Page:The Strange Case of Miss Annie Spragg (1928).djvu/104

 . . . Personal and Magnetic Force. She thought, "Things are beginning to happen to me. He is exactly like the hero of 'In a Winter City.

Despite herself, her manner became overwrought and arch. She explained that Mrs. Weatherby was afraid of Italian servants. . . . She had heard stories in Carmel. . . and that all the servants slept in a pavilion near the stables. She led the way to the stables, followed by the stranger and old Pietro, who limped as he walked and kept muttering to himself. The miracle at the stables was even greater than she had hoped. In the shadows and among the ghosts of the Spanish Ambassador's Arab horses they discovered the battered Ford. The gasoline tank was full to the brim.

The stranger appeared in such great haste that he threw himself down without a thought into the dust and grease beneath the Ford and set to work filling the two bidons he carried with him. When he had finished he rose and insisted upon seeing Miss Fosdick back through the shrubbery despite all her fluttering protests that she was not afraid. In the thickest part of the shrubbery he even touched her arm gently with an old-fashioned courtesy. The implication that Miss Fosdick was so fragile that she might easily slip in the darkness and injure herself flattered her vanity, and made her feel very small and feminine. At the door he took out a soft leather wallet and taking from it a card gave it to her. It was then that she discovered for the first time with embarrassment that in one hand she still held Mrs. Weatherby's hair-brush. Strands of Aunt Henrietta's grey hair still clung to it. 