"Oh, don't talk about it!" she exclaimed. "Surely somebody will come get us--or couldn't we go up this road till we find a farmhouse?" "If you like," said Clarence. They rose and walked on for a while. "Oh, listen!" Joy whispered. "I hear something!" "It's a car," said Clarence hopefully. And it was. It was John's car, with John in it, and the temper Joy had been thinking of tenderly was with him. He was evidently thoroughly angry, for he scarcely spoke, even when he found them. "See here, Hewitt," Clarence protested. "You aren't doing the thing at all properly. You should say, 'My own! At last I have found you!' instead of backing up the car with a short sentence like that." What John had said, as a matter of fact, was, "Get in the car. It's late." He did come to a little at Clarence's flippant reminder, and smiled reluctantly. "Well, you see, it was self-evident. I _had_ found you both. You oughtn't to have walked so far if you didn't know where you were going." "It is also self-evident that it is late," said Clarence stiffly, and, it must be confessed, a little sulkily. "Nevertheless, we're having a very pleasant time.... Is dinner over?" John, for no apparent reason, smiled frankly at this. "Not in the least," he said. "They are waiting dinner till the prodigals' return. My mother has had hers sent up to her, but Gail and your friend Tiddy are kindly keeping the rest of it hot." It is a quicker journey in a car than when you stroll leisurely along, discussing light opera and your disposition. They were surprised to find how near, comparatively, they were, to the village. "Joy, do you suppose I am invited to dinner?" asked Clarence in a stage whisper. "If it is not thus I shall probably starve by the roadside, because Gail sent her mother to a bridge-and-high-tea before she went, and the maids there had no orders about food. That's why I was prowling about the hospitable Hewitt mansion." Joy couldn't help smiling. "I think you must be," she said. But she didn't understand John's allusion to Tiddy. He was abjectly devoted to Gail, but it did seem that devotion had its limits, when it came to following her to somebody else's house. "What is Tiddy doing in these parts?" Clarence asked for her, as people so often do ask your questions for you if you only give them time. "Dinner-party, is it?" "Tiddy," said John dryly, "is making himself useful." "That is nothing at all new in Tiddy's life," said Gail's cousin. "People who dwell about Gail do. Am I to understand that he is chief cook and bottle-washer?" "You are," said John. They got out and went into the house, Joy feeling as mussy as only a girl can who has been away from home all day. She followed the curious-minded Clarence into the kitchen.