"Then I ’d rather take you in to-night," said Brant, promptly. "We ’ll fill up the car with chaperons, and you can sit in front with me. They ’ll be tickled to go, in this moonlight. I ’ll ask Mrs. Hildreth and Miss Armitage; they ’ll discuss dressmakers all the way in and leave us in peace." Shirley let him arrange it, personally much preferring to reach home that night and get up at the usual hour in the morning, with an interval between her pleasure-making and her work. The hour was not late, and Brant professed to be able to make incredibly quick time, so he had no difficulty in arranging his party. There were many sallies at Shirley’s expense as her friends saw her depart. Her devotion to business was considered a caprice, likely at any time to give way to more rational behaviour, and she was assured of an enthusiastic welcome back to the company of sane beings when her "craze" should be over. She went away smiling at the thought of how little they understood her, and with a sense of having at hand resources of contentment at which they could not even guess. With an empty road ahead, and the moonlight making all things clear, Brant sent his car humming. In the rush of air caused by their flight, all four travellers stopped talking, and it was upon a silence hitherto disturbed only by the muffled mechanism of the car that the startling _bang_ of an exploding tire woke the echoes. "Confound the luck!" burst from the young man in the driver’s seat, as he brought the machine to a standstill. "That means stop and repair right here. We can’t run her in on her rim. We ’re not half way." Shirley looked about her. Ten rods away, its big barns looming against the sky, its white house showing clearly in the moonlight, lay the farm of Mr. Elihu Bell, the grandfather of her friends. Although it was after eleven o’clock, there were lights showing in windows which she knew belonged to the front room of the farm-house. "Shall you need help?" she asked, as Brant threw open the box which held his repair kit. "The noise has brought somebody to the door over there. It ’s the Bell farm--my sister Jane’s grandfather, you know." "Is it? Then we’ll pull over there into the yard, and you people can go inside, since they seem to be up. It may take me quite a while to get out of this scrape. I ’m not much of a mechanic, and I ’ve been lucky enough not to puncture many tires." He got in again, and ran the car slowly over to the open gate of the Bell place. As he turned in, the two figures which had been standing in the doorway came out and crossed the yard.