“Also an old friend, and almost the dearest I have.  I’m very happy to be near her.  Dr. Leaver, will you tell me what time it is, please?  I have a dreadful suspicion that I shall be very late.”

As he drew out his watch a voice was heard from the other side of a clump of undergrowth, calling crisply: 

“All right, Jack, we’re off.  One more call before luncheon, and it’s blamed late, so get busy.”

“In a minute,” Leaver called back, smiling, as he showed Charlotte his watch’s dial.

Red Pepper Burns looked over the bushes, discerning in his friend’s tone an intention of delay, and inclined to be still more peremptory with him about it.  Discovering now what looked like an interesting situation, he came forward, bareheaded, his frown of impatience turning to a smile of greeting.

“What luck, to find a dryad in the woods!” he cried.  “Did this gentleman invade your domain?”

“Not at all.  I invaded his most unexpectedly.  I was following a lane, intending to turn back at any moment, when it ran away under a fence and treacherously led me into trouble.”

“Call it trouble, do you, meeting your friends in the woods?  That’s always the way!  Call a woman luck, and she calls you trouble!  Let me tell you, Miss Charlotte, it’s luck for you, meeting us, for we can give you a lift of a mile down the road.  We have to turn off there, but you’ll be less late for a luncheon that’s probably already cold than you would be after walking the whole distance.  You won’t refuse?  You mustn’t, for I expect it’s my only chance to get John Stone Leaver of Baltimore started.  Otherwise he’ll stand here till mid-afternoon, showing you his watch and pointing out to you the beauties of this noisy brook.”

“Thank you, Dr. Burns, but you can’t very well take me in a car built for two.”

“Can’t I?  The car has frequently carried half a dozen, judiciously distributed over the running-boards, to the imminent peril of the tires and springs.  We’ll put Dr. Leaver on the running-board.  It will hurt neither his clothes nor his dignity, and if it does he can get off and walk.”

He led the way.  If she could have done so Charlotte would gladly have turned and run away.  But there are people from whom one cannot easily run away, and Red Pepper Burns was one of them.  With all his powers of discernment, he had no possible notion that the two who followed him were not eager to accept this arrangement.  They looked well together, too, he had observed as he neared them—­exceedingly well.  He was sure he was doing them a favour in keeping them together as long as possible.

In point of actual distance he certainly succeeded literally in keeping them extremely near together, during the few minutes it took to get out of a winding wood-road to the main highway, and to drive at a stimulating pace a mile down that road.  When Leaver took his place upon the running-board he was unavoidably close to Charlotte’s knee, and his head was within reach of her hand.  His hand, grasping the only available hold with which to keep himself in place, as Burns let the car go at high speed, was close under her eyes.