“Hello, Miss Mercer!” he said:  “Jump in, won’t you?  I’ll take you wherever you want to go.  I’ve got lots of time—­nothing in the world to do, and I’m lonely.”

“Why, thank you very much, Mr. Holmes,” said Eleanor, smiling at him.  “This is my new friend, Bessie King, Mr. Holmes.  Mr. Holmes is one of our family’s oldest and best friends.”

“Well, well, this is very nice!” he said.  “I’d better be careful, though, or I’ll have all the young fellows in town down on me, when they see an old codger like me driving two pretty young ladies around.  Where shall we go, eh?”

“If you’re really not in a hurry, Mr. Holmes,” said Eleanor, “I wish you would take us down town by the long way around.  I’d like Bessie to see the river and the Kent Bridge.”

“Splendid!” said Mr. Holmes.  “That’s fine!  You see, they say I’m a back number, now that I don’t know how to run my store any more.  I guess they’re right, too.  I just seem to be in the way when I go down there.  So I stay away as long as I can find anything else to do.”

Eleanor laughed, but Bessie somehow felt that the jovial words didn’t ring true.  There was a strange look in the eyes of their kindly host, and despite her attempts to convince herself that she was foolish, she didn’t like him.  But she enjoyed the ride thoroughly.  He took them out of the town, and then, skirting the suburbs by a beautiful road, approached the heart of the business section by a new road that Bessie had not seen before.  But then, though he had said, and, indeed, proved, that he was in no hurry, Mr. Holmes began to increase the speed of his car.

“He’s going very fast if he’s not in a hurry,” suggested Bessie, sure that the driver could not hear in the rush of the wind made by the car’s speed.

Eleanor laughed merrily.

“He always does everything in a hurry,” she said.  “This is the fastest car in town, and before automobiles got so popular, Mr. Holmes had the fastest horses.  He just likes to go quickly.  That’s why his business was so successful, they say.”

Just then the car stopped, and Holmes, laughing, turned to them.

“I heard that,” he said.  “After all, what’s the harm?  It would have taken you an hour to get down town if you’d walked all the way, wouldn’t it, Miss Eleanor?”

She nodded.

“All right, then, I’ll get you there as soon as that, and have time for a bit of a spin in the country, as well.  We’ll go pretty fast, so just put on these goggles, young ladies, and you’ll have no trouble getting specks in your eyes.  I’ll do the same.  I really intended to drive slowly today—­that’s why I haven’t got mine on.  But somehow, when I get a wheel between my hands, I can’t drive slowly; it isn’t in me, somehow!”

He handed them their goggles, and then put on his own, and changed his soft hat, which had two or three times threatened to blow off, for a cap that would stay on in any wind.  And, as he faced them, Bessie had all she could do to suppress a sharp cry of amazement, and she was more than thankful for the goggles that partly concealed her start of surprise and dismay.  For the sight of Holmes, thus equipped, had recalled something that seemed in a way, at least, to explain her feeling of distrust and dislike.