Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-95.djvu/210

 took her hand, she said laughing, "Good-bye, Mr. Crusoe."

"Good-bye, Miss Friday," he returned.

A moment later she had left him and started merrily down the road. As he stood gazing after her, Gordon murmured wistfully, "I didn't intend to find the road so soon." And then his face broke into a whimsical smile. "That was the sweetest lie I ever told," he said, and commenced whistling an old English ballad. He seemed as light-hearted as a boy of twelve.

Meanwhile, Marcia Loring was talking to herself, as she made her way happily back toward "The Qaks," Beechwood.

"He thought I was lost," she mused. "If he only knew that I've roamed about in those woods for over fifteen years!"

For the first time in her life, the Undecided Woman had made up her mind in a hurry.

True to his promise, Gordon Sloan called at "The Oaks," Beechwood, at precisely three o'clock on the following afternoon and enjoyed to the full the glory of the bright midsummer day. For the first time in his life he discovered how great was the joy of living, and also how perverse was the will of an undecided woman. But nevertheless he enjoyed both immensely, so much in fact that his first visit proved a forerunner of many others; a prologue as it were, preceding the chapter of a continued story—light but pleasing.

One afternoon, he came in a great red motor-car.

"That's the 'Red Devil," he explained, as Marcia cried out her enthusiastic approval.

"I never thought I should care for him if we met," she declared.

"If you really like him," said Sloan, "we'll go for a spin."

A little later he was helping her into the car. As he took the seat beside her, he murmured, "It is indeed a rare pleasure to ride with the 'Red Devil' and one of 'The Maids of Paradise' at the same time."

As he spoke, the chauffeur pulled a lever or something, the car gasped and choked for a moment, and then with a sigh of resigned fate, it went whizzing down the road. It sped on and on, straight for the trail through the Beechnut Woods, the cool retreat beneath the ever-shading branches, Marcia uttered a little sigh of rapture.

"It is exquisite!" she cried.

"Swell!" said he.

And then the engine started to give imitations of two fighting tomcats, with the result that there was a whizzle, a sizzle and a bang and the car came to a stop. The chauffeur rose from his seat majestically, climbed out, down and under where he remained for quite a while; so long in fact that Gordon climbed out to see if he had gone to sleep or died. As he reached the ground, the chauffeur returned from his voyage under the car. Then the two commenced to tinker, argue, hammer and suggest, much to the amusement of Marcia Loring, who smiled down upon them good-naturedly from her throne in the car. Finally Gordon climbed back to his seat again and the chauffeur set off up the road in the direction from which they had cone.

"He's gone to get a—," explained Gordon. (Dashes do not denote profanity. They stand for the missing part of the automobile, the name of which I have forgotten.)

Time drags like a wheeless wagon to a man stalled alone in a motor-car way off somewhere in the wilderness; but if he has a beautiful woman by