“Mrs. Lessing! You old chump, don't you remember she's gone? Why, Mac started for the train with them all in his car, not ten minutes before you came. They haven't been gone fifteen. I begged off from going along because I was dusty and tired. Just got home myself.”
R. P. Burns, making the circuit of the driveway behind the houses and now turning the Imp's nose toward the street again, stared at his friend in amazement.
“Why, she wasn't going till day after to-morrow!” he exclaimed.
“I came over last night,” drawled Chester in a longsuffering tone, “and explained to you and shouted at you and tried in every way to ram the idea into your head that Pauline had wheedled Mrs. Lessing to start when she did, because their routes lay together as far as Washington. You put me out, calling me names and generally insulting me. It's all right, of course. She's to spend the winter in South Carolina, but she'll be back next summer. You can say good-bye to her then. It'll do just as well.”
Burns's watch was in his hand. “What time does that train go?” he demanded.
“Five-thirty. You can't make it.” Chester's watch was also out. “What do you care? Send her a picture postcard explaining that you forgot all about her until it was too—”
The last word was jerked back into his throat by the jump of the Green Imp. She shot out of the driveway like a stone out of a catapult, and was off down the mile road to the station, All conveyances going to that train had passed quarter-hour before, and the course was nearly clear.
“There's the train's smoke at the tunnel. You can't do it,” asserted Chester, pointing to the black hole a few rods to one side of the station whence a gray cloud was issuing. “She only makes a two minute stop. You won't more than get on board before—”
“If I get on board you drive into the city and meet me there, will you?” begged Burns.
“I can't drive the Imp, Red; you know I can't.”