“I won’t get like that!” reiterated Teddie, looking for all the world like a second Artemisia confronting an army of embattled males. She stood there, as though expecting some retort from him. But he said nothing. He merely took out another cigarette, lighted it, and recovered his morning _Herald_ from the grass at his feet. This he proceeded to peruse with studied unconcern, quite ignoring the young Artemisia still glowering at him over the edge of it. Then he looked up, with the ghost of a yawn. “By the way, I saw the Commodore in town yesterday,” observed Teddie’s uncle as he leisurely turned a page. “He was telling me a queer thing about young West.” “Indeed!” said Teddie, without moving. “The Commodore was saying that Gerry’s going to marry that Rivers girl,” offhandedly announced the maculated old scoundrel in immaculate cricketer’s flannel. He waited behind his paper, for several seconds. Then he heard a mirthless little laugh. Then he heard the contemptuous ejaculation of “_That frump!_” And then he heard quick steps along the marble walk that bisected the Terrace. “Where are you going?” he demanded as he looked up to see Teddie making off with the stride of a Diana. But Teddie entirely ignored that question. Instead of answering that not unnatural interrogation she was calling sharply out to Watkins: “Tell Parrish I want my car. I want it _at once_!” And two minutes later, as the old Major folded up his paper and watched Teddie vanish down the West Drive leaving a scurry of gravel and a residuary cloud of dust above the shrubbery, he sighed audibly, and took out another cigarette, and sat deep in thought. CHAPTER FOURTEEN Teddie, as she swung into the open road and headed for the blue hills of Forgetfulness, which receded as she approached them, remembered that she was at least mistress of that ever-responsive piece of machinery on which she sat poised like a stormy petrel on the crest of a comber. It was hers to hasten and retard, to control and direct, as she wished. It was hers to curb into submission and harry into dust-trailing violation of the state road-laws. And as she went careening along the open highway, crouched frowningly over her mahogany wheel, she sought to ease the tumult in her perplexed young body by drinking up distance very much as disheartened men drink alcohol. She did her best to drug herself with speed, letting the air whip through the opened wind-shield and sting her clouded and untalcumed young face. When she caught sight of Luddy O’Brien, the traffic cop at the Valley Crossing, she dropped an eye to her speedometer and automatically slowed down. Quite automatically, too, she accosted that officer, after the long-established manner so disapproved of by her family, by raising her left hand to the level of her ear, holding the palm outward, and wigwagging her hunched fingers nervously up and down, very much as if she were twanging the strings of an invisible Irish harp.