We had not wasted five minutes, and now we sprang forward at a good speed for Carcassonne.
"What will happen next," I said, answering Miss Randolph's question, "may be this. If the peasants are angry enough to take the trouble and risk, all they have to do is to go to the police-station in the nearest village and give information against us, when a wire with a description of us and the car will raise the whole country so that we shall not be safe anywhere."
"Oh, my gracious!" the poor child exclaimed. "What are we to do? Aunt Mary and I have other hats and jackets and things in our car-luggage. Couldn't we change, so as to look quite different, and buy a lot of of—Aspinall, or something in the next village before they've had time to give the alarm, and paint the poor car a bright scarlet? Then we should get through and no one would know."
I couldn't help laughing, though really her suggestion wasn't so fantastic as it may sound, for I know a man who did that very trick in somewhat similar circumstances; but her earnestness combined with the childlike guile on her face was comic.
"It would be too long a job to paint the car before we could be spotted," I said. "I think we must just hope for the best, and show a bold face. I shouldn't be surprised if we'd get through all right somehow. Perhaps, if there was much money in your aunt's purse, miss, the peasants would prefer keeping their mouths shut and sticking to that than mixing themselves up with the police and perhaps losing what they might have had, like the dog with his meat in the fable."
