Page:Three speeds forward.djvu/43

 and an old woman; and as far as any splurge was concerned, he might have been the hired caretaker. I mean, except for his G. R. A. T. car, a forty-horse Austrian giant that used to slip out, mostly at night, and sizzle around like the wind. Papa said he was only trying to pique our curiosity, and that the surest way of getting people to know you, who don't want to know you, is to make them believe you don't want to know them.

Well, it went along like this for ever so long, till one day he actually did make an acquaintance, and—would you believe it?—that acquaintance was me. I was hung up on the road when I heard a big car purring up the hill, and when I turned round, I saw it was the G. R. A. T. It swerved for a moment in an undecided manner, passed me, slowed down, and stopped. I looked up from the bonnet, and there was Mr. Marsden getting out. I knew him in a minute from his picture, and, besides, the G. R. A. T. identified him like a passport. He was a startlingly