Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/193

 only half below her breath, "Clumsy creature!" Thoroughly humiliated, and no longer in a mood to care whether their Jimmy wrecked the car and killed us (all but one) I took my seat. I do believe that Aunt Mary secretly thinks me capable of having misjudged and ill-treated Eyelashes, who laid himself out to "be nice" to her.

Hardly had we started when I heard Miss Randolph telling Payne that this car belonged to the Honourable John Winston, Lord Brighthelmston's son, and asking him if he had ever met Mr. Winston. I suppose that, in the excitement of managing a big machine which he knew little or nothing about, Payne forgot that, since I "went with the car," the owner must have been one of those (to him) fatal old masters of mine. He can't bear to deny the soft impeachment of knowing anyone whom he thinks may be a swell, and in the hurry of the moment habit got the better of prudence.

"Oh yes, I know Jack very well!" he exclaimed; then drew in his breath with a little gasp which he turned into a cough. In that moment he had probably remembered me.

"I suppose you know his mother, then?" said Miss Randolph. "I met her in Paris. She's at Cannes now, and so you will see her there."

"Ye—es," returned Jimmy. "Oh yes, I shall certainly see her. I know Lord Brighthelmston better than I do her; but I shall call, of course."

What with his fear of having committed himself anew, and the chill in his marrow produced by my critical eye on his vertebræ, he grew more and more