“She's a thoroughbred, sir,” he said. “We jump when she asks us for anything. She's a real blooded one; not like some, sir--like some of them fullrigged ones. They keep 'er 'oppin'.”
“Them nurses, I mean, sir. They loves to 'awe them--them young 'Vaddies,' as we call them--V. A. D., you know, sir. They keeps 'em a 'oppin' proper--scrubbin' floors, runnin' messages, but Miss Vincent, she mostly drives a car.”
While the sergeant was dilating upon the virtues and excellences of the young V. A. D., his men ran out her car, and packed into it the biscuit tins and coffee. By the time the sergeant was ready she was back, dressed in a chauffeur's uniform.
Barry had thought her charming in her V. A. D. dress, but in her uniform she was bewitching. He noticed that her hair clustered in tiny ringlets about her natty little cap, in quite a maddening way. One vagrant curl over her ear had a particular fascination for his eyes. He felt it ought to be tucked in just a shade. He was conscious of an almost irresistible desire to do the tucking in. What would happen if--
“Well, are you ready?” inquired the girl in a quick, businesslike tone.
“What? Oh, yes,” said Barry, recalled to the business of the moment.
During the drive the girl gave her whole attention to her wheel, as indeed was necessary, for the road was dangerously slippery, and she drove without lights through the black night. Barry kept up an endless stream of talk, set going by her command, as she took her place at the wheel. “Now tell me about Canada. I can listen, but I can't talk.”
In the full tide of his most eloquent passages, Barry found himself growing incoherent at times, for his mind was in a state of oscillation between the wonderful and lustrous qualities of the brown eyes that he remembered flashing upon him in the light of the fire, and that maddening little curl over the girl's ear.
In an unbelievably short time, so it seemed to him, they came upon the rear of a marching column.
“These are your men, I fancy,” she said, “and this will be your camp on the left; I know it well. I've often been here.”
She swung the car off the road into an open field, set out with tents, and brought the car to a stop beside an old ruined factory.