"Mr. Truslow," I said, speaking loud, so as not to be drowned by the engine, "if you promise on your honor not to speak a single word to me—you can come, too!" I had to say it twice before he understood, and then, didn't he bound in! I suppose it was an awfully reckless thing to do, for whatever they say about absence making the heart grow fonder, sitting close is lots more dangerous, and I began to feel all my pride and determination oozing out of my shoes. It came over me in waves that I loved him better than ever, and I stole little sidewise peeps at him —and every peep seemed to make it worse. He belonged to a splendid type—I had to admit that, even if I didn't forgive him —big, clear-eyed, ruddy and broad-shouldered—and there was something tremendously compelling and manly about him that seemed to sweep me off my feet. This only made me hate him more, for I didn't see how I could ever love anybody else, and it's dreary for a girl to have only a single man in her life and not even be on speaking terms with that one! It leaves her with no outlook or anything, and one might as well be dead right off. But you can't be long miserable in a bubble, even if you try—that is, if it is running nicely, developing full power and you have a fat, rich spark—and though I looked as cold and distant as I could, secretly I think I never was so happy in my life.
Morty behaved properly for quite a while—much longer, in fact, than I could have believed possible. Then he brought out a pencil and began to write things on the beck of an envelope. I never moved an eyelash and didn't seem to understand at all till he handed me what he had written. I promptly tore it up and threw it away. But he found another envelope and did it again, this time holding to it tight and moving it before my eyes. I nearly ditched the car, for I was running with an open throttle and the grade was in our favor. Then he bent over and kissed my cloth sleeve. I pulled up short and gave him his choice of either getting out or comporting himself like a civilized being. He indicated that he would try to do the latter, though be looked awfully savage and folded his arms, and moved as far away from me as the seat would allow. I didn't care, besides he was safer like that than when he was nice—and so I just looked cross, too, and speeded up.
I laid out about a twenty-five mile spin, cut cutting Deering Avenue midway, and branching off where the Italians are working at the new trolley, toward Menlo, Hatcherly and the road through the woods. We turned at the Trocadero, climbed the long hill, and took the river-drive home. You know how steep it is, the river miles below and nothing but the sheerest wall on the other side. But there is no finer road in Europe, and it's straight enough to see everything ahead, so you are free to coast as fast as you please. I let her out at the top, for knew my breaks had been taken up, and there were cotter pins in every bolt of the steering gear; and, as I said before, there was always plenty of room to pull up in if you happened to meet a team. Well, off we went with a rush that made our ears sing, the little car humming like a top.
When we were more than two-thirds down and going like the wind I saw a nurse-girl near the bottom pushing a baby in a baby carriage and coming uphill, with two lithe tots in red dresses walking on either side of her. They saw us the same moment we saw them and lined up against the side—fiery sensibly, as I thought—and it was all so plain and right that I held on without a thought of danger. When I was about ten yards from them and allowing them an ample four feet to the good—I mean from the steep side, where they stuck in a row like barnaeles—what did the little idiots do but rush across the road like a covey of partridges, while the nurse-girl stayed where she was with the baby! If ever a person's blood ran cold it was mine. There was no time, no room, no anything—and the bubble going at forty miles an hour! It seemed like a choice between their lives or our own. But, thank God, I was game, and I just screamed out the one word "jump!" to Morty and turned the machine over the edge. I must have jumped, too, though I have no recollection of it, for when I came to myself my head was lying on Morty's knee and on looking about I saw we were still on the road. The machine? Oh, it was two hundred feet below, smashed to smithereens, and if we both hadn't lit out like lightning—
I wasn't a bit hurt, only bruised and giddy, and Morty was throwing the baby's milk in my face to revive me, while the baby looked on and roared with displeasure at its being wasted. Morty wasn't hurt, either, and if there were ever two people well out of a bad scrape it was he and I. He had been so frightened about me he was crying; and I guess his tears were like the recording angel's, because they seemed to blot out all the old quarrel between us. At least, when we got up and began to limp home it seemed to me I didn't mind anything so long as he was close to me. He was shameless enough to kiss me right before the nurse-girl, who was demanding our names and addresses and our blood—and all I did was to kiss back. I didn't have any fight left, and for once he had everything his own way. Of course, it didn't last long—it wouldn't have been good for him if it had—but even in six minutes I managed to lose the results of six months' coldness. Yet I was glad it was gone; glad just to be alive; and we'd look at each other and laugh like children. You don't realize what a good old place the world is until you've taken a chance on leaving it and weighed against death itself; all our little jealousies and misunderstandings seemed too trivial to count. It seemed enough that I loved him and that he loved me and that neither of us had broken anything—bones, I mean. It was sad, though, to think the poor little bubble was a goner and that we'd never hear its honest little pant again.
"If we had lived up to the comic papers, Morty," I said, "we would have spiflicated a red child, given a merry toot and disappeared in a cloud of dust!"
"I'm almost sorry we didn't," said Morty, who was dreadfully pale and always hated walking. "We'll know better next time."
"There'll be no next time for that bubble," I said sadly.
"It's sparked its last spark and will never choo-choo again!
"I mean our next car, of course," said Morty (it was awfully sweet to hear him say "our." And it took the sting out of losing the little bubble, especially now that we're going to have another).
"Yesterday Forbes Mason offered me his new four-cylinder Lafayette for twenty-eight hundred dollars," said Morty; "it's only been run five hundred miles, and I told him I'd think about it."