"fresh" repartee when he had started a
casual conversation with her when they chanced to be seat mates from
Holyoke on.

Casual conversations were apt to turn into casual flirtations with Ted
Holiday. Afterward he wasn't sure whether she had dared him or he had
dared her to plan the midnight joy ride which had so narrowly missed
ending in a tragedy. Anyway it had seemed a jolly lark at the time--a
test of the mettle and mother wit of both of them to "get away with it."

And she had looked good to him last night when he met her at the
appointed trysting place after "As You Like It." She had come out of the
shadows of the trees behind which she had been lurking, wearing a scarlet
tam-o'-shanter and a long dark cloak, her eyes shining like January
stars. He had liked her nerve in coming out like that to meet him alone
at midnight. He had liked the way she "sassed" him back and put him in
his place, when he had tried impudently enough to kiss her. He had liked
the way she laughed when he asked her if she was afraid to speed, on the
home stretch. It was her laugh that had spurred him on, intoxicated him,
made him send the car leaping faster and still faster, obeying his
reckless will.

Then the crash had come. It was indeed a miracle that they had not both
been killed. No thanks to the rash young driver that they had not been.
It would be many a day before Ted Holiday would forget that nightmare of
dread and remorse which took possession of him as he pulled himself to
his feet and went over to where the girl's motionless form lay on the
grass, her face dead white, the blood flowing from her forehead.

Never had he been so thankful for anything in his life as he was when he
saw her bright eyes snap open, and heard her unsteady little giggle as
she murmured, "My, but I thought I was dead, didn't you?"

Game to her fingertips she had been. Ted acknowledged that, even now that
the glamour had worn off. Never once had she whimpered over her injuries,
never hurled a single word of blame at him for the misadventure that had
come within a hair's breadth of being the last for them both.

"It wasn't a bit more your fault than mine," she had waived aside his
apologies. "And it was great while it lasted. I wouldn't have missed it
for anything, though I'm glad I'm not dead before I've had a chance to
really live. All I ask is that you won't tell a soul I was out with you.
Grandpa would think I was headed straight for purgatory if h