Page:A M Williamson - The Motor Maid.djvu/240

224 This was a mild way of putting it; and he was considerate in not mentioning the precipice which fell abruptly down under the uneven shelf he generously called a road.

Sir Samuel gave a wary glance down, and said no more. Luckily Lady Turnour, sitting inside her cage, on the side of the rock wall we were following up the mountains, could not see that unpleasant drop under the shelf, or even quite realize that she was on a shelf at all. Her husband sat down by her side, more quietly than he had got up, even forgetting to shut the window; but he was soon reminded of that duty.

"Are you frightened?" the chauffeur asked me; and I thought it no harm to answer: "Not when you're driving."

"Do you mean that? Or is it only an empty little compliment?" he catechized me, though his eyes did not leave the narrow slippery road, up which he was steering with a skill of a woman who aims for the eye of a delicate needle with the end of a thread a size too big.

"I mean it!" I said.

"I 'm glad," he answered. "I was going to tell you not to be nervous, for we shall win through all right with this powerful car. But now I will save my breath."

"You may," I said, "I'm very happy." And so I was, though I had the most curious sensation in my toes, as if they were being done up in curl papers.

On we climbed, creeping along the high shelf which was so untidily loaded with rough, fallen stones and layers of mud, powdered with bits of ice from the rocky wall that seemed sheathed in glass. Icicles dangled heavy diamond fringes low over the roof of the car; snow