The Princess Passes

								

"I suppose muleteers have dispositions," I reflected aloud.
"Mules have. I've met them in America. But if you think my idea a
bright one, reward it by going with Jack and me as far as Lucerne.
There you can pick up your mule and your mule-man."
"'A picker-up of unconsidered trifles,'" I quoted dreamily. "Well, if
you and Jack are willing to tool me out on your motor car as far as
Lucerne, I should be an ungrateful brute to refuse. But the difficulty
is, I want to turn a sulky back on my kind at once, while you two----"
"We're starting on the first," said Jack.
"What! No Cowes?"
"We wouldn't give a day on the car for a cycle of Cowes."
And so the plan of my consolation tour was settled, in the supreme
court beyond which there is no appeal. But man can do no more than
propose; and woman--even American woman--cannot invariably "dispose"
to the extent of remaking the whole world of mules and men according
to her whim.
CHAPTER II
Mercédès to the Rescue



     "What is more intellectually exhilarating to the mind, and even

     to the senses, than . . . looking down the vista of some great

     road . . . and to wonder through what strange places, by what

     towns and castles, by what rivers and streams, by what mountains

     and valleys it will take him ere he reaches his destination?"--The

     Spectator.

That Locker should have come in at the moment when I was trying on my
new automobile get-up was more than a pin-prick to my already ruffled
sensibilities--it was a knife-thrust.
"What on earth are you laughing at, man?" I demanded, whipping off the
goggles that made me look like a senile owl, and facing him angrily,
as he had a sudden need to cover his mouth with a decorous palm.
"I beg pardon, me lord," he said. "It was coming on you sudden in them
things. I never thought to see you, me lord, in hotomobeel
clothes--you who always was so down on the 'orrid machines."
"Well, help me out of them," I answered, feeling the justice of
Locker's implied rebuke. I twisted my wrists free of the elastic
wind-cuffs, and shed the unpleasantly heavy coat that Winston had
insisted I should buy.
"And you such a friend of the 'orse too, me lord," added Locker, aware
that he had me at a disadvantage.
I winced, and felt the need of self-justification. "You're right," I
said. "I never thought I should come to it. But all men fall sooner or
later, and I have held out longer than most. Don't be afraid, though,
that I am going to have a machine of my own: I haven't quite sunk to
that; if everybody else I know has. I'm only going across France on
Mr. Winston's car. He has a new one--the latest make. He tells me that
when he 'lets her out' she does seventy an hour."
"Wot--miles, me lord?" Locker almost dropped the coat of which he had
disencumbered me.
"Kilometres. It's the speed of a good quick train."
It was strange; but until the night of that hateful dinner at the