"'Machine' doesn't strike me as exactly the word--in your case. As for the 'intelligence'--I suppose Townsend & Company are very exacting. Do you suppose they 'd take me on the force?"

"You!" It seemed to amuse her very much.

Brant looked nettled. He had asked the question in sport, but he did not like to be taken that way. "Look here, am I such a joke as that?"

"The notion of your working for anybody, even for yourself, is very interesting."

"You think I 'm not capable?"

"I think the mere thought of going to an office every morning at nine o'clock would be too much for you."

"You must have a pretty poor opinion of me."

"Not at all. But you have never needed to work, never expect to need to work, and have never shown the first sign of intending to work. Why shouldn't the idea of your working seem strange?"

"I might have said the same of you a few months ago." Brant was getting red.

"So you might. But I 'm a girl."

"Does my being a man--I'm twenty-four--make it a foregone conclusion that I should roll up my sleeves and tackle a shovel and pick, whether I need the money or not?"

Shirley surveyed him. "No, I don't think it does--_with you_."

The red which had begun to show above Brant's collar now spread toward his ears, extended his forehead, and finally suffused his entire face.

He broke out hotly: "Look here, you used not to be sharp-tongued like that. If your taking up this sort of thing is going to make you not mind how you cut your friends, it 's my opinion you 'd be better at your embroidery."

Shirley bit her lip with a mischievous desire to say something which would make the angry gleam in his eyes light up still more vividly. She and Brant had played together and quarreled and made up since their nursery days, and this retort, which she would have resented from anybody else, merely delighted her from Brant.

She liked to wake him up, and considered that hurting his feelings on the score of his idleness was both salutary and justifiable. Ever since she had returned she had been feeling more and more annoyed with him for seeming to settle down so unconcernedly to a life of absolute ease and the spending of his share of the estate left him by a father who had toiled a lifetime to get his property together.

But she did not intend to be led into a serious argument with him now and here, nor did she wish to make him like her less on account of her new method of employing her time. She liked him for many good points, and she was rather wiser than most girls in perceiving when she had said enough. So after an instant's silence, she asked, with a bright glance, disarming because unexpected, "Shall we call it even?"

"Did my shot about the embroidery hit?" Brant exulted.

"Hard. It doesn't matter that I don't know how to embroider."

"Not in the least. Yes, I 'll call it even, though I got the worst of it. I was mad enough to bite something a minute ago, but you always did have a way of making a chap double up his fists, and then open them again, feeling foolish. Oh, here comes Mrs. Hildreth. You don't want to go back to-night, do you?"

"I 'll wait till morning. But we must be off early. I would n't miss being on time for a week's salary."

"Before breakfast?"

"Of course--if they'll let us. We'll have breakfast at home; the early morning run will make us hungry."

"It certainly will. See here, we don't have to get anybody up to go in with us, do we?"

Shirley looked doubtful. "I 'm afraid we do."

"Then I 'd rather take you in to-night," said Brant, promptly. "We 'll fill up the car with chaperons, and you can sit in front with me. They 'll be tickled to go, in this moonlight. I 'll ask Mrs. Hildreth and Miss Armitage; they 'll discuss dressmakers all the way in and leave us in peace."

Shirley let him arrange it, personally much preferring to reach home that night and get up at the usual hour in the morning, with an interval between her pleasure-making and her work. The hour was not late, and Brant professed to be able to make incredibly quick time, so he had no difficulty in arranging his party.

There were many sallies at Shirley's expense as her friends saw her depart. Her devotion to business was considered a caprice, likely at any time to give way to more rational behaviour, and she was a.s.sured of an enthusiastic welcome back to the company of sane beings when her "craze" should be over. She went away smiling at the thought of how little they understood her, and with a sense of having at hand resources of contentment at which they could not even guess.

With an empty road ahead, and the moonlight making all things clear, Brant sent his car humming. In the rush of air caused by their flight, all four travellers stopped talking, and it was upon a silence hitherto disturbed only by the m.u.f.fled mechanism of the car that the startling _bang_ of an exploding tire woke the echoes.

"Confound the luck!" burst from the young man in the driver's seat, as he brought the machine to a standstill. "That means stop and repair right here. We can't run her in on her rim. We 're not half way."

