“Well, what about that automobile?”
“I’ll have one at the door for you at ten,” said he.
She turned to Phyl.
“You’d better go with me—if you’d like to; you’d be lonely here all by yourself, and you may as well see Grangersons whilst the old man’s there, though maybe he’ll be gone before we arrive. We may be there for a couple of days, so you’d better take enough things.”
Then she went off to dress herself for the journey, and an hour later she appeared veiled and apparelled, Dick following her with the luggage, a bandbox and a bag of other days.
She got into the big touring car without a word. Phyl followed her and Pinckney tucked the rug round their knees.
“You’ve got the most careful driver in Charleston,” said he, “and he knows the road.”
Miss Pinckney nodded.
She was flying straight in the face of her pet prejudice. She was not in the least afraid of a break down or an overset. An accident that did not rob her of life or limb would indeed have been an opportunity for saying “I told you so.” She was chiefly afraid of running over things.
As Pinckney was closing the door on them who should appear but Seth—Seth in a striped sleeved jacket, all grin and frizzled head and bearing a bunch of flowers in his hand. He had not been dismissed after all. When Miss Pinckney had gone into the kitchen to pay him his wages he had carried on so that she forgave him. The flowers—her own flowers just picked from the garden—were an offering, not to propitiate but to please.