Page:Lady Athlyne (IA ladyathlyne00stok).pdf/196

 to Carlisle. As he slowed down at the city wall Athlyne looking at his watch said quietly:

"An hour and a half and some fifty miles. Let us go on and eat our lunch in Scotland."

"Oh do! Go on! Go on—darling! I forgot to tell you that I have had a wire; they don't get in till seven; so we have two more hours," cried Joy enthusiastically. This time she used the word of endearment instinctively and without a pause. Practice makes perfect" says the old saw.

Athlyne controlled himself and went at quiet pace through the Cumberland capital. He would like to have put the engine at full speed; the last word had fired him afresh. However, he did not want to get into police trouble. When he came out on the Northern road and climbed the steep hill to Stanwix he felt freer. The road was almost a dead level and there was little traffic, only a stray cart here and there. Then he let go, and the car jumped forward like an eager horse. Athlyne felt proud of it, just as though it had an intention of its own—that it wanted to show Joy how it loved to carry her. Joy almost held her breath as they swept along here. The wind whistled around her head and she had to keep her neck stiff against the pressure of the fifty-mile breeze. They slowed at the forking of the road beyond Kingstown; and at the Esk bridge and its approaches; otherwise they went at terrific speed till they reached the border where the road crossed the Sark. Then, keeping the Lochberie road to the right, they rushed away through Annan towards Dumfries.

Joy did not know that at that turning off to Annan they were almost in touch with Gretna Green. Athlyne did not think of it at the time. Had the knowledge or the thought of either been engaged on the subject the temptation it would have brought might have been too much for lovers in their rapturous condition … and the course of this history might have been different.