"It is nothing; I was about to go." She turned to give Bailey her hand, smiling involuntarily in her relief. With a glance, an inflection, Lestrange had stripped their former meeting of its embarrassment and unconventionality, how, she neither analyzed nor cared.
"Good morning," said Bailey. "Shall I take you through, or—"
But Lestrange was already holding open the door, with a bright unconcern as to his workmanlike costume which impressed Emily pleasantly. She wondered if Dick would have borne the situation as well, in the impossible event of his being found at work.
The two walked together down an aisle of the huge, machinery-crowded room, the grimy men lifting their heads to gaze after Emily as she passed. Once Lestrange paused to speak to a man who sat, note-book and pencil in hand, beside another who manipulated under a grinding wheel a delicate aluminum casting.
"Pardon," he apologized to Emily, who had lingered also. "Mathews would have let that go wrong in another moment. He," his smile glanced out, "he is not a Rupert at changing his tires, so to speak, but just a good chauffeur."
The gay and natural allusion delighted her. For the first time in her life Emily Ffrench laughed out in a genuine, mischievous sense of adventure.
"Yes? I wonder you could separate yourself from that Rupert to come here; he was a most bewildering person," she retorted.
"Separate from Rupert? Why, I would not think of racing a taxicab, as he would say, without Rupert beside me. He is here taking a post-graduate course in this type of car, in order to be up to his work when we go down to Georgia next week."
"Next week? You expect to win that race?"
"No. We are running a stock car against some heavy foreign racing machines; the chance of winning is slight. But I hope to outrun any other American car on the course, if nothing goes wrong."