Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905

“Is that thing yonder green?”

“There’s only one person in it, and – and he’s getting out now. It’s stopped.”

“Anything more?”

“Oh!” cried Lucy, and now it was hers to stand, “I think – ”

“Indeed!” remarked Miss Herron. “I fancied I saw that yellow head of his.”

“The workings of Providence!” Lucy sighed.

“How perfectly absurd! Don’t be irreverent, miss.”

As they approached the machine, young Fraser was quite invisible; but when at last Miss Herron had coaxed her horses up to it, and made them stand, he crawled out from beneath it somewhere, red-faced, dusty and with black grease on his hands.

“The penalty of recklessness!” observed the old lady, surveying the boy as though he was inanimate stone. “Broken down.”

“How d’ye do, Miss Herron?” said Fraser, apparently much embarrassed. “Lucy – ”

“Is that machine really broken?” The joyful hope in Miss Agatha’s voice was quite unconcealed. “Smashed?”

“There’s something wrong, certainly,” the boy confessed, ruefully. His regard sought Lucy’s. “But just what’s amiss I can’t see.”

The old lady shook her head warningly. Some outward manifestation she had to make in order to conceal the joy which, like a warm cordial, penetrated every fiber of her being as a certain plan shaped itself in her mind. This was the automobile which had frightened her horses and set her nerves twittering; and now it reposed by the roadside helpless. This was the reckless, handsome boy who had set her guests laughing on an occasion requiring a measure of decorum, since the bishop honored her house with his presence; who now, with every appearance of impotent anger, was tinkering with the vitals of a hot engine, dirty and perspiring. Miss Herron admired the idea which grew before her imagination as she would have admired a beautiful, unfolding flower.

“It ought to go now,” the boy announced, after some further bungling examination. What his testing and poking was supposed to accomplish did not appear. He spoke with an odd ruefulness, and seemed to try to deepen the impression his tone conveyed by another look at Lucy eloquent of regret.

“Try it,” said Miss Herron.

The boy threw over the balance wheel; there came forth a clank and some faint clicks from the engine’s interior; then cold silence settled upon it again.

“No go,” reported Archibald, and proceeded to explain what by rights should have come to pass. “But none of these engines are perfected,” he added.

“So there you must – remain? Two miles from any assistance?”

“Yes, Miss Herron.”

“I rather question the willingness of any of our Barham folk to aid a shipwrecked automobile. You drive them so heedlessly, young gentleman. I confess,” she continued, judiciously, “that I rather enjoy your plight.”

The boy grinned delightfully. “So do I. It isn’t often” – how express the light mockery that danced on his lips! – “that my accidents are so charmingly compensated as this is.”

“I am quite serious, Mr. Fraser.”

“I am equally so, Miss Herron.”

A moment they regarded one another in silence. “I am inclined to offer you some assistance, I think,” the old lady announced, deliberately. “Merely out of common humanity. I have read that the drivers of automobiles often depend on friendly or highly paid wagoners to – to tow them. Now – ”

Archibald drowned the rest in thankful protestations. And —

“It would be awfully kind of you, Cousin Agatha,” said little Lucy, suddenly finding her voice. “I’m sure that Archie – ”

“Eh?”

“It would be very nice indeed,” the child contrived to say, and tried to look unconscious.

“If you could help me a little,” explained Archibald, and his own cheeks flamed, though his eyes faltered not a bit. “The break isn’t very serious, I guess.”

A second time Miss Herron considered in silence. She turned deliberately and looked at Lucy, who returned her questioning glance with a stare of babylike innocence; her gray eyes interrogated the boy.

“If you can assure me that your machine can’t go,” said Miss Herron, “I’ll tow you.”

For a brief second Archibald hesitated. Then he fumbled among the levers; raised the hood again; returned to the driver’s seat, and fingered at something the ladies could not see. “She can’t be moved,” the boy reported.

From the fence along the roadside a loosened rail was wrenched; an honest cow, picketed at pasture, had her tether shortened a dozen feet in two strokes of the boy’s knife. In five minutes more, amid many warnings from Miss Herron against scratching the varnish, one end of the rail was made fast to the rear axle of the carriage, and the other to the automobile.

“Now jump in,” ordered Lucy, radiant with smiles; and she pointed to the back seat.

“Mr. Fraser,” her cousin amended, calmly, “will continue in his automobile. To – to steer, if necessary.”

“But – ”

“I should prefer it, if you please.” The horses strained forward, the wheels turned; the triumphal procession was under way. “My dear,” said Miss Herron, “will you be good enough to hold your parasol over me? The sun is very uncomfortable.”

All the way home, the length of Barham Street, where the people stared and laughed, young Fraser repeated all the maledictions he could remember or invent. For the dust choked him, and the view of Lucy’s back as she sat holding the parasol over her cousin did not cheer.

“I’ll get even – oh, more than even! – with you, dear lady,” he promised, releasing his tiller to shake his fist at Miss Herron’s unconscious and unbending figure, “if it takes all summer. I wonder if she could have guessed. And it was planned so perfectly.”

Barham laughed over the story, laughed again when at the Richmonds’ dance Lucy came back into the glare of the lights with the Fraser boy, dazzled and bright-cheeked, after half an hour’s absence in the darkness of the great garden. And how many of the gossips would have given their ears to have heard the long talk between Miss Agatha and Lucy’s father on the night of his arrival? So the slow summer drifted by.

If the Revolutionary Daughters had not arranged their September meeting on the day that a freight wreck made the trains from Barham westward very late and irregular; if Miss Herron had not been waiting a fretful half hour in the dusty station for the means of reaching the meeting before it was over, when Archie Fraser drove his car thither in a search for an express package, the latter part of this story would have been very different. But as the boy stopped his panting, throbbing machine at the edge of the platform, Miss Herron looked out the window.

“I am waiting for a train,” she remarked, on the heels of her stiff little greeting, “for Oldport.”

Archie glanced at the old lady’s delicate dress and at the badge of gold and enamel she wore on her breast. “The R. D.’s?” he asked, respectfully.

“Exactly. I am one of the charter members, as you probably are aware. And to miss the meeting is distinctly vexatious.”

“I’m so sorry.” He turned to the station agent. “How late’s the train?”

“Half an hour or so. She won’t make up much comin’ this far. And she’s got to let the express pass her.”

Out by the platform the car murmured its steady, quiet song of power, and quivered with its singing. Archibald started, stung by a sudden hope. If only —

“That will bring you to Oldport very late, I’m afraid,” he ventured, feeling his way toward a compassing of his plan. The express package could wait. “I’m very sorry. I wish – ” Here he broke off his speech to gaze pensively at the automobile.

“It’s very annoying,” said Miss Herron.

The station agent winced, as though she had laid a lash across his shoulders, and in his awkward fashion endeavored to apologize for his road’s remissness. Like a tradesman reproved by his best customer, he promised Miss Herron that “it shouldn’t happen again.” It was quite in keeping with her character that she was graciously pleased to accept the man’s excuses. And then the agent, fired into an expansive cheerfulness by her kindness, said that which won him the mysterious present he received the following Christmas.