's a good thing, for that's all we'll get," was the terse reply. "When some folks start to kick a brick wall, luck drops a feather pillow between. Other people stub their toes. I ain't crying bad luck, because I never had any; I'm just saying we'll stub our toes, if we kick the wall. We don't have to kick it."
"Rupert is a philosopher," Gerard observed, not mockingly or in ridicule, but as one stating a fact.
His mechanician nodded coolly.
"Calling names don't count. I've raced long enough to know a type of car when I see it, and I've lived long enough to tell a type of man. The way their heads set does it, maybe. Did you know the ladies were upstairs?"
"The ladies?" echoed Gerard, surprised. "They came with you?"
"Not precisely, I guess I came with them. Miss Rose saw me starting and said she was coming over with her own little machine to see the launch off, if she could get her cousin to come, and they'd bring me. So she drove me over. I ain't used to that."
"Ladies?"
"Ladies' driving. My life's insured, so it was all right, though."