"Oh, Thomas, you are the most _inefficient_ boy about everything except
farming that I ever saw! Let me see if I can't help."

She jumped out, her feet, clad in silk stockings and satin slippers,
sinking into the mud as she did so. Together for fifteen minutes, rapidly
growing hot and angry, they wrestled with the refractory lock. At the end
of that time they were no nearer success than they had been in the
beginning.

"We'll have to crawl home on a flat tire," she said at last disgustedly;
"I hope we'll get there for breakfast."

Thomas had never seen her temper ruffled before. Her imperiousness was
always sweet, and it was Heaven to be dictated to by her. The fact that
he believed her to be comparing him in her mind to Austin did not help
matters. Austin, as he knew very well, would have managed some way to get
that tire changed. For some time they rode along in silence, the mud
churning up on either side of the guards with every rod that they
advanced. At last, realizing that his precious moments were slipping
rapidly away, and that though, in Sylvia's present mood, it was hardly a
favorable time to go on with his declaration, the morrow would be even
less so, Thomas summoned up his courage once more.

"Is your back tired?" he asked. "It's awfully jolty, going over these
ruts. I could steer all right with one hand, if you would let me put my
other arm around you."

"You're not steering any too well as it is," remarked Sylvia tartly.
"_Thomas_! What are you thinking of? Don't you touch me!--There, now
you've done it!"