Page:Mary Rinehart - More Tish .djvu/189

 Rh  she was on her back under it, hammering at something.

That night at dinner she made an announcement.

"I have for some time," she said, "been considering—go out, Hannah, and close the door—been considering the values of different engines for an ambulance which I propose to take to France."

"Tish!" Aggie cried in a heart-rending tone.

"And I have come to the conclusion that my own car has the best engine on the market. Tonight I propose to make a final test and if it succeeds I shall have an ambulance body built on it. I know this engine; I may almost say I have an affection for it. And it has served me well. Why, I ask you, should I abandon it and take some new-fangled thing that would as like as not lie down and die the minute it heard the first shell?"

"Exactly," I said with some feeling; "why should you, when you can count on me doing it anyhow?"

She ignored that, however, and said she had fully determined to go abroad and to get as near the Front as possible. She said also that she had already written General Pershing, and that she expected to start the moment his reply came.