Joan promptly put on a small hat and a large veil, and went out to take a walk.
"Miss Darcy! Say, Miss Darcy!" (Honk-honk—or rather Ooo-ooga-ooga!) "Look who's here! Mine! Bought it myself!—I was just hoping I'd run across you somewhere."
"I trust you won't," murmured the lady.
"Ha! Ha! Ha!" roared Archie, recognizing a jest. "Look out, or maybe I will yet! Perhaps the safest place is inside," he suggested craftily, and with some truth. Joan accepted the hint.
"Learnt in three lessons!" proclaimed Archie, unable to resist the temptation to brag a little. (An automobile of his own, all paid for, and the One and Only beside him on its seat—who can blame the man?) "Only got it last week, and if there's a part of little old Lizzie I don't know about, it's because it isn't there, that's all! Of course I can't take my eye off the road yet—" (this as a family party narrowly escaped annihilation)—"but you won't mind my talking sort of over my shoulder?"
"I won't mind your talking any way at all—so long as it's not about armadillos."
Archie grinned. "Now you're joshing me!"
"I never was more serious in my life. What's the subject this week?"
But he declined to be drawn. "All that's just for social gatherings. People don't have really to converse out-of-doors, do they?—Say, what if we go out in the real country somewhere!—not parks, where there's always so many things around, but a good straight empty road, where I can step on her tail and let her rip—eh?"
The idea seemed good to Joan. It was the sort of day when cities are an abomination, and the soul of the veriest urbanite yearns to follow a gipsy pateran.