"If that's the way you drive you will be lucky if you're not discharged before we reach Oak Cliff," Miss Harding declared, and I did not dare look in her eyes to see if she were offended or not.
For the following minutes I attended strictly to business. The steering gear and other operating parts were a bit stiff on account of newness, but I soon acquired the "feel" of them, and we ate up the first ten miles in seventeen minutes.
We were following a sinuous brook toward its source, now skirting its quiet depths along the edge of reedy meadows, and then chasing it into the hills where it boiled and complained as it dashed and spumed amid rocks and boulders.
"Hold on there, Smith!" shouted Harding from the rear seat in the tonneau.
"Stop, Jacques Henri!" ordered my fair employer, and then I dared look into her smiling eyes.
"I want to cut some of those willow switches," explained Harding, as the car stopped.
"What do you want of willow switches, John?" asked Mrs. Harding.
"Going to make whistles out of them," he said, cutting several which sprouted out from the edge of a spring. "Besides they're good things to keep the flies from biting the tonneau. Smith runs so slow that they are stealing a ride."
"Defend me," I said to my employer.
"Jacques Henri is doing as he is told," declared Miss Harding.