Three miles south of Irvington, Billings jumped wildly in the air and yelled for me to stop.
"A coleopteran!" he shrieked excitedly as I throttled down. "A coleopteran struck me in the eye—one of the hydrophilidae family!"
And hurling aside rugs and blankets, he twisted open the door and in a moment was in the road running back. It was then I went back to the crazy theory, for it was an open stretch of road and there wasn't a soul in sight. But it was so funny to see his fat figure waddling along there in the pajamas and bedroom slippers that Frances and I just threw back our heads and screamed. Couldn't help it, by Jove!
And the frump, jogging along behind, looked just as funny. I wasn't alarmed, for I knew she could control him. And, dash it, she did it by humoring him! For we saw her twist her veil about the fork of the stick he extended to her, and both of them went to slapping wildly at the air and the ground. Presently they both came waddling back, she with a butterfly and he with a bug which he was craning at with a lens he had fished from his sleeve somewhere. He was trying to do this and at the same time hold together a great armful of gaudy weeds he had gathered.
Billings got in and then I helped her. "Awfully jolly good of you to humor his crazy whims," I whispered gratefully.
"Crazy!" she ejaculated, one foot on the running-board. "Why, he's just getting sane! He's been a born fool all his life! And now, Jacky, as you were saying of the antennae—" And she flopped eagerly by him and together they bent over the glass.
It was rum, but I was getting along so swimmingly with Frances that I didn't much care what they did. Seemed to be only about a minute more and we were clipping through the curves of the Wolhurst park—Frances pointed the way—and had slowed down under the porte-cochère.
The frump whispered to the man who opened the door.
"As quietly as possible, Wilkes," she said, "and without his father seeing him."
"The judge is away, miss," said the man. "He drove down to the village with Senator Soakem, who had to catch a train back to Albany; but I'm looking for him every—"