stop there!"

But I didn't want to. For one thing, we were a half-block away, and I
had badly coasted a towel supply wagon and scattered the wares of a
push-cart across three sidewalks.

My cap went flying as we skidded a corner, and I was devilish glad, for
the inertia threw Frances' head almost against mine and I felt the
tickling brush of a little hair wisp as it swept my nose.

Her eyes were dancing with excitement. She looked back, waving her hand
at the figure of O'Keefe trotting from around the corner, and her
laughter pealed joyously, deliciously in my ear.

"Oh, I think American men are great--are _wonderful_!" she cried,
striking her little hands together. "Especially Harvard men--and
especially--" She stopped with the faintest catch.

"By Jove!" I cried. "Do you _mean_ it?"

And for the briefest instant the hands were three; but her scream
brought me back to earth just in time to save the lives of a man and a
boy. Devilish ungrateful, too, for I could see the man, three blocks
behind, and still shaking his fist. The way with these pedestrians!

At Fifty-ninth Street we caromed with a hansom trotting too leisurely
across the plaza, and I listened for nearly a block to the remarks of a
bicycle cop before he dropped behind. What dashed me not a little was
Billings' indifference to the record I was making for his car--didn't
seem to care a jolly hang.

The frump was still hanging on him in a way to make you sick, and cooing
and going on in a nervous, half-hysterical way I never would have
thought her able to chirp up to. And Billings was holding her hand!

"Hello!" I called to him, just after we clipped Yonkers.

He looked up at me, smiling and nodding.

"Feel all right now, old man?" I inquired cheerily.

Billings looked at me hard, and then, dash it, he _winked_! And I began
to wonder, by Jove, if it was just plain drunk.

CHAPTER XXII

MY DARLING IS SLANDERED

Three miles south of Irvington, Billings jumped wildly in the air and
yelled for me to stop.

"A _coleopteran_!" he shrieked excitedly as I throttled down. "A
_coleopteran_ struck me in the eye--one of the _hydrophilidae_ family!"

And hurling aside rugs and blankets, he twisted open the door and in a
moment was in the road running back. It was then I went back to the
crazy theory, for it was an open stretch of road and there wasn't a soul
in sight. But it was so funny to see his fat figure waddling along there
in the pajamas