“I should say so!” gasped Benedicta. “I never anticipated that runnin’ this chariot was so perturbative.”
“Dear, dear!” laughed Polly; “what big words you do use! You take my breath away.”
“Teeters and tongs!” exclaimed Benedicta scornfully, “if you think I use lengthy words, you ought to hear Mr. Aimé talk. His are the grandest I ever heard. My Miss Flora laughs at him and says he swallowed the dictionary when he was three and has been spouting it up ever since. But I told him I adored his kind of talk, and from that if he didn’t begin to learn—I mean, ‘teach’—me some of his stretched-out words, and I put ’em down so I can look ’em over once in a while. But I can’t hold a spark to him. I forget ’em so. Seem ’s if my memory bag must be made of openwork, for there’s always something slippin’ out. But, my! what an improvident mortal I be—gabbin’ this way when I ought to be drivin’ the chariot! What do I do to start—oh, yes, I know!”
Polly nodded assent to her questioning glance, and again they whirled along the smooth road.
Late in the afternoon Polly drove back up the mountain; but when they were nearly within sight of home Benedicta begged so earnestly to announce her new achievement in her own way, that finally she was allowed to take the wheel.
“I want to sweep up to the house in one glorious curve,” she exulted. “Won’t they be surprised!”
So intent was the driver upon the little veranda group that she nearly forgot her part in the affair. The machine wabbled along in a most inglorious way, tilted into a gully beside the road, and began slipping slowly downhill.
“Put your foot on the brake!” cried Polly, grasping the emergency lever and forcing it back.
The car meekly stopped.
“Sinners and snobs!” exclaimed Benedicta. “And I’m the sinner!—and the snob too! Let me get out! Let me get out!”