Toby chatted with her soldier and I with mine, who was a mechanician at the flying field. It was a disappointment not to have him an aviator, though he admitted a mechanician’s was a far weightier responsibility. Before the war, he had been a professional racer, had come in second in a championship race between San Francisco and Los Angeles, and gave such good reasons why he hadn’t come in first that he seemed to have taken a mean advantage of the champion. “Sixty-three miles is about as fast as I’ve ever driven,” I said in an off-hand way. “Sixty-three? That’s not fast. When you get going ninety-five to a hundred, that’s something like driving.” “This car,” I explained, “won’t make more than fifty. At fifty she vibrates till she rocks from side to side.” He looked at the wheel hungrily. “Huh! I bet I could bring her up to seventy-five.” Stung, I put my foot on the gas, and the speedometer needle swung to the right. As we merged with the traffic of Houston, shell-holes were left behind us, and passing cars were taking advantage of a perfect concrete road. A Hudson with a Texas number passed us with a too insistent horn, the driver smiled scornfully and looked back, and his three children leaned out from the back to grin. And they were only going a miserable thirty. The near-champion looked impotently at the steering wheel, and in agonized tones commanded, “Step on it!” The Hudson showed signs of fight, and lured us through the traffic at a lively pace. My companion on the running board was dying of mortification. I knew how he itched to seize the wheel, and for his sake I redoubled my efforts. In a moment the impudent Hudson children ceased to leer from the back of their car, and were pretending to admire the scenery on the other side. Then suddenly the Hudson lost all interest in the race. “Turn down the side street,” yelled my passenger, frantically. I tried to turn, wondering, but the carburetor sputtered and died. I will say that it is almost a pleasure to be arrested in Texas. Two merry motor-cops smiled at us winsomely. There was sympathy, understanding and good fellowship in their manner,--no malice, yet firmness withal, which is the way I prefer to be handled by the police. As officers they had to do their duty. As gentlemen, they regretted it. Toby, chatting about aviation with the man on her running-board, was completely taken by surprise to hear “Ah’m sahry, lady, but we’ll jest have to ask you-all to come along with us.” What an embarrassing position for our passengers! They had accepted our hospitality, egged us on to unlawful speed, and landed us in the court-house,--with pay-day weeks behind. Their chagrin deepened as their efforts to free us unlawfully went for naught. Our indulgent captors could not have regretted it more if we had been their own sisters, but they made it clear we must follow them.