"Learnt in three lessons!" proclaimed Archie, unable to resist the temptation to brag a little. (An automobile of his own, all paid for, and the One and Only beside him on its seat--who can blame the man?) "Only got it last week, and if there's a part of little old Lizzie I don't know about, it's because it isn't there, that's all! Of course I can't take my eye off the road yet--" (this as a family party narrowly escaped annihilation)--"but you won't mind my talking sort of over my shoulder?" "I won't mind your talking any way at all--so long as it's not about armadillos." Archie grinned. "Now you're joshing me!" "I never was more serious in my life. What's the subject this week?" But he declined to be drawn. "All that's just for social gatherings. People don't have really to converse out-of-doors, do they?--Say, what if we go out in the real country somewhere!--not parks, where there's always so many things around, but a good straight empty road, where I can step on her tail and let her rip--eh?" The idea seemed good to Joan. It was the sort of day when cities are an abomination, and the soul of the veriest urbanite yearns to follow a gipsy pateran. Once out of the complications of traffic, Archibald lost his caution, and stepped on her tail and let her rip. The song of the birds, the neigh of startled colts in the fields as they passed, the rush of the golden air itself, all were lost in the roar of the willing little engine. "Thirty-five, thirty-eight, forty-two--" chanted Archie with a proud eye on the speedometer. "Go to it, Lizzie! Good old girl!" Joan had no fear. Somehow the car seemed safe in his big, powerful hands--as safe as she was herself. Off came her hat, and the wind did its pleasure with her hair. Rushing along so close to the ground, dust in their faces, trees and meadows passing in long green streaks, she got quite a different sense of motion from any she had known before. It was a more personal thing, more of an individual effort, as if she and her companion were really flying like birds, with the little car for wings. "Oh, don't stop! It's glorious!" she cried as he suddenly slowed down. He explained, quietly, that her hair was blowing in his eyes. "What a nuisance!" She tucked the offending strand into place. "I--didn't mind," said Archibald, in a rather queer voice. Joan, with a glance at his face, decided that they would have to be turning back. But as she bade him good-by she said suddenly, "Teach me how to run Lizzie myself some day, will you, Archie?" "You mean you'll go out with me again?" he demanded, radiant. "Of course," promised Joan, reckless with speed and the Spring air. "Whenever you like!" Archibald tooled his Lizzie back to her shed with the air of Phoebus driving the chariot of the sun. He warbled aloud, he wore his hat on one ear, he presented a small darky, who helped him to groom and tend Lizzie, with a silver dollar.