Mrs. Radigan told him the other day that she could see by his face that he was working too hard, and insisted that the bracing air of Hempstead Plain could alone save him to his country. So we all went down to the Westbury place for a week-end, even Miss Bumpschus, with Constance Wherry and Williegilt Mint, a youngish chap, who is studying at Harvard, and so has not much to do except go about. Pearl took some of us down in her car in the afternoon, while the rest went by train, arriving in time for dinner. The Duke was in our party, but I doubt if ever again he will trust himself to the mercy of our fair chauffeuse, for Pearl is an expert with her car and can run as close to a hub without scraping it as can the Frenchman who looks after the Radigan machine-shop. We put the Duke and Miss Bumpschus behind, with Gascan as chaperone, and we should never have known they were there as we ran down the avenue to Thirty-fourth Street had not the Duke once remarked that it was "jolly." Then I gave Pearl a gentle nudge and she made a figure S around two rapidly approaching trolley cars. I expected a scream, but there was an ominous silence. Covertly I turned my head, first to look into the expressionless face of Gascan, his eye set along the track, then into the pale eyes of the great Englishman. He was terror-stricken, but to do him justice, I think he was not so much frightened by the smartness with which Pearl ran across the fender of the trolley car, as by Miss Bumpschus, who lay gasping in one of his arms. I could not help smiling, and in smiling I aroused him to action. With the bull-dog perseverance that is the characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon, he propped Ethel up in her corner. "That was a jolly close call," he said, speaking, we supposed, of the delightful way Pearl handled the car. "Another like that and you lose the Duke," I whispered. I could see just a bit of pink cheek turn pinker, just the full mouth curling at the corners, for all the rest was hidden from me by fur and goggles. We shot between a vegetable truck and an elevated post, at top speed, and came to a standstill within an inch of the ferry-gate; and when on the other side of the river, we whirled away again at the legal speed, going like the wind. The keen air put the mischief in Pearl's veins, and she ran with a recklessness that at times even disturbed my equanimity, though, of course, I did not dare show it, for I have noticed that these silent women set more store by nerve than by brains. We turned corners on one tire; we ran up to trolley cars at a forty-mile clip, then circled around them with a wild scream of the horn; over crossings we bowled with a succession of shocks that were likely to hurl his Grace off into the sky, but he clung to the hem of the silent Gascan's cow-skin coat. Just once the noble Englishman spoke. The mud, gentle harbinger of spring, was rising around us in clouds, and the engine, called on for double exertion, was roaring demoniacally.