He sighed outrageously. "They Met but to Part; Laura Jean Libbey; twenty-fourth large edition," he murmured. "And I was just about to present myself as Martin Dyke, vagrant, but harmless, and very much at your service. However, I perceive with pain that it is, indeed, my move. May I help you up to the wheel of your ship? I infer that you intend driving yourself." "I'll have to, if I'm to get anywhere." A look of dismay overspread her piquant face. "Oh, dear! I don't in the least understand this machinery. I can't drive this kind of car." "Glory be!" exclaimed Mr. Dyke. "I mean, that's too bad," he amended gracefully. "Won't you let me take you where you want to go?" "What'll become of your van, then? Besides, I haven't any idea where I want to go." "What! Are you, too, like myself, a wandering home-seeker on the face of an overpopulated earth, Miss?" The "Miss" surprised her. Why the sudden lapse on the part of this extraordinary and self-confident young person into the terminology of the servant class? "Yes, I am," she admitted. "A hundred thousand helpless babes in the wood," he announced sonorously, "are wandering about, lost and homeless on this melancholy and moving day of October 1st, waiting for the little robins to come and bury them under the brown and withered leaves. Ain't it harrowing, Miss! Personally I should prefer to have the last sad dirge sung over me by a quail on toast, or maybe a Welsh rabbit. What time did you breakfast, Miss? I had a ruined egg at six-fifteen." The girl surrendered to helpless and bewildered laughter. "You ask the most personal questions as if they were a matter of course." "By way of impressing you with my sprightly and entertaining individuality, so that you will appreciate the advantages to be derived from my continued acquaintance, and grapple me to your soul with hooks of steel, as Hamlet says. Or was it Harold Bell Wright? Do you care for reading, Miss? I've got a neat little library inside, besides an automatic piano and a patent ice-box.... By the way, Miss, is that policeman doing setting-up exercises or motioning us to move on? _I_ think he is." "But I can't move on," she said pathetically. "Couldn't you work my van, Miss? It's quite simple." She gave it a swift examination. "Yes," said she. "It's almost like my own car." "Then I'll lead, and you follow, Miss." "But I can't--I don't know who--I don't _want_ your van. Where shall we--" "Go?" he supplied. "To jail, I judge, unless we go somewhere else and do it _now_. Come on! We're off!"