May I help you up to the wheel of your ship? I infer that you intend
driving yourself."

"I'll have to, if I'm to get anywhere." A look of dismay overspread her
piquant face. "Oh, dear! I don't in the least understand this machinery.
I can't drive this kind of car."

"Glory be!" exclaimed Mr. Dyke. "I mean, that's too bad," he amended
gracefully. "Won't you let me take you where you want to go?"

"What'll become of your van, then? Besides, I haven't any idea where I
want to go."

"What! Are you, too, like myself, a wandering home-seeker on the face of
an overpopulated earth, Miss?"

The "Miss" surprised her. Why the sudden lapse on the part of this
extraordinary and self-confident young person into the terminology of
the servant class?

"Yes, I am," she admitted.

"A hundred thousand helpless babes in the wood," he announced
sonorously, "are wandering about, lost and homeless on this melancholy
and moving day of October 1st, waiting for the little robins to come and
bury them under the brown and withered leaves. Ain't it harrowing, Miss!
Personally I should prefer to have the last sad dirge sung over me by a
quail on toast, or maybe a Welsh rabbit. What time did you breakfast,
Miss? I had a ruined egg at six-fifteen."

The girl surrendered to helpless and bewildered laughter. "You ask the
most personal questions as if they were a matter of course."

"By way of impressing you with my sprightly and entertaining
individuality, so that you will appreciate the advantages to be derived
from my continued acquaintance, and grapple me to your soul with hooks
of steel, as Hamlet says. Or was it Harold Bell Wright? Do you care for
reading, Miss? I've got a neat little library inside, besides an
automatic piano and a patent ice-box.... By the way, Miss, is that
policeman doing setting-up exercises or motioning us to move on? _I_
think he is."

"But I can't move on," she said pathetically.

"Couldn't you work my van, Miss? It's quite simple."

She gave it a swift examination. "Yes," said she. "It's almost like my
own car."

"Then I'll lead, and you follow, Miss."

"But I can't--I don't know who--I don't _want_ your van. Where shall
we--"

"Go?" he supplied. "To jail, I judge, unless we go somewhere else and do
it _now_. Come on! We're off!"

Overborne by his insistence and further influenced by the scowl of the
approaching officer, she took the wheel. At the close of some involved
but triumphant maneuverings t