“And I'll depend on you,” Kuhn added,—“a good figger and a loving disposition. We don't want any dead ones on this trip.”
“Laura's all right,” she assured him; “she's just ready for something of this sort; she goes off about twice a year.”
When they had started, Hartmann leaned forward. “Going Thursday... that little trip I spoke to you about.—No talking, understand. Look over the tires, get what you think-necessary for five or six hundred miles.” He tended Anthony a crisp, currency note. “Here's the five. Your salary starts to-morrow.”
That night Anthony wrote a letter of explanation to his father, a note to California in reference to his trunk, and a short communication to Eliza.—He was not certain that she would receive it. Her parents, he was convinced, were opposed to him—they were ignorant of the singleness, the depth, the determination, of his love.
XXV
IT. was nearly four, when, on Thursday, Anthony stopped the car before the inn by the elms. The woman with the yellow hair, accompanied by a figure in a shapeless russet silk coat, were waiting for them. The latter carried a small, patent-leather dressing case, and a large bag reposed on the portico, which Anthony strapped to the luggage rack. Kuhn, animated by a flow of superabundant animal spirits, bantered each member of the party: he gave Anthony a cigar that had been slightly broken, tipped off Hartmann's cap, and assisted the woman with profound gallantry into the car. Hartmann discussed routes over an unfolded map with Anthony; then, the course laid out, they moved forward.
Their way led over an old postroad, now between walls, trees, dank and grey with age and dust, now rising steadily into a region of bluish hills. Scraps of conversation fell upon Anthony's hearing: the woman in the russet coat, he learned, was named Laura Dallam. Kuhn talked incessantly, and, occasionally, she replied to his sallies in a cool, detached voice. She differed in manner from the others, she was a little disdainful, Anthony discovered. Once she said sharply, “Do let me enjoy the country.”
They slipped smoothly through the afternoon to the end of day. The sun had vanished beyond the hills when they stopped at an inn on the outskirts of an undiscovered town. It was directly on the road, and, built in a flimsy imitation of an Elizabethan hostelry, had benches at either side of the entrance.