"Was that what you were doing," she asked, alluding to some small item
of the operating, "when you stopped by the side of the road, Sunday
night, when Miss Lydia was with you?"
He looked his astonishment.
"You were right under my window when you stopped," Johnnie explained to
him. "I watched you-all when you started away. I was sure you
would beat."
"We did," Stoddard assured her. "But we came near missing it. That
connection Buckheath put in for me the evening you were with him on the
Ridge worked loose. But I discovered the trouble in time to fix it."
Remembrance of that evening, and of the swift flight of the motors
through the dusk moonlight, made Johnnie wonder at herself and her
present position. She was roused by Stoddard's voice asking:
"Are you interested in machinery?"
"I love it," returned Johnnie sincerely. "I never did get enough of
tinkerin' around machines. If I was ever so fortunate as to own a
sewing machine I could take it all apart and clean it and put it
together again. I did that to the minister's wife's sewing machine
down at Bledsoe when it got out of order. She said I knew more about
it than the man that sold it to her."
"Would you like to run the car?" came the next query.
Would she like to! The countenance of simple rapture that she turned to
him was reply sufficient.
"Well, look at my hands here on the steering-wheel.
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