Page:A M Williamson - The Motor Maid.djvu/120

104 "I do, but don't be so despairing. I told them I thought I 'd better look the car over, and was n't quite ready. That 's always true, you know. A motor 's like a pretty woman; never objects to being looked at. So they said 'damn,' and strolled off to buy chocolates."

"It's getting beyond count how many times you 've saved me, and this is only our second day out," I exclaimed. "Here they come now, as they always do, when we exchange a word."

I trembled guiltily, but there was no more than a vague general disapproval in Lady Turnour's eyes, the kind of expression which she thinks useful for keeping servants in their place.

I got into mine, on the front seat; the car's bonnet got into its, the chauffeur into his, and at just three o'clock we turned our backs upon good King René.

The morning had drunk up all the sunshine of the day, leaving none for afternoon, which was troubled with a hint of coming mistral. The landscape began to look like a hastily sketched water-colour, with its hills and terraces of vine; and above was a pale sky, blurred like greasy silver. The wind roamed moaning among the tops of the tall cypresses, set close together to protect the meadows from one of "the three plagues of Provence." And even as the mistral tweaked our noses with a chilly thumb and finger, our eyes caught sight of the second and more dreaded plague: the deceitfully gentle-seeming Durance, which in its rage can come tearing down from the Alps with the roar of a famished lion.

Far above the wide river, the Aigle glided across a high-hung suspension bridge, the song of the water