"Mules have. I've met them in America. But if you think my idea a bright one, reward it by going with Jack and me as far as Lucerne. There you can pick up your mule and your mule-man." "'A picker-up of unconsidered trifles,'" I quoted dreamily. "Well, if you and Jack are willing to tool me out on your motor car as far as Lucerne, I should be an ungrateful brute to refuse. But the difficulty is, I want to turn a sulky back on my kind at once, while you two----" "We're starting on the first," said Jack. "What! No Cowes?" "We wouldn't give a day on the car for a cycle of Cowes." And so the plan of my consolation tour was settled, in the supreme court beyond which there is no appeal. But man can do no more than propose; and woman--even American woman--cannot invariably "dispose" to the extent of remaking the whole world of mules and men according to her whim. [Illustration] CHAPTER II Mercédès to the Rescue "What is more intellectually exhilarating to the mind, and even to the senses, than . . . looking down the vista of some great road . . . and to wonder through what strange places, by what towns and castles, by what rivers and streams, by what mountains and valleys it will take him ere he reaches his destination?"--_The Spectator_. That Locker should have come in at the moment when I was trying on my new automobile get-up was more than a pin-prick to my already ruffled sensibilities--it was a knife-thrust. "What on earth are you laughing at, man?" I demanded, whipping off the goggles that made me look like a senile owl, and facing him angrily, as he had a sudden need to cover his mouth with a decorous palm. "I beg pardon, me lord," he said. "It was coming on you sudden in them things. I never thought to see you, me lord, in hotomobeel clothes--you who always was so down on the 'orrid machines." "Well, help me out of them," I answered, feeling the justice of Locker's implied rebuke. I twisted my wrists free of the elastic wind-cuffs, and shed the unpleasantly heavy coat that Winston had insisted I should buy. "And you such a friend of the 'orse too, me lord," added Locker, aware that he had me at a disadvantage. I winced, and felt the need of self-justification. "You're right," I said. "I never thought I should come to it. But all men fall sooner or later, and I have held out longer than most. Don't be afraid, though, that I am going to have a machine of my own: I haven't quite sunk to that; if everybody else I know has. I'm only going across France on Mr. Winston's car. He has a new one--the latest make. He tells me that when he 'lets her out' she does seventy an hour." "Wot--miles, me lord?" Locker almost dropped the coat of which he had disencumbered me. "Kilometres. It's the speed of a good quick train."