She straightened up, sitting very erect, her two hands tense upon the useless wheel. He noted the poise of her head and found in it something almost queenly. For a moment they were both very still, he watching and feeling his sense pervaded by the glowing sensation that all was right with the world, she holding her face averted and keeping her thoughts to herself.
Presently she got out and lifted the hood, looking in upon the engine, despairing. But did not glance toward him. Then she closed the hood and returned to her seat, once more attempting to get some sort of response from the starting system. Packard felt himself fairly beaming all over.
"I may be a low-lived dog and a deep-dyed villain besides," he was frank to admit to himself. "But right now I'm having the time of my life. And I wouldn't bet two bits which way she's going to jump next, either—never having met just her type before."
"Well?" she said abruptly.
She hadn't moved, hadn't so much as turned her head to look at him. If she had done so just then perhaps Packard's extremely good-humored smile, a contented, eminently satisfied smile, would not have warmed her to him.
"Speak to me?" he asked innocently.
"I did. Simply because there's nobody else to speak to. Don't happen to know anything about motor-cars, do you?"
It was all very icily enunciated, but had no noticeably freezing effect upon the man's mood.
"I sure do," he told her cheerfully. "Know 'em from front bumper to tail-lamp. Yours is a Boyd-Merril, Twin Eight, this year's model. Fox-Whiting starting and lighting system. Great little car, too, if you ask me."
"What I was going to ask you," came the cool little voice, more haughtily than ever, "was not what you think of the car but if you—if you happened to know how to make the miserable thing go."