[Illustration]

[Illustration:  “SOMETIMES JACK DROVE, WITH MOLLY BESIDE HIM".]

CHAPTER III

My Lesson

    “The broad road that stretches.” 
                    —­R.L.  STEVENSON.

Forty-eight hours later we drove out of Havre, bound for Paris and Lucerne, where I was to “pick up” that mule, and become a lone wanderer on the face of the earth.  Gotteland had seen to the shipping of the car from Southampton, while we spent a day on the crowded sands of Trouville, where I was so lucky as to meet no one I knew.

It was only now, Winston said, that I should realise to the full the joys of motoring, impossible to taste under present conditions in England.  Our way was to lie along the Seine to Paris, and Jack recalled to us Napoleon’s saying that “Paris, Rouen, and Havre form only one city, of which the Seine is the highway.”

Last year, these two had seen the country of the Loire together, under curious and romantic conditions, and now Molly was to be shown another great river in France.  We changed places in the car, like players in the old game of “stage coach.”  Sometimes Molly had the reins, and I the seat of honour by her side.  Sometimes Jack drove, with Molly beside him, I in the tonneau; then I knew that they were perfectly happy, though Gotteland and I could hear every word they said, and their talk was generally of what we passed by the way, occasionally interspersed by a “Do you remember?”

Now, if there is an insufferable companion under the sun, it is the average “well-informed person” who continually dins into your ears things you were born knowing.  This I resent, for I flatter myself that I was born knowing a good many exceptionally interesting and exciting things which can’t be learned by studying history, geography, or even Tit-Bits.  Jack Winston, however, though he has actually taken the trouble to house in his memory an enormous number of facts,—­“those brute beasts of the language,”—­has so tamed and idealised the creatures as to make them not only tolerable but attractive.  I can even hear him tell things which I myself don’t know or have forgotten, without instantly wishing to throw a jug of water at his good-looking head; indeed, I egg him on and have been tempted to jot down an item of information on my shirt cuff, with a view of fixing it in my mind, and eventually getting it off as my own.

Whenever Molly or I admired any object, natural or artificial, it seemed that Jack knew all about it.  She showed a flattering interest in everything he said, and, fired by her compliments, he suddenly exclaimed:  “Look here, Molly, suppose we don’t hurry on, the way we’ve been planning to do?  Last year we had that wonderful chain of feudal chateaux in Touraine, to show us what kingly and noble life was in dim old days.  Now, all along the Seine and near it, we shall have some splendid churches instead of castles.  We can hold a revel, almost an orgie, of magnificent ecclesiastical architecture if we like to spend the time.  I’ve got Ferguson’s book and Parker’s, anyhow, and why shouldn’t we run off the beaten track——­”