was, came away feeling a little dowdy and a good deal out
of date.

At that earlier period, however, it was still simple; the germ was
there, but the development of its possibilities had only begun. When
Mrs. McComas invited Mrs. Prince to drive out with her and see some
tennis, Mrs. Prince was quite ready to accept.

I do not know just what mode of locomotion they employed. It was in the
early days of the automobile and Johnny McComas was one of the first men
in town to have one. I recall, in fact, some of his initial experiences
with it. On a Sunday afternoon I encountered him in one of these still
relatively unstudied contraptions on a frequented driveway. Another man
was sitting beside him patiently. The conveyance was making no progress
at all. Fortunately it had stopped close enough to the curb not to
interfere with the progress of other and more familiar equipages.

"We're stuck," said Johnny, jovially, as he caught sight of me. "Ran for
three or four miles slick as a whistle--and look at us now!" It
entertained him--a kink in a new toy. And he enjoyed the interest of the
people collected about.

"You're gummed up, I expect," said I. In those days nobody knew much
about the new creature and its habits, and one man's guess was as good
as another's. Two or three bystanders eyed me deferentially, as a
probable expert.

"Likely enough," he agreed--and that made me an expert beyond doubt.
"But this will do for to-day. We've been here twenty minutes."

He had the car pushed to a near-by stable, amidst the mixed emotions of
the little crowd, and next day he had it hauled home.

"You were right," he said, when I met him out again in it, a week later.
"It _was_ gummed up, so to speak; but it's working like a charm to-day.
Get in and I'll take you a few miles. That other fellow got an awful
grouch."

It may have been by this machine, or by some more familiar mode of
locomotion, that the two women reached the country club and its tennis
tournament. Gertrude Prince strolled through its grounds and galleries
with the aloof and amused air of one touring through a foreign town--a
town never seen before and likely to be left behind altogether within an
hour or two. It was at once semi-smart and semi-simple. She took it
lightly, even condescendingly; and when Johnny McComas himself appeared
somewhat later and set them down at a little marble table near a
fountain-jet and offered cocktails as a preliminary to a variety of