Thompson rested, watching them from the grassy level beneath a tree. He rather regretted now the impulse which had made him ship his bag and blanket roll from the last town, and undertake this solitary hike. He had merely humored a whim to walk through orchards and green fields in a leisurely fashion, to be a careless trudger for a day. True, he was saving carfare, but he observed dryly that he was expending many dollars' worth of energy--to say nothing of shoe leather. The pleasure of walking, paradoxically, was best achieved by sitting still in the shade. A midday sun was softening the asphalt with its fierce blaze. He looked idly at passing machines and wondered what the occupants thereof would say if he halted one and demanded a ride. He smiled.
He stared after a passing sedan driven by a uniformed chauffeur, one half the rear seat occupied by a fat, complacent woman, the other half of the ten-inch upholstery given over to an equally fat and complacent bulldog. And while he reflected in some little amusement at the circumstance which gave a pampered animal the seat of honor in a six-thousand-dollar car and sent an able-bodied young man trudging down the road in the heat and the dust, another machine came humming up from the south.
It was a red car, crowding the state limit for speed, and it swept down on Thompson with a subdued purr like a great cat before a fire. When it was almost abreast of him there burst from it a crack like the report of a shotgun. There was just a perceptible wabble of the machine. Its hot pace slackened abruptly. It rolled past and came to a stop beside the road fifty yards along--a massive brute of a red roadster driven by a slim girl in a pongee suit, a girl whose bare head was bound about with heavy braids of corn-yellow hair.
Thompson half rose--then sank back in momentary indecision. Perhaps it were wiser to let sleeping dogs lie. Then he smiled at the incongruity of that proverb applied to Sophie Carr.
He sat watching the machine for a minute. The halting of its burst of speed was no mystery to Thompson. Miss Carr proceeded with calm deliberation. She first resurrected a Panama hat from somewhere in the seat beside her and pinned it atop of her head. Then she got out, walked around to the front wheel, poked it tentatively once or twice, and proceeded about the business of getting out a jack and a toolkit.