tle white-clad
creature flitting past the door turned and brought into that quiet
spot of leafy shadow the dazzling quickness of her smile, her eyes,
her golden hair, he said to her nonchalantly: "Just in time to head
them off. Sylvia and your grandfather were being so high-brow I was
beginning to feel faint,"

Molly laughed flashingly. "Did Grandfather keep his end up? I bet he
couldn't!"

Arnold professed an entire ignorance of the relative status. "Oh, I
fell off so far back I don't know who got in first. Who _was_ this man
Capua, anyhow? I'm a graduate of Harvard University and I never heard
of him."

"I'm a graduate of Miss Braddon's Mountain School for Girls," said
Molly, "and _I_ think it's a river."

Mr. Sommerville groaned out, exaggerating a real qualm, "What my
mother would have said to such ignorance, prefaced by 'I bet!' from
the lips of a young lady!"

"Your mother," said Molly, "would be my great-grandmother!" She
disposed of him conclusively by this statement and went on: "And I'm
not a young lady. Nobody is nowadays."

"What _are_ you, if a mere grandfather may venture to inquire?" asked
Mr. Sommerville deferentially.

"I'm a _femme watt-man"_ said Molly, biting a large piece from a
sandwich.

Arnold explained to the others: "That's Parisian for a lady
motor-driver; some name!"

"Well, you won't be that, or anything else alive, if you go on driving
your car at the rate I saw it going past the house this morning,"
said her grandfather. He spoke with an assumption of grandfatherly
severity, but his eyes rested on her with a grandfather's adoration.

"Oh, I'd die if I went under thirty-five," observed Miss Sommerville
negligently.

"Why, Mr. Sommerville," Arnold backed up his generation. "You can't
call thirty-five per hour dangerous, not for a girl who can drive like
Molly."

"Oh, I'm as safe as if I were in a church," continued Molly. "I keep
my mind on it. If I ever climb a telegraph-pole you can be sure it'll
be because I wanted to. I never take my eye off the road, never once."

"How you must enjoy the landscape," commented her grandfather.

"Heavens! I don't drive a car to look at the landscape!" cried Molly,
highly amused at the idea, apparently quite new to her.

"Will you gratify the curiosity of the older generation once more, and
tell me what you _do_ drive a car for?" inquired old Mr. Sommerville,
looking fondly at the girl's lovely face, like a pink-flushed pearl.

"Why,