"I'll tell you what I'll do," Jimmy Urquhart said. "The run down would be rather jolly, but the run back in the dark might be a bore. The Nugents have got a house at Sandwich. Why shouldn't you go there? You know my sister Nugent, as they used to say."
"Yes, of course I do," Lucy said, "but I couldn't really—"
"But she is there, my dear ma'am. That's the point. I'll drop you there on my way back. I wish I could stop too, but that's not possible. She'll arrange it."
James thought it an excellent plan; but Lucy had qualms. Odd, that the visit of Eros should a second time be succeeded by a motor-jaunt! To go motoring, again, with a Mr. Urquhart—oh! But she owned that she was absurd. James did not conceal his sarcasms. "She either fears her fate too much..." he quoted at her. She pleaded with him.
"Darling," she said—and he was immensely complacent over that—"I suppose it's a sign of old age, but— After all, why shouldn't I go by train—or in our own car, if it comes to that?"
"Firstly," said James through his eyeglass, "because Urquhart asks you to go in his—a terror that destroyeth in the noonday compared to ours; and secondly because, if you don't want it, I should rather like to go to Brighton in mine."
"Oh," said she, "then you don't mind motoring in March!"
"Not in a closed car," said James—"and not to Brighton." This acted as an extinguisher of the warmer feelings. Let Mr. Urquhart do his worst then.