they do, and Gerard Malcolm and the captain, to make matters
worse, talked a whole streak about good form, and how in England
they always walked their automobites, and how hateful anything
like speeding (and going to jail) was to a real English lady, and
'Oh, my dear, would the Queen do it?' Can't you hear him? It
goaded me into saying awful things back, and when I took him out
for his first spin, as grumpy as only an Englishman can be after
you've insulted him from his hat to his boots, I just opened the
throttle, threw in the high clutch, and let her go. There were
some things I liked about the captain, and the best was that he
didn't scare easy. He just folded his arms and never wiggled an
eyelash while I took some of the grades like the Empire State
Express.

"I knew he was boiling inside, in spite of his calm, British,
new-washed look, for I hadn't let him kiss me or anything, and
nobody, however brave he is, welcomes the idea of being squashed
under a ton of old iron. You see I was in a perfectly vicious
humor, thinking what an awful mistake I had made, and what a
little fool I had been, and how if it had only been Gerard
Malcolm--and while my hands were clenched on the steering-wheel
I could see the mark of his horrid ring' sticking through my
gauntlets, and I wouldn't have cared two straws if I had blown up
a tire just then, and driven head-foremost through a stone wall.

"I had given him about eighteen miles of this sort of thing when
the right-hand cylinder began to miss a little. Then, after a
while, the left started to skip, too. I stopped under a tree to
look for the trouble and pulled up the bonnet. The spark-plugs
were badly carbonized, and when I had seen to them and had put