The "Heavenly Chariot" was Judy's name for the Bennetts' shining gray car. The Pendletons had one of their own, an elderly and dignified Daimler, but for some reason unfathomable by the younger members of the family, it was never allowed out at night, when it was most wanted. Millicent thought that Forbes, the old chauffeur and ex-coachman, required his evenings to himself, and as Forbes had never been known to object to this arrangement, it stood, and the family relied on taxis, or the underground.
So that Judy was feeling uncommonly luxurious close on eleven that night, when the beautiful gray nose of the Heavenly Chariot thrust its way through the fog that had shut London from the sky for three days past. She loved the movement, the mystery of the dark streets, the soft menace of the fog.
"This is the very essence of London," she thought.
They turned into Pall Mall, and she was sorry to think that the perfect motion would cease in
