“No, no,” she laughed. “Don’t discuss it here. I’ve only done what any other girl in my place would have done. Come,” she added. “Let’s get on and carry out the plan we arranged.”
“Right-ho!” he replied. “That’s the road,” he added, pointing straight before him. “According to the map, there’s a wood a little way up, where the road forks. We take the left road, skirt another wood past a farm called Danemore, then over a brook, and it’s the first house we come to on the right—with another wood close behind it.”
“Very well,” answered the girl. “You’ll have a breakdown close to the house—eh?”
“That’s the arrangement,” he laughed, and next minute he was running beside his machine, and was soon away, followed by his mud-bespattered well-beloved.
Off they both sped, first down a steep slope, and then gradually mounting through a thick wood where the brown leaves were floating down upon the chilly wind. They passed the farm Kennedy had indicated, crossed the brook by a bumpy, moss-grown bridge, and suddenly the man threw up his hand as a signal that he was pulling-up, and, slowing down, alighted, while his engine gave forth a report like a pistol-shot.
Ella, too, dismounted, and saw they were before a good-sized, well-kept farmhouse, which stood a short distance back from the road, surrounded by long red-brick outbuildings.
The report had brought out an old farm-hand—a white-bearded old fellow, who was scanning them inquisitively.
Both Ella and her lover were engaged in intently examining the latter’s machine, looking very grave, and exchanging exclamations of despair. Kennedy opened a bag of tools and, with a cigarette in his mouth, commenced an imaginary repair, with one eye upon the adjacent house. This lasted for about a quarter-of-an-hour. In the meantime a woman, evidently the farmer’s wife, had come out to view the strangers, and had returned indoors.
“I think it’s now about time we might go in,” the air-pilot whispered to his companion, whereupon both of them entered the gate and passed up the rutty drive to the house.
“I wonder if you could lend me a heavy hammer?” asked the motor-cyclist in distress of the pleasant, middle-aged woman who opened the door.