Daisy went on a few steps; then, just as her intended pilot was about to bang the door shut and start his engine, she turned.
"Can I come home with who I like, then, if I go?" she queried, dimpling all over as she wrestled with her merriment.
"Yes, blame you!" said the taxicab driver, "you can come home with the Devil, if you like. Come on—get in! Don't keep me here all night, waiting for a dead-head passenger to burn up four mile o' juice on."
Daisy stepped in and sat down, warm and flushed and round, right beside him. Then she had a good laugh, and thereby relieved herself.
"Take them bughouse streaks often?" her host enquired; his dry-pursed mouth, his careless hat, and his eyes that looked regardlessly ahead through the windshield, giving him, to Daisy, a kind of big-brother aspect—the look of a man to be trusted.
"This was easy," he said, presently, as the car rushed away down-street—the speedometer indicating that the speed limit was only being exceeded by ten miles an hour; "dead easy. Ain't you scared, kid? S'posin' I was a murderer or something, after all!"
"I'm not scared." Daisy slid a soft glance up at him.
"All right," said her companion, "for that, we go to the park, like I said—this time. I had a half a mind to ride you to the bridge and dump you into the river. I'm a revengeful son of gun when I'm crossed."
It was now about eight o'clock. The streets were filling with the promenaders of evening, each in his or her best "bib and tucker," enjoying the worker's well earned off-hour of spooning or strolling. Motorcycles darted in and out among the sedater and larger vehicles, exploding like machine-guns; in the seat of each a happy youth with either smile or cigarette or both, and often behind him, on a kind of pillion, a girl, with the happily-needful arm placed about him for purposes of support. Sometimes the girl was in a side-car, but then she was generally the motorcyclist's wife. Automobiles glided ahead or beside, down the smooth broad asphalt, like boats on a canal. As the street ribboned away behind Daisy and her driver, there showed gradually more green spaces on the streets. Before long, the houses grew few and drew away, as it were, from the roadside. Green woods scalloped the skyline. The asphalt ended, and they were running on a smooth-graded road, oiled to keep down the dust. There was an interval of quiet bowling along through sunset woodland, with Nature's lawns interspersing; then life, to Daisy's relief, began to bubble and sparkle around them again. They had reached the gate of the park at the same time as two crowded street-cars; and, obeying traffic rules, halted to let the crowd of passengers—many-hued in their summer dresses as though one were looking at them through a prism—dance and chatter and giggle and stalk past, arm-linked or baby-toting or soberly single, until the road was clear. Then the curly-haired young man spun his steering-wheel, describing an easy and rapid turn; and they were sailing down a road straight as a line, with a great white pavilion awaiting them from the top of its smooth-lawned hill. On either side, down the walking-paths, came an endless stream of pedestrians, noisy and gay in their evening emancipation, with bare-legged youngsters breaking loose, racing and chasing across the green as Daisy had seen the calves do in spring.