At the station Jessie Bradley sat drawn up in a buggy: she had her place in a small convention of phætons, carryalls, and express-wagons. She tossed her head brightly and waved her whip.
"I could have walked as well as not," said Ogden, climbing in. "What's half a mile?"
"Three quarters--almost," she corrected. She gathered up the lines and secured the approved hold on the whip. "Unless _you_ care to drive?" she suggested.
"Not particular," replied Ogden, leaning back easily. "Quite willing to be a passenger."
He took a look at her sidewise from behind. She wore a pert little flat-brimmed, flat-crowned hat, set straight on the top of her head; a stray lock of hair brushed across her ear in the breeze; she had a bunch of pale purple primroses at her throat.
"You may if you want to," she said, with a sudden turn in his direction. Her eyes snapped and sparkled.
[Illustration: "'Here we go,' she cried, 'Sunday or no Sunday, I hate to poke.'"]
"I'd as soon see you--unless you don't care to."
"Oh, as far as that goes! Just hold on tight, though. Get up, John!"
She drew a taut rein and flicked the horse over the ear. He was a mettlesome five-year-old, and he rushed into his best gait at once. "Here we go!" she cried, "Sunday or no Sunday. I hate to poke."
She rushed him through the outskirts of the town; she bumped over the cumbrous plank crossings, she grazed one or two of the wooden posts that held up oil-lamps, she charged a flock on its homeward way from church and cut it into two frightened and indignant halves. She was on her native heath; she felt it; she showed it.
George grasped the buggy-cover with his left hand and held his right in readiness to seize the reins. The buggy, with many a bump and sudden wrench, sped on over the stones and ruts and puddles and rough crossings of an indifferent country road, and presently it turned into a yard with a rasping graze on one of the two painted white posts that made the entrance way. On the side porch of the house stood the girl's parents. They were laughing.
Jessie jumped out briskly. She struck a masculine attitude on the carriage-block, her right hand resting on the stock of her whip, her left arm a-kimbo.
"I was to get yer through on time; them was my orders, and here ye are!"