"If that's the way you drive you will be lucky if you're not discharged before we reach Oak Cliff," Miss Harding declared, and I did not dare look in her eyes to see if she were offended or not.
For the following minutes I attended strictly to business. The steering gear and other operating parts were a bit stiff on account of newness, but I soon acquired the "feel" of them, and we ate up the first ten miles in seventeen minutes.
We were following a sinuous brook toward its source, now skirting its quiet depths along the edge of reedy meadows, and then chasing it into the hills where it boiled and complained as it dashed and spumed amid rocks and boulders.
"Hold on there, Smith!" shouted Harding from the rear seat in the tonneau.
"Stop, Jacques Henri!" ordered my fair employer, and then I dared look into her smiling eyes.
"I want to cut some of those willow switches," explained Harding, as the car stopped.
"What do you want of willow switches, John?" asked Mrs. Harding.
"Going to make whistles out of them," he said, cutting several which sprouted out from the edge of a spring. "Besides they're good things to keep the flies from biting the tonneau. Smith runs so slow that they are stealing a ride."
"Jacques Henri is doing as he is told," declared Miss Harding.
The spring was so inviting that we sampled its clear, cold water. Harding in the meantime whittling industriously on his willow switch. When he found that his whistle would "blow" he was as pleased as if he had designed a new type of locomotive.
A mile farther on we passed sedately through a country village and aroused the fleeting interest of the loungers in front of the combined post-office and news store. Then we entered a fine farming country, and from it plunged into a forest so dense that the overhanging boughs almost spanned our pathway.
Moss-covered stone walls lined both sides of the road. Everywhere was a profusion of wild flowers, their petals brushing against our tires, and their flaunting reds, yellows, and blues brightening the gloom of the encompassing wood. A gray squirrel scampered across our path and impudent chipmunks chattered to right and left. And then we came to a small clearing filled with the wagons, tents and litter of a gipsy camp.