“Not at all. I am most interested really. I should make the cabbage your hero, and the onion your heroïne, then she can weep on his breast.” They swerved violently, and with a little gasp she added, “All the same, I’ve no desire to weep on the highway underneath a motor-car. What _are_ you doing?” “I don’t know. The steering-wheel seems a bit odd.” They stopped to examine the wheel, and almost immediately, out of the gathering darkness behind shot another car, hooting violently to them to get out of the way. Unable to stop the oncoming car in time, Dick tried to move aside, failed, and in less than a minute the newcomer, in spite of brakes swiftly adjusted, crashed into them, smashing their lamp, and badly damaging the back near-side wheel of the car. “Well, I’m blowed!” said Dick, “that’s the only moment in the whole day you shouldn’t have been on that particular square yard of the entire globe. Any other moment, I could either have moved aside or stopped you in time.” The occupant of the other car, who was driving alone, sprang out and came briskly forward. “What the devil!...” he began, then noticed the lady, and stopped short. “It was certainly the devil,” said Dick, ruefully examining his battered wheel, and “I always thought he was credited with the deceny to look after his own. How have you fared?” “Well, he seems to have looked after me all right,” in a cheery voice; “there’s nothing that will prevent my going on to town. But if you will pardon my curiosity, why take root in the middle of the road and ask for trouble?” Hal’s smile suddenly flashed out in the lamp-light irresistibly. “It’s a new theory about vegetables being wiser than mankind, but of course we took root too soon.” A pair of grey eyes looked quizzically at her in the darkness, discerning only the gleam of a white face in a close-fitting bonnet, and the flash of white, even teeth. “The blasted steering wheel wouldn’t act,” said Dick. “We had just that second slowed down to examine it. You might have come along here to all eternity and not have been as inopportune.” “You take it very well.” The big-coated apparition, in motor-cap with the ear-flaps down, and motor-goggles, and the suggestion of a rotundity about the centre, was not at all engaging to look at, but he had a charming voice. “I’m taking it so ill that I daren’t express myself out loud,” said Hal. “What in the world are we to do? Is there a train anywhere near?” “I’m afraid not, but there is a decent enough inn close by.” “An inn isn’t much use to me.” She paused, then added solemnly: “I’ve got a strait-laced brother.” Hal’s voice was rather deep and rich for a woman, and it had a dangerous allurement in the darkness. The stranger took off his goggles and tried again to see her face, while Dick took a minute stock of his damage. “Well,” he suggested, a little daringly, “if he is able to chaperone you at the inn himself?—”