"Five minutes more and I've finished," said Beth. "'The conversation after dinner turned on---- Now what do you think, belovedest? Politics? Wrong. Science? Wrong. Guess again. Well, if you won't, let us whisper: silk stockings. But you'd have guessed that, wouldn't you? if I'd mentioned that Miss Mary Lambert was one of the party.'" "I won't have it," said Mary. "As if I'd dare to talk about silk stockings to a _grand seigneur_. Tell her not to, Jimmy." "Not much use my telling Beth anything. Besides, we are going to talk about silk stockings, aren't we? I mean to say, that's the general idea of the party--smuggling and so forth." "Thank Heaven, I've finished," said Beth. "I'll just run and change my frock, and then we'll see what the Pallas Athene can do along the roads." "If anybody talks about silk stockings," said Mary when Beth had left the room, "it'll have to be you, Jimmy. I simply daren't to a man like your uncle." "But that's what we're going to see Uncle Evie about. What I mean to say is this: we want to get all the particulars about this smuggling stunt of his, whether there's any chance of fitting in a little of the real thing. It all depends, you know. But if we could manage to get in a few dozen pairs of silk stockings under cover of the pageant it'd be all to the good for you and Beth, wouldn't it?" "Jimmy," said Mary, "you're an angel!" "I don't promise anything. It all depends on how Uncle Evie's working the thing. If he leaves the lugger part of the show in my hands---- Didn't Beth say there was a bishop in it? You can do pretty nearly anything if you're holding hands with a bishop. Nobody ever suspects you. Besides, he might be a sportsman himself--the bishop, I mean. Some are, I'm told. Anyhow, I don't suppose he'd have any objection to a case of champagne. If he didn't care to drink it himself he could give it away to poor parsons in the diocese." Chapter IX For the first hundred and thirty miles or so of the journey the Pallas Athene did all that could be expected of an eight-cylinder sports model driven by a young man who did not shrink from paying an occasional fine. The needle of the speedometer often flickered past the sixty miles mark. The average speed fell little short of double that which our legislators--the same people who made the laws about beer--consider sufficient. Ilchester was reached in less than four hours. Jimmy, slowing down slightly through the long narrow street of the village, congratulated himself and his passengers on the achievement. "I call that a satisfactory record so far," he said, "and we haven't killed or maimed so much as a dog, which just shows the advantage of careful driving."