I left them downstairs and went to bed. Cecilia tried to make me believe there was nothing wrong with me, as she always does when she has neuralgia, or says she has neuralgia, herself, but I know that there is. What is the matter I can't exactly say, only I am certain that I am going to suffer in some way from this horrible expedition.
SIR ARCHIBALD MAXWELL MACKENZIE
There is something soothing even in hotel tobacco, I suppose, so I was better, though still feeling decidedly blue, later in the day at Widdington, when I came up to the inn door and began overhauling the motor as it stood in the yard. There was nothing particularly cheering in finding several long cuts in the tires, and I was probing them to get the grit out, when I heard a little cough behind me. I turned to see Miss Virginia standing in the doorway, looking at me rather doubtfully. Now of course I had been rather short, not to say nasty, but somehow it's a fact that you cannot be sharp with a woman without at once being put in the wrong, though she may really have been the sinner all the time. It was Miss Virginia who had brought me out on this show, who had cost me about forty pounds in tires, and Heaven knows how much in other ways, but it was I who felt a beast now. Yet she looked at me in a way which seemed to say she was sorry I was vexed. She was rubbing her hands together and shivering a little. Of course she was cold in that ridiculous dress.
'A nice day it has turned out, hasn't it!' I said rather spitefully.
'Oh, I'll never, never ask for a picnic again!' cried she, with a comical look. She came and began to look at the cuts in the tires herself.
'Oh, they are bad,' she exclaimed, 'and I suppose you love that old motor better than anything on earth, don't you?' she inquired.
'I get a good deal more pleasure out of it,' I truthfully replied, 'than I do out of the society of most human beings.' She gave a little laugh.
'I expect I had better go inside after that!' she said, and of course I felt rather a brute. I hadn't really meant to be rude or send her away. I hunted under the tarpaulin that covered the motor for my fur-lined coat, and then I followed her into the inn.
'Look here,' I said, 'better put this on; you're horribly cold.' She seemed half inclined to refuse, but finally let me put the coat over her shoulders and run her arms into the sleeves.