Sometimes, if they started in the afternoon, Effie May would insist upon providing one of the little picnic lunches that were her specialty.—"So's you won't have to come home till you get good and ready," she explained, twinkling at Archie. It was perhaps a little ungrateful of him not to meet her overtures half way, since it was evident that she suspected his secret and was deliberately aiding and abetting him.
But Archie cared nothing for her aidings and abettings. Hope did not enter into his calculations at all. He entertained no false illusions. All he asked was to be allowed as much as possible of Joan's company, for as long as she was willing to grant it.
His present streak of luck could not last, he knew. Some fellow would come along soon with a larger, finer car, or perhaps with a saddle-horse, or a coach and four—at any rate with something more suitable than he, Archie, had to offer. But meanwhile there was now; and if she was never allowed to suspect the inner state of his feelings, the glorious now might be prolonged indefinitely. Archibald was nothing if not an opportunist.
So he was very careful. And Joan was very careful. No more hair blew into eyes. They remained matter-of-fact and chummy and impersonal, even when they picknicked together under a twilight sky, one on either side of a spread napkin, as if they had set up housekeeping together in the wilderness—a situation which, as people know who are far less wise than Effie May, is usually provocative of results. Nothing occurred, however: until the day that marked the passing of Lizzie.
They were on their way home in the gray of a late evening, Archibald driving, with half an eye on the whiteness of certain hands as they deftly stowed away the remains of tea in the picnic-box. Which may have been the reason that when he came to a railroad crossing, he was less careful than usual.
It was a switching track on which a freight train stood, heavily panting. Lizzie safely negotiated this, and was going on to a second track beyond, when something jerked Archie's eyes around in time to gaze full into the headlight of an approaching passenger train. He had not enough speed on to cross the track ahead of it. He had too much to stop where he was.
"Gee!" he grunted; and with a powerful wrench of the wheel, turned into the track just ahead of the rushing engine.
Joan meant to scream, but forgot in sheer excitement. Behind sounded a frantic grinding of brakes, a hiss of steam, and the locomotive let out shriek after shriek.
"Oh, I hear you!" muttered Archie. "I'll get out of your way the minute I can, old top! None too soon to suit yours truly."
He stared into his side-mirror. Down the ties pounded willing Lizzie at thirty, forty, fifty—with a pop a tire blew out.