"I’ll look out where you back; let her go," commanded Sylvester, and
Samuel backed his car out of the narrow space where it had stood between
Sylvester’s big brown limousine and Stephen’s modest phaëton. Samuel
used care until he had made the curves from barn to road, between trees
and hedges and the brown remains of a garden, out through the old
stone-posted gateway. Then, with a straight turnpike road before him
and the city only twenty miles away, Samuel opened his throttle. The
slim, powerful machine, its exhaust, unmuffled, roaring a deep note of
power, shot away down the road like the wind.
At a window inside Mr. William Kingsley was watching excitedly. A tall
figure of the general proportions of his sister Isabel’s husband, James
Dent, was at his elbow. "By George!" he ejaculated, "Syl’s gone with
Sam!"
Mr. George Kingsley, partially deaf, caught his own first name. "What’s
that, Will?" he responded eagerly.
William wheeled and saw whom he was addressing. George, his anxious
eyes peering down the road, was plainly not thinking of family quarrels.
Why should anybody think of family quarrels with Sam’s young Syl lying
upstairs looking as if the life had been knocked out of him by that
terrific fall? William found himself unable to answer this question.
"Sylvester’s gone with Sam after Doctor Graham," he announced in
George’s interrogative best ear.
"You don’t say!" responded George. "Well, it’s a good thing."
It certainly was. Not a member of the family but would admit that.
Also, if it was a good thing for Sylvester and Sam to tear down the road
together in a sixty-horse-power car, after a quarrel the proportions of
which anybody must concede were far more serious than those of the
difficulty between George and William, it would seem rather forced, at
least until the truth was known about young Syl, for two other brothers
looking out of the same window to cling to outward signs of
estrangement.
"Sam’s got an extremely powerful machine," observed William, continuing
to gaze down the road, though the aforesaid machine was already probably
a mile away and far out of sight.
"I guess he has. Must go faster than Sylvester’s, I should say."
"Sylvester’s isn’t made so much for speed as for getting about the city
warm and comfortable for his wife. Syl’s not much on speed, as I
remember. Shouldn’t wonder if Sam’s pace going to meet the doctor would
make Syl hang on some."
"It’s Sam’s boy," said George in a lower tone.
"So it is," agreed William. "Couldn’t blame him if he took some chances.
Don’t know as he’ll get Graham here more’n five minutes quicker’n he
could get here with his own car, but it’ll relieve the strain for Sam a
little to be doing something."
"That’s so," admitted George.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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