Page:A M Williamson - The Motor Maid.djvu/82

66 I would have been capable of eating vulgar bread and cheese under its wickedly historic roof if I had been invited.

"Do you suppose they know anything about the road and its history?" I asked the chauffeur, with a slight gesture of my swathed head toward the solid wall of glass which was our background.

"They? Certainly not, and don't want to know," he answered with an air of assurance.

"Why do they go about in motors then," I wondered, "if they don't take interest in things they pass?"

"You must understand as well as I do why this sort of person goes about in motors," said he. "They go because other people go—because it 's the thing. The 'other people' whom they slavishly imitate may really like the exhilaration, the ozone, the sight-seeing, or all three; but to this type the only part that matters is letting it be seen that they 've got a handsome car, and being able to say "We 've just come from the Riviera in our sixty-horse-power motor-car. They 'd always mention the power."

"Lady Turnour did, even to me," I remembered.

"But is Sir Samuel like that?"

"No, to do him justice, he is n't, poor man. But his wife is his Juggernaut. I believe he enjoys lying under her wheels, or thinks he does—which is the same thing."

"Have you been with them long?" I dared to inquire.

"Only a few days. I brought the car down for them from Paris, though not this way—a shorter one. We 're new brooms, the car and I."