"Well, you’ve got your nerve with you!" I snorted. "I have, right here handy. I’m a friend of the Janneys, I’m a—" he stopped. His nerve was handy all right but he hadn’t enough to tell me it was because of Esther Maitland he was so keen. "Go on," I said sarcastic. "I’m interested to hear what _you_ are now you’ve found out what I am." "I’m almost a member of the household. I can help. I want to help—and I want to know." "Maybe you do," I said. "We often want things in this world that we can’t get. Don’t think you have the monopoly of that complaint." The motor rose over the crest of a hill, flashed by a farm and slid down an incline. Before us stretched a white line of road, with the forward car racing along it in a blur of dust. "You mean you won’t tell me?" "You got me." We suddenly began to slow up, the car swung off sideways from the roadbed, ran toward the bushes on the right, and came to a halt. Ferguson dropped against the back of the seat, stretched his legs and said: "This is a nice shady place to stop in." "Stop!" I cried. "Forget it! What do you want to stop for?" "I don’t—it’s you. I’m going to rest here quietly while you tell me." "Young man," I said, fixing him with a cold eye, "this is no time to be funny." "I entirely agree with you. Therefore as we’re of the same mind it behooves you to get busy and give me the information I want." The coolness of him would have riled a hen. It did me; I gave a stamp on the footboard and angrily said: "Start up this machine. I was ordered to go to New York and I’ve got to get there." "You will as soon as you tell me. But I won’t move until you do. We’ll stay here all day, all night if necessary. There’s just one thing certain: we’ll stay till I hear what I want to know." I was beaten and it made me mad straight through. I was helpless too and that made me madder. If I’d had the least notion of how you started the dinged machine I was angry enough to have tried to do it, though it wouldn’t have been any use with Ferguson there to frustrate me. "You’re losing time," said he. "There’ll be trouble if you don’t show up." "Do you think it’s a high class thing," I snapped out, "to put a girl in a position like this?" "Don’t _you_ think you can trust me?" he answered very quiet. I looked at him, a long, slow survey, and as I did it my anger simmered down. It’s part of my business to read faces and what I saw in his made me say sort of reluctant: "Well, maybe I can." He leaned forward and put his hand on mine. "Miss Rogers, if you’ll stand in with me, trust me and let me help, you won’t make any mistake. For I’ll stand in with you, not now, not just for this thing, but for always. You’ve my word on it and I don’t break my word."