Mary was up early the next morning, out in the garden to look after her pets and to make their dawn toilets by pulling weeds and clipping dead leaves, when a long graceful car, its size unobtrusive because of its good lines and true proportions, came up the side street, blew its horn at her several times, by way of salute, and stopped at the gate.
“Thought you’d be here!” shouted Win, as the engine stopped to allow him to speak. He sprang down from his place beside the chauffeur and opened the tonneau door to let out Jane and Florimel, who were pushing it madly but ineffectively. Florimel carried a basket to which she clung so devotedly that Mary was at once suspicious of it. In spite of it, she managed to hug Mary as hard as Jane did, and both embraced her as if it were she who had just returned, and from a journey of desperate danger.
“You old blessing!” cried Jane. “I’ve felt like a pig, a perfect pig, every minute! The next time I go anywhere you can’t go, let me know! I’ve been furious to think of it; Mel, too! You just said you couldn’t go, and we fell right in with it, and you could have gone as well as not! I’m a pig!”
“You won’t get another chance to come your unselfishness, Mary Garden,” Florimel corroborated her sister. “But we had a perfectly scrumptious time. Where’s Chum, and how’s mother?”
“Chum’s around somewhere; mother’s well. Chum nearly choked to death,” replied Mary, holding tight to Win, because she could not get a chance to do more than look her welcome to him and pat the back of his hand, which had been Mary’s way of petting Win since she was a baby.
“No word for the new car, Molly?” hinted Win. “Some car! It brought us home in great shape; I’ve almost mastered running it; it isn’t hard. I’m going to teach you three.”
“Indeed you’re not; not me!” cried Mary. “But it’s a beauty, Win! It looks even better in the body than it does in the pictures!”
“Looks better in the chassis, too!” laughed Win. “We made no mistake in our selection. Captured a chauffeur, too. Come and speak to him. Say, Mary, he’s a wonder; English, seems an out-and-out gentleman; I don’t understand him,” Win whispered, as Mary went with him to the gate to greet this acquisition.
“Willoughby, this is the eldest of the three young ladies, Miss Garden. Mary, this is Willoughby, Wilfrid Willoughby, who drives splendidly and is going to look after us this summer,” Win introduced the new chauffeur.
Willoughby bowed; then, as if he remembered, touched his cap with his forefinger in the groom’s salute. “Hope I may be allowed to look after you, Miss Garden,” he said, in the unmistakable accent of an English university man. He wore a close black beard and his eyebrows were inky black; Mary thought it gave him a queer effect. His eyes were the bluest blue.