Arnold suddenly emitted a great puff of smoke and a great shout of “Help! help!  Molly to the rescue!” and when a little 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, I drive to see how fast I can go, of course,” explained Molly.  “The fun of it is to watch the road eaten up.”

“It is fascinating,” Sylvia gave the other girl an unexpected reinforcement.  “I’ve driven with Molly, and I’ve been actually hypnotized seeing the road vanish under the wheels.”