Tommy considered within himself for a moment or two, then broke into his boyish laugh. “I’m an ungrateful pig, and I’ll follow you all over the world. Dear old Clementina,” he added, more seriously, putting his hand on her shoulder, “forgive me.” Clementina gently removed his hand. She preferred the grip on the wrists that hurt. But, mollified, she forgave him. So in a few days they started on their travels. * * * * * The thirty-five horse-power car whirled them, a happy pair, through the heart of summer. Above the blue sky blazed, and beneath the white road gleamed a shivering streak. The exhilarating wind of their motion filled their lungs and set their tired pulses throbbing. Now and then, for miles, the great plane trees on each side of the way formed the never-ending nave of an infinite cathedral, the roof a miracle of green tracery. Through quiet, sun-baked villages they passed, at a snail’s pace, hooting children and dogs from before their path—and because they proceeded slowly and Tommy was goodly to look upon, the women smiled from their doorways, or from the running laundry stream where they knelt and beat the wet clothes, or from the fountain in the cool, flagged little square jutting out like a tiny transept from the aisle of the street. Babies stared stolidly. Here and there a bunch of little girls, their hair tied in demure pigtails, the blue sarrau over their loud check frocks; would laugh and whisper, and one more daring than the rest would wave an audacious hand, and when Tommy blew her a kiss from his fingers there came the little slut’s gracious response, amid mirth and delight unspeakable. Men would look up from their dusty, bare, uneven bowling-alley beneath the trees and watch them as they went by. An automobile, in spite of its frequency, is always an event in a French village. If it races mercilessly through; there is reasonable opportunity to curse which always gladdens the heart of man. If it proceeds slowly and shows deference to the inhabitants, it is an event rare enough to command their admiration. Instead of shutting their eyes against a sort of hell-chariot in a whirlwind; they can observe the gracefully built car and its stranger though human occupants, which is something deserving a note in the record of an eventless day. If they stopped and quitted the car so as to glance at leisure at old church or quaint fountain—and in many an out-of-the-way village in France the water of the community gushes forth from a beautiful work of art—all the idlers of the sunny place clustered round the car, while the British chauffeur stood by the radiator, impeccably vestured and unembarrassed as a Fate. At noon came the break for déjeuner; preferably in some little world-forgotten townlet, where, after the hors-d’œuvre, omelette, cutlet, chicken, and fruit—and where is the sad, plague-stricken hamlet of France that cannot, in the twinkling of an eye, provide such a meal