Shirley looked about her. Ten rods away, its big barns looming against the sky, its white house showing clearly in the moonlight, lay the farm of Mr. Elihu Bell, the grandfather of her friends. Although it was after eleven o'clock, there were lights showing in windows which she knew belonged to the front room of the farm-house.

"Shall you need help?" she asked, as Brant threw open the box which held his repair kit. "The noise has brought somebody to the door over there.

It 's the Bell farm--my sister Jane's grandfather, you know."

"Is it? Then we'll pull over there into the yard, and you people can go inside, since they seem to be up. It may take me quite a while to get out of this sc.r.a.pe. I 'm not much of a mechanic, and I 've been lucky enough not to puncture many tires."

He got in again, and ran the car slowly over to the open gate of the Bell place. As he turned in, the two figures which had been standing in the doorway came out and crossed the yard.

Shirley recognized them both, one tall and slim, with the slight stoop and characteristic walk of age; the other also tall, but broad-shouldered and erect. She wondered what Peter Bell could be doing out here, calling on his grandfather at this late hour, and then remembered that Peter's time was so full by day that he must needs make his visits by night. She thought of the mortgage he had spoken of, and surmised that the visit, prolonged past the hour when farmhouses are usually dark and silent, was on business.

"Well, well!" called the kindly voice of the old man. "Broke down, have you? Anything we can do? Your lights are brighter than any we can furnish you."

Peter came close. "Will the ladies come into the house?" he asked. He could not see who they were.

Mrs. Hildreth and Miss Armitage accepted the offer, for the November air was not so mild as it had been during the day, and they had no great confidence in Brant's ability to repair his own machine.

Peter offered a helping hand. When the older ladies were out, he turned to the girl on the front seat. She sprang down, and stood still before him. She had pulled her gray veil closely about her face, and she spoke in a m.u.f.fled whisper: "Guess who I am."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "SHE SPRANG DOWN, AND STOOD STILL BEFORE HIM"]

Peter glanced toward Brant, who had now come around into the glare from his own headlights. Peter knew Brant, as anyone must who was included in the entertaining done in the Townsend house. But it had always been many leagues farther to Gay Street from the Hille home on the north side of Worthington Square than from that of Murray and Shirley Townsend on the south side.

"I'm afraid I can't guess," admitted Peter, who thought he knew that Shirley was at home that night, having noted a light in her window when, at nine o'clock, he had mounted his bicycle to make the trip to Grandfather Bell's. Her figure in the long coat and shrouding veil was not familiar to him, and the whisper had conveyed no note of Shirley's real tones.

"Then you shall never know," the sepulchral whisper a.s.sured him, and he found some difficulty in holding his hand from the desire forcibly to remove the provoking veil. The possibility that it was his sister Jane caused him to estimate sharply the height of the figure before him.

It was a little too tall for Jane, and Peter was about to hazard a guess that it was one of the least formidable of the girls of Shirley's set whom he occasionally met at her home, when Brant Hille called out, annoyance sounding in his voice:

"You 'd better go in with the others, Shirley--this is going to take time. I 've got to put on a new tire--worse luck!"

Peter's fingers grasped the veil and gently pulled it aside from the laughing face beneath, "No wonder you wanted to hide!" he jeered, under his breath. "A working-girl like you, off on midnight larks like this, with to-morrow ahead."

But there was a distinct hint of pleasure in his voice at the discovery of her here, thrown upon his hospitality. He led her away to the house, within whose open door the other ladies had disappeared.

"Grandmother has gone to bed long ago," he said, as they came up on the porch, "and I don't think I 'll disturb her. She 's deaf and won't hear, and she needs her sleep. But I can get you all something hot to drink, and something to eat, too, if there 's much delay."

Shirley presented him to Mrs. Hildreth and Miss Armitage, who were already making themselves at home in the low-ceiled, pleasant living-room which lay all across the front of the farm-house. A dying fire reddened the hearth, which Peter soon revived into a blaze. Then he went in search of refreshments. Thereafter, returning to the scene of the breakdown, he rendered Brant valuable a.s.sistance, proving handier at the process of replacing the injured tire than Brant himself. When they finally had done the work, and Brant pulled out his watch with a hand black with dirt and grease, he gave an exclamation of dismay.

"One A.M., by all that's unfortunate! Better let me take you back to Longacre, Shirley, and get you home comfortably in the morning. What difference does it make if you do miss part of a day?"