Lucy's face grew gently mutinous. "Which is that, cousin?"
"That yellow-haired boy of----" She checked her reply abruptly to listen. The horses were reined in. "My dear," she asked, resignedly, "what was that noise I heard?"
There was no mistaking that honk of the goose many times strengthened, and, following this, the low, steady sputter of a gasoline engine. The nigh horse's ears pricked up, then were laid back; his honest mate stopped short to await developments.
"I'm afraid," ventured Lucy, "that it's an automobile."
"The wretches, to choose this road! Are they coming? Go along, there!" cried Miss Herron to the horses, who sprang forward as she laid the whip on their fat flanks. "If we can get just beyond the woods I can turn out for it. But--oh, the _wretches_!"
"Oh!" cried Lucy. She knelt up in the carriage seat, looking back along the road.
"Wave to him, my child." Miss Herron leaned back on the reins. Her thin cheeks flushed up, and her gray eyes were like coal fires. "Signal the creature to slow up."
"I am, Cousin Agatha. I am waving as hard as I can." She was standing now, meeting with a lithe motion of supple knees and slender hips each plunge of the hurrying carriage, one little hand on the back of the seat. And with the other, Lucy, who looked at cousin Agatha and then laughed--just a little--signaled gayly if vaguely to the driver of the coming car. This was a young man, whose hair--for he wore no hat--shone in the sun like crisp gold wire.
"Honk!" spoke the horn, "honk!" and then three times more in quicker succession.
Lucy laughed aloud. "Isn't he silly?" And then waved once more.
"Whoa!" commanded Miss Herron, drawing her steeds to the side of the road. "Stand still, and don't be so foolish. It's only"--she hesitated, then pronounced the word as though it profaned her speech--"an automobile."
"May I pass you?" came the driver's voice from behind. The choking reek of the gas drifted down and enveloped them.
"It's all right," caroled Lucy. "Come ahead!" Then she dropped down to her seat beside her companion, light as a sparrow.
The horses snorted, swerved, and plunged heavily. There swept by a vision of dark green and shining brass, the chuck-chuck-chuck of machinery.