s; our fat rubber tyres were bouncing over the stones like
baseballs, and I'd never been so uncomfortable nor so perfectly happy in
my life. I wished I were a cat, so that I could purr, for purring has
always struck me as the most thorough way of expressing satisfaction.
When other people are in automobiles, and you are walking or jogging
past with a pony, you glare and think what insufferable vehicles they
are; but when you're spinning, or even jolting, along in one of them
yourself, then you know that there's nothing else in the world as well
worth doing. I made a remark like that to Mr. Barrymore, and he gave me
such a friendly, appreciative look as he said, "Have you discovered all
this already?" that I decided at once to eat my heart out with a vain
love for him.

I haven't been really in love before since I was ten; so the sensation
was quite exciting, like picking up a lovely jewel on the street, which
you aren't sure won't be claimed by somebody else. I was trying to think
what else I could say to fascinate him when the car lost its breath
again, and--"r-r-retch" went in another speed.

"It's our 'first and last,'" said Mr. Barrymore. "Good old girl, she's
going to do it all right, though there's many a twenty-four horse-power
car that wouldn't rise to it. By Jove, this is a road--and a half. I
believe, Ralph, that you and I had better jump off and ease her a bit."

Mamma squeaked, and begged our chauffeur not to leave us to go up by
ourselves, or we should be over the awful precipice in an instant. But
Mr. Barrymore explained that he wasn't deserting the ship; and he walked
quickly along by the side of the car, through the bed of sharp stones,
keeping his hand always on the steering-wheel like a pilot guiding a
vessel among hidden rocks.

Maida would have been out too, in a flash, if Mr. Barrymore had let her,
but he told us all to sit still, so we did, happy (judging the others by
myself) in obeying him.

I hadn't supposed there could be such a road as
this. If one hadn't had hot and cold creeps in one's toes for fear the
"good old girl" would slide back down hill and vault into space with us
in her lap, one would have been struck dumb with admiration of its
magnificence. As a matter of fact, we were all three dumb as mutes, but
it wasn't only admiration that paralysed my tongue or Mamma's, I know,
whatever caused the phenomenon with Maida, who has no future worth
clinging to.

As we toiled up, in spite