“Shall I turn her around?” asked Carey nonchalantly, “or do you want to go back to the house?”
“How did you do it?” asked Arthur Maxwell, grasping Carey’s grimy hand eagerly. “I didn’t see you catch her.”
“Oh, just jumped her from Brand’s running-board. Dead easy. Guess she gave you a little start though. That kid ought to be spanked. I guess the lady’s pretty badly scared.”
The lady and the “kid” were bathed in tears and wrapped in each other’s arms in the back seat. The child was experiencing a late repentance, and the grandmother was alternately scolding and petting and in a fair way to make the little criminal feel she had done a smart thing. Maxwell gave them a withering glance, and turned to Carey, who had swung out over the door and was standing in the road, looking at the car like a lion tamer who has just subdued a wild creature.
“I shall never forget this, Copley,” said Maxwell, grasping his hand once more in the kind of a grip a real man gives to another. “I’ll talk about it later when I’ve taken these people to the train. Meantime accept my thanks for yourself and your friend. You’re both princes, and I’ll see that everybody knows it.”
“Forget it!” chanted Carey, and swung himself like a thistledown to the running-board of Brand’s car as he swept slowly, scrutinizingly up.
“Got her all right, didn’t you, old man?” said Brand admiringly. “Any scratches? You had a mighty close shave!”
“Yep! She’s all right. Well, so-long Maxwell; we gotta beat it back to work,” and with a great whizzing and banging of joyful celebration the racer shot its way back uphill, and the two jumped out quite casually as if they had been off to get a soda and come back to work again.
Cornelia, white, and trembling from the horror of the thing, tried to praise, to question, to exclaim; but, failing to make an impression on the two indifferent workers, went upstairs, fell on her knees, and cried. Somewhere in the midst of her tears her crying turned into a prayer of thanksgiving, and she came down with an uplifted look on her face. Now and then as she went about her duties she stole to the front window, and looked out on the two sturdy workers. She could have hugged them both she was so proud of them—they were so cool, so capable, and so indifferent! Just regular boys!
Maxwell came back that evening. She had somehow known he would. He was filled with gratitude to the two who had so gallantly saved him from a catastrophe which would have shadowed his whole life. He still shuddered over the thought of what might have happened.