"Why not?"
"Because I wouldn't stand it. Because I'd drive through the car ahead if it tried to keep me back. Oh, I'd have them out of my way—you're laughing at me, Allan Gerard!"
Gerard was certainly laughing, and the others with him.
"If I were Dean, I wouldn't wait to be fired, Corrie; I'd resign," he rallied. "Some day I'll challenge you to a game of auto tag, and show you that trick."
"You can't; I'd get by," Corrie retorted, his violet-blue eyes afire with excitement.
"Instead of you two fighting about that nonsense, you might take me around the course in one of your cars," Isabel remarked gloomily. "I've asked you often enough."
"You'll not do that," Mr. Rose pronounced with decision. "It's not fit and I won't have it. And I'm tired of hearing you sulk at Corrie and Gerard because they've got the sense to say no. You'll keep out of the racing cars and off the race track, my girl. Flavia, if you don't make your brother stop eating nuts, he'll be ashamed to meet a squirrel in the woods."
There was open mutiny in the glance Isabel darted at her uncle, but she said nothing. Mr. Rose was not contradicted in his own house by anyone.
"Nuts agree with me, sir," Corrie protested, aggrieved. "Besides, I feel as if I had to celebrate somehow; I have had such a bully day." He leaned back in his chair, turning to Gerard his gaze of shining acknowledgment and measureless content. "I don't think I ever spent such an all-round good old day, just all right all through. I shall have to tie a gold medal on the calendar, or mark it with a white stone, or——"
"Or drop a pearl in the vase of Al-Mansor," Gerard suggested. His own feelings were not very far removed from Corrie's, that night.