"Here we are!" she said, and flung open the door of the car just as we started to move. The young man sprang forward, threw in his bags, slipped into the extra seat, slammed the door, and Peaches touched Richard upon the shoulder.
"Drive for your life!" she shouted, and the big black car shot down the street just as the two pursuers emerged, breathless, from the crowd.
[IV]
The young man whom Alicia had hailed turned toward her with quite the nicest smile it had ever been my fortune to behold, a smile in which his white teeth, which were of a character to do any dentist credit, were the least important factor, beautiful as they were. It was the way his face lighted up which caught one. In any situation that smile would prove his shield and buckler. It would have been invaluable to a book agent, and a missionary would have needed no other credentials—at least certainly not on our street at home. We all smiled back at him instinctively, though it was to Alicia that he spoke.
"It was simply ripping of you people!" he said in excellent English and a delightfully modulated voice, yet with a curious intonation, as if it were not his native tongue.
"Not at all!" replied Peaches, her eyes holding his. "Glad to oblige you!"
He seemed a trifle blank at this.
"I didn't expect you to be here," he went on. "But I think it's awfully jolly. I suppose you motor a great deal, Lady Gordon!"