"To San Marco," cried the girl breathlessly. "Can you get us there by one o'clock?" "To--to--say, lady," stammered the rustic chauffeur. "That train you just got off of is going to San Marco." "Oh, no, it isn't," Minot explained. "We know better. It's going out into the country to lie down under a shade tree and rest." "The train is too slow," said the girl. "I must be in San Marco before one o'clock. Can you get me--us--there by then? Speak quickly, please." The effect of this request on the chauffeur was to induce even greater confusion. "T--to--to San Marco," he stumbled. "W--well, say, that's a new one on me. Never had this car out o' Sunbeam yet." "Please--please!" the girl pleaded. "Lady," said the chauffeur, "I'd do anything I could, within reason--" "Can you get us to San Marco by one o'clock?" she demanded. "I ain't no prophet, lady." A humorous gleam came into his eye. "But ever since I got this car I been feelin' sort o' reckless. If you say so, I'll bid all my family and friends good-by, and we'll take a chance on San Marco together." "That's the spirit," laughed Minot. "But forget the family and friends." He placed his baggage in the front of the car, and helped the girl into the tonneau. With a show of speed, the countryman went around to the front of the car and began to crank. He continued to crank with agonized face. In the course of a few minutes, sounds of a terrific disturbance came from inside the car. Still, like a hurdy-gurdy musician, the man cranked. "I say," Minot inquired, "has your machine got the Sextette from _Lucia_?" "Well, there's been a lot of things wrong with it," the man replied, "but I don't think it's had that yet." The girl laughed, and such a laugh, Dick Minot was sure, had never been heard in Sunbeam before. At that moment the driver leaped to his seat, breathing hard, and had it out with the wheel. "Exeunt, laughingly, from Sunbeam," said Minot in the girl's ear. The car rolled asthmatically from the little settlement, and out into the sand and heat of a narrow road. "Eight miles to San Marco," said the driver out of the corner of his mouth. "Sit tight. I'm going to let her out some." Again Dick Minot glanced at the girl beside him. Fate was in a jovial mood to-day to grant him this odd ride in the company of one so charming! He could not have told what she wore, but he knew she was all in white, and he realized the wisdom of white on a girl who had, in her hair and eyes, colors to delight the most exacting. About her clung a perfume never captured in a bottle; her chin was the chin of a girl with a sense of humor; her eyes sparkled with the thrill of their adventure together. And the dimple, in repose now, became the champion dimple of the world.