I laid out about a twenty-five mile spin, cut cutting Deering Avenue midway, and branching off where the Italians are working at the new trolley, toward Menlo, Hatcherly and the road through the woods.  We turned at the Trocadero, climbed the long hill, and took the river-drive home.  You know how steep it is, the river miles below and nothing but the sheerest wall on the other side.  But there is no finer road in Europe, and it’s straight enough to see everything ahead, so you are free to coast as fast as you please.  I let her out at the top, for knew my breaks had been taken up, and there were cotter pins in every bolt of the steering gear; and, as I said before, there was always plenty of room to pull up in if you happened to meet a team.  Well, off we went with a rush that made our ears sing, the little car humming like a top.

When we were more than two-thirds down and going like the wind I saw a nurse-girl near the bottom pushing a baby in a baby carriage and coming uphill, with two lithe tots in red dresses walking on either side of her.  They saw us the same moment we saw them and lined up against the side—­fiery sensibly, as I thought—­and it was all so plain and right that I held on without a thought of danger.  When I was about ten yards from them and allowing them an ample four feet to the good—­I mean from the steep side, where they stuck in a row like barnaeles—­what did the little idiots do but rush across the road like a covey of partridges, while the nurse-girl stayed where she was with the baby!  If ever a person’s blood ran cold it was mine.  There was no time, no room, no anything—­and the bubble going at forty miles an hour!  It seemed like a choice between their lives or our own.  But, thank God, I was game, and I just screamed out the one word “jump!” to Morty and turned the machine over the edge.  I must have jumped, too, though I have no recollection of it, for when I came to myself my head was lying on Morty’s knee and on looking about I saw we were still on the road.  The machine?  Oh, it was two hundred feet below, smashed to smithereens, and if we both hadn’t lit out like lightning—­

I wasn’t a bit hurt, only bruised and giddy, and Morty was throwing the baby’s milk in my face to revive me, while the baby looked on and roared with displeasure at its being wasted.  Morty wasn’t hurt, either, and if there were ever two people well out of a bad scrape it was he and I. He had been so frightened about me he was crying; and I guess his tears were like the recording angel’s, because they seemed to blot out all the old quarrel between us.  At least, when we got up and began to limp home it seemed to me I didn’t mind anything so long as he was close to me.  He was shameless enough to kiss me right before the nurse-girl, who was demanding our names and addresses and our blood—­and all I did was to kiss back.  I didn’t have any fight left, and for once he had everything his own way.  Of course, it didn’t last long—­it