"Will you come?"

"Yes," he agreed. "But give a fellow a chance. Don't drag me into your
home looking like this. I'm not vain, but I'd feel more comfortable in
clean clothes. I shipped all my things into town. They should be in the
express office now. I'll come this afternoon or this evening, whichever
you say. Drop me off at the first carline."

"I'll do better than that," she declared. "I'll drive you downtown
myself."

"But it isn't necessary," he persisted. "I don't want to take up all
your time, and--"

"For the rest of this day," Sophie murmured, "I have absolutely nothing
to do but kill time. I get restless, and being out in the car cures that
feeling. Do you mind if I chauff you a few miles more or less? Don't be
ungallant. I love to drive."

"Oh, well."

Thompson mentally threw up his hands. In that gracious mood Sophie was
irresistible. He sank back in the thick, resilient upholstery and
resolved to take what the gods provided--to dance as it were, and reckon
with the piper when he presented his bill.

CHAPTER XVII

THE REPROOF COURTEOUS(?)

For the few minutes it took the red roadster to slip under the green
summits of Twin Peaks and by a maze of boulevards debouch at length upon
Valencia and so into the busy length of Market Street their talk ran to
commonplaces. Thompson placed himself unreservedly in Sophie's hands. He
had to reach an express office on lower Market, get his things, and
proceed thence to the house where he had roomed all winter. Since it
suited Miss Carr's book to convey him to the first point, he accepted
the gift of her company gladly. So in the fullness of time they came
into the downtown press of traffic, among which, he observed, Sophie
steered her machine like a veteran.

At Third and Market the traffic whistle blocked them with the front
wheels over the safety line that guided the flow of cross-street
pedestrians, and the point man, crabbed perhaps from a long trick amidst
that roaring maze of vehicles, motioned autocratically for her to back
up.

Sophie muttered impatiently under her breath and went into reverse.
Behind her the traffic was piling up, each machine stealing every inch
of vantage for the go-ahead signal, crowding up wheel to wheel, the nose
of one thrusting at the rear fender of the other. On one side of Sophie
rose the base of a safety station for street-car boarders. Between her
car and the curb a long-snouted gray touring-car was edging in. An