by Lady Turnour to mend Mr. Stokes's socks, he having made peace by offering to "give her a swagger dinner in town."
Bertie's cleverness was not confined to ingratiating himself with her ladyship. He contrived adroitly to damage the steering-gear by grazing a wall as he turned the Aigle into the hotel courtyard, and by this feat disposed of the chauffeur's evening, which was spent in hard work at the garage. Such dinner as Jack got, he ate there, in the shape of a furtive sandwich or two, otherwise we should not have been able to leave in the morning at the early hour suggested by Mr. Stokes.
Warned by the incidents of yesterday, Sir Samuel desired his chauffeur to take the wheel again from Nevers to Paris. But—no doubt with the view of keeping us apart, and devising new tortures for his enemy—Bertie elected to play Wolf to Jack's Spartan Boy, and sit beside him. This relegated me to the cage again, with back-massage from Sir Samuel's knees.
Before Fontainebleau, I found myself in a familiar land. As far as Montargis I had motored with the Milvaines more than once, conducted by Monsieur Charretier, in a great car which might have been mine if I had accepted it, not "with a pound of tea," but with two hundred pounds of millionaire. I knew the lovely valley of the Loing, and the forest which makes the world green and shadowy from Bourrau to Fontainebleau, a world where poetry and history clasp hands. I should have had plenty to say about it all to Jack, if we had been together, but I was still inside the car, and by this time Bertie had induced his stepfather to consent to his driving
