"Off directly, you two! Connie is just having a last farewell with her mechanics. She has collected quite a bunch of them by this time." "They have n’t taken long over the job," said Dicky, in a slightly injured tone. Carmyle, who too had once dwelt in Arcady, smiled. "An hour and ten minutes," he said concisely. Dicky and Tilly said no more, but meekly uprose from the fallen tree upon which they had been sitting and accompanied their host to the road. All signs of disaster had disappeared. The punctured back tyre stood up once more, fully inflated; the tool-box had been repacked and put away; and Connie, smiling indulgently, sat waiting at the wheel. Far away in the distance could be descried two other cars, rapidly receding from view. They contained in all five knights of the road--grotesquely attired and extremely muddy, but very perfect gentle knights after their kind--who were now endeavouring, in defiance of the laws of the land, to overtake the time lost by their recent excursion into the realms of romantic adventure; all wishing in their hearts, I dare swear, that life’s highway contained a few more such halts as this. "Connie is going to write a book one day," observed Mr. Carmyle, as they climbed into the car, "called ’Hims Who Have Helped Me.’ All right behind there?" The car set off once more. III The rest of the day passed uneventfully, and as it was spent _à quatre_ need not be described at length. They sped home in the gathering darkness of a frosty evening. Connie, who had relinquished the wheel to her husband, with instructions to get the car home as speedily as possible--she had not forgotten her promise to go and hear Mr. Rylands’s evening sermon--now shared the back seat with Tilly; and the two ladies snuggled contentedly together under the warm rug, silently contemplating the outlines of their squires against the wintry sky. The car swung in at the lodge gates and began to run along the crackling gravel of the drive. Presently, as they rounded a bend, the lights of the house sprang into view. "Tea--and a big fire!" murmured Connie contentedly. To Tilly the sight of the house suggested other thoughts. Suddenly she removed her gaze from Dicky’s broad back and slipped a cold hand into Connie’s. "Will they try to take him from me?" she whispered passionately. One of Connie Carmyle’s many gifts was her ability to catch an allusion without tiresome explanations. Straightway she turned and looked deep into the appealing grey eyes beside her. Her own brown ones glowed indomitably. "If they do, dear," she answered--"fight for him." "I will," said Tilly, setting her teeth. The two girls gripped hands in the darkness. CHAPTER XVI AN IMPOSSIBLE FAMILY