Up and up mounted our road, cresting green billows of rolling mountain land.  We were running towards the boundary of Savoie, into Dauphine, a country which I had never seen.  The Boy and I had talked of entering it together and visiting its Seven Marvels, the very possession of which made it seem in our eyes alluringly mediaeval.  Had he been my companion still, we would have been travelling some hidden side-path, where doubtless Joseph and Innocentina, chaperoned by les animaux, were happily straying at this moment.  I could almost hear the donkey-girl’s mechanically constant, warning cry, “Fanny-anny, Fanny-anny!  Souris-ouris!” like a low undertone of accompaniment to the thrum of the motor.

The fancied sound smote me with homesickness, and to coax my mind from the disappointment which still rankled, I asked Jack when he would let me try my hand at driving.

“Not here,” said he with a smile, which was instantly explained by an abrupt plunge from the top of a long hill down into a cutting between lichen-scaled rocks, tracing with our “pneus” as we went a series of giddy zig-zags.  We had hardly twisted one way when lo! the time had come to twist in the opposite direction, and nowhere had we a radius of more than twenty yards in which to perform our tricks.

“I couldn’t have done that as well as you did it, I confess,” said I, with becoming modesty.

“It’s easy enough when you’ve got the knack,” replied the “Lightning Conductor.”

“So, no doubt, is reeling, writhing, and fainting in coils.  Motoring down these serpentine hills is like hurling yourself into space, and trusting to Providence.”

“So is all of life,” said Jack.  “A timid man might say the same of getting out of bed in the morning.”

“Even I can do the trick,” cut in Molly, who was taking a temporary interest in our affairs again.  “At least, I can this year, now that chickens are better than they used to be.”

“They are looking nice and fat this summer” I judicially remarked.

“I don’t mean that,” explained Molly.  “But they are more sensible.  Last year, before Jack and I were married, chickens were so bad that I used to dream of nothing else in my sleep.  I had chicken nightmares.  The absurd creatures never would realise when they were well off, but even in the midst of laying a most important egg on one side of the road, our automobile had only to come whizzing along to convince them that salvation depended on getting across to the other.  This year they seem to have formed a sort of Chicken Club, a league of defence against motors, and to have started a propaganda.”

My imagination tricked me, or this theory of Molly’s evoked a faint sound of stifled mirth in the heart of the mysterious mushroom.  In haste I turned away, lest I should be suspected of regarding it, and Jack began to pump my memory mercilessly for what it might retain of his driving lessons.  Luckily, I had forgotten nothing, and I was able to demonstrate my knowledge by pointing to the various parts of the machine with each glib reference I made.