That night at dinner she made an announcement.
“I have for some time,” she said, “been considering—go out, Hannah, and close the door—been considering the values of different engines for an ambulance which I propose to take to France.”
“Tish!” Aggie cried in a heart-rending tone.
“And I have come to the conclusion that my own car has the best engine on the market. Tonight I propose to make a final test and if it succeeds I shall have an ambulance body built on it. I know this engine; I may almost say I have an affection for it. And it has served me well. Why, I ask you, should I abandon it and take some new-fangled thing that would as like as not lie down and die the minute it heard the first shell?”
“Exactly,” I said with some feeling; “why should you, when you can count on me doing it anyhow?”
She ignored that, however, and said she had fully determined to go abroad and to get as near the Front as possible. She said also that she had already written General Pershing, and that she expected to start the moment his reply came.
“I told him,” she observed, “that I would prefer not being assigned to any particular part of the line, as it was my intention, though not sacrificing the national good to it, to remain as near my nephew as possible. Pershing is a father and I felt that he would understand.”
She then prepared to take the car out, and with a feeling of desperation Aggie and I followed her.
For some time we pursued the even tenor of our way, varied only by Tish’s observing over her shoulder: “No matter what happens, do not be alarmed, and don’t yell!”
Aggie was for getting out then, but we have always stood by Tish in an emergency, and we could not fail her then. She had turned into a dark lane and we were moving rapidly along it.