Page:A M Williamson - The Motor Maid.djvu/232

216 "You say that as if it was the devil's kitchen."

"There 's probably first rate cooking in the devil's kitchen; I 'm not so sure about the inns at Alais."

"But it 's arranged to picnic on the road to-day for the first time, you know. They put up such good things at Nîmes, and I was to make coffee in the tea-basket."

"That 's why I wanted to get on. Picnic country doesn't begin till after Alais. Who could lunch on a dull roadside like this? Only a starving tramp would n't get indigestion."

It was true, and I began to detest the unknown Alais. Perhaps, after all, we might sweep through the place, I thought, without the idea of lunch occurring to the passengers. But Mr. Dane's heart-to-heart talk with the Aigle resulted in quite a lengthy argument; and no sooner did a town group itself in the distance than Sir Samuel knocked on the glass behind us.

"What place is this?" he asked.

"Alais," was the answer the chauffeur made with his lips, while his eyebrows said "I told you so!" to me.

"I think we'd better lunch here," Sir Samuel went on. And the arrival of a princely blue motor car at the nearest inn was such a shock to the nerves of the landlady and her staff that the interval before lunch was as long and solemn as the Dead March in Saul. To show what he could do in an emergency, the chef slaughtered and cooked every animal within reach for miles around.

They appeared in a procession, according to their kind, when necessary disguised in rich and succulent sauces which did credit to the creator's imagination; and there