The Argosy, Vol. 82 No. 2 — page 23: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

GETTING AWAY FROM THOMPSON. car of yours is a very delicate piece of ma- chinery, and likely to fly in little pieces in strange hands; you know, the automobile people themselves said that not one man in a hundred was qualified to drive it.” “Tt doesn’t spoil my party,” Jane cor- rected, rather doggedly. “Jones found me another driver before he left—a man who has been driving the same kind of a car for a year. His name is Cragg, and he will be here at nine sharp.” “Does Jones know him?” Aunt Martha asked, faintly. “Ves, dear, and vouches for him, so I suppose he’s all right. Uncle!” Mr. Porter-Preston glanced up absently. aT eee “Will you ask Dixon to sleep on the bench beside the door to-night and have the second man stay awake somewhere near the back windows?” “Tf you wish it.” “I’m sorry about being married and ma- king all the excitement and rushing off like this,” his niece said forlornly, ‘“but— Thompson might turn up before morning!” Thompson did nothing of the kind. Jane, waking to the early sunshine, was conscious that in spite of all she had slept splendidly, and now, in the daylight, the Thompson proposition had lost some of its terrors. Not that Jane contemplated re- maining home and confronting the gentle- man, but the chance of escaping unscathed to the broad highways seemed much bright- er than last evening. Nor, when heart and blood are young, is there anything distasteful in the pros- pect of a long run in a new car, through autumn woods, and with—at least reason- ably—congenial people. Jane, indeed, was actually humming as she hurried breakfastward, but she ceased her humming at the sound of the voice be- hind the closed door of Aunt Martha’s room. A moment she listened; then she entered and it was as she had feared. Aunt Hettie, Mrs. Horace Porter-Pres- ton’s acidulated step-sister, had apparently arrived early for a visit! Mrs. Porter-Preston herself had not yet arisen; on the table at her bedside three bottles and two pill-boxes added to the im- pression that was forming in Jane’s brain. “The sciatica?” she asked instinctively. “Tt began about midnight,” Aunt Mar- tha responded. 205 “T’m sorry,” said Jane. “I—” Aunt Martha smiled through her pain. “Tt is all right, dear,” she said. “The thing has to run its course as usual, but it shall not interfere with your plans. I sent for Aunt Hettie, and she will take care of you on your trip.” Jane nodded silently, for the time bereft of speech. There are aunts and aunts; Aunt Hettie was not of the kind one would select as chaperon to an ostensibly merry party. Chronic disapproval of everything on earth had drawn deep, hard lines in her thin, elderly countenance; her eye, eter- nally, was cold and unfriendly and her voice rasped. At her side just now stood a lean, rusty little black bag that could have belonged to nobody under the sun but Aunt Hettie—?” “VYou’re not going to tear around the country at sixty miles an hour on this ridiculous excursion?” she asked _pleas- antly. ‘“Why—I just meant to jog along slowly ——just a sort of lazy jaunt,” Jane stam- mered. “But if you don’t want to come, Aunt Hettie—? “T don’t, but I’m going. Why you should be permitted to race off like this when you’ve not been home twenty-four hours is beyond me.” Jane’s lips opened and, as she caught Aunt Martha’s warning eye, closed again. “Jane loves the country; there’s really no reason why she should be penned up here,’ Aunt Martha said gently. ‘Run along and have your breakfast, dear; it is growing late.” | Silently the unwilling Mrs. Thompson moved away. She sought her Uncle Horace, meaning to plead with him that Mrs. Hapworthy would constitute a per- fectly efficient chaperon and that Aunt Hettie, detesting travel at best, might be spared the duty. Uncle Horace, as it happened, having been kept from his offices these many weeks, had succumbed to their lure very early this morning and fled, laden down with brief-cases and bundles of documents. Dixon, as he served her lonely meal, com- municated this news and added that Mr. Weston had telephoned just after seven. ‘That he will be here?” Jane asked hope- fully. “That he cannot come, miss,” Dixon corrected. ‘He said he’d be sending an- COMMICLOOOKS (C@)