"That war!" exclaimed Mrs. Brundage. "It's got a deal to answer for. Now, there's Tom; it's changed his heart from cows and horses to motor-cars and airyplanes."
"It was in a hospital——" said Dick.
"Them hospitals!" she interrupted. "I know 'em. And very dangerous institootions I consider 'em."
"I see you do—so you will understand that part. When we had made the discovery that each was the only thing in the world to the other, and she had told her father, the Marquis of Ontario, that she would wed none but me, his anger was so terrible that I dared no longer leave her beneath his roof. There was nothing for it but——"
"An elopement!" burst from Mrs. Brundage.
Dick nodded.
"We did it—last night, in my car. But about four miles from Millsborough, we had an accident. You've seen my face, Mrs. Brundage, but you haven't seen my car. And we knew that the Marquis was not far behind us. So we dragged ourselves along the ditch into which we had fallen, and hid. At dawn we saw him go tearing by in his sumptuous sixteen-cylinder electric landaulette. After that——"
A crunching of gravel outside brought a not inconvenient interruption to this romance.
Dick was out of the kitchen like a flash, his right hand in the pocket of his jacket.
Mrs. Brundage heard a voice that was not his, and words of a language she had never heard before. Having no reason to fear anything worse than the Marquis of Ontario, she followed her hero with a stride as swift and almost as silent as his own.