Later, behind a window barred like a prison, Sallie MacMahon’s lips clung together and she looked away as her most precious possession passed into other hands—probably for all time.
At last the night arrived when the girls sighted at the curb a little car blue as the heavens. One of them stepped lightly from the stage entrance, fetched a key from her bag, bent down, then sprang in and took the wheel as though running a motor were a daily pastime.
Miss Mallard stopped in the center of the pavement.
“I’ll tell the world!” she breathed, forgetting Fifth Avenue. “She wasn’t lying, Grace,—she wasn’t!”
Sallie MacMahon smiled upon them, put her foot on the self-starter, heard the cheerful chug chug of the engine responding and, with terror chasing down her spine, spun round the corner.
As she disappeared, Grace’s reply wafted on the breeze:
“But he’s a piker, anyhow. It’s as big as a minute!”
Up Broadway, eyes starting with fear, heart pounding, went Sallie. And every instant’s progress petrified her. Buildings descended. Motor trucks loomed up. Trolleys tore, gigantic, within an inch of the blue mite that held her. It was completely, totally swamped. Alone in it for the first time, she clung wildly to the wheel while all Broadway danced.
Never had she traveled a distance to equal those [281] ]ten blocks. Never before had the thought of the sagging brownstone house been a welcome one. A century later she reached her own street, turned in. Then something snapped. The blue runabout stood stock still. Sallie tried to recall the varied instructions of the garage man who had taught her to drive it. Without his guiding hand they were Greek.
She fled in the direction of a passing policeman, caught his arm. “Please, would you mind? Something’s happened. It—it’s stuck.”