He stared after a passing sedan driven by a uniformed chauffeur, one
half the rear seat occupied by a fat, complacent woman, the other half
of the ten-inch upholstery given over to an equally fat and complacent
bulldog. And while he reflected in some little amusement at the
circumstance which gave a pampered animal the seat of honor in a
six-thousand-dollar car and sent an able-bodied young man trudging down
the road in the heat and the dust, another machine came humming up from
the south.
It was a red car, crowding the state limit for speed, and it swept down
on Thompson with a subdued purr like a great cat before a fire. When it
was almost abreast of him there burst from it a crack like the report of
a shotgun. There was just a perceptible wabble of the machine. Its hot
pace slackened abruptly. It rolled past and came to a stop beside the
road fifty yards along--a massive brute of a red roadster driven by a
slim girl in a pongee suit, a girl whose bare head was bound about with
heavy braids of corn-yellow hair.
Thompson half rose--then sank back in momentary indecision. Perhaps it
were wiser to let sleeping dogs lie. Then he smiled at the incongruity
of that proverb applied to Sophie Carr.
He sat watching the machine for a minute. The halting of its burst of
speed was no mystery to Thompson. Miss Carr proceeded with calm
deliberation. She first resurrected a Panama hat from somewhere in the
seat beside her and pinned it atop of her head. Then she got out, walked
around to the front wheel, poked it tentatively once or twice, and
proceeded about the business of getting out a jack and a toolkit.
By the time Thompson decided that in common decency he should offer to
lend a hand and thus was moved to rise and approach the disabled car she
had the jack under the front axle and was applying a brace wrench to the
rim bolts. But the rim bolts that hold on a five-inch tire are not
designed to unscrew too easily. Sophie had started one with an earnest
tug and was twisting stoutly at the second when he reached her. He knew
by the impersonal glance she gave him that he was to her merely a casual
stranger.
"May I help you?" he said politely. "A big tire is rather hard to
handle."
Sophie bestowed another level look upon him as she straightened up from
her task. A puzzled expression showed briefly in her gray eyes. But she
handed him the wrench without parley.
"Thanks, if you will," she said. "These rim bolts are fearfully stiff. I
daresay I could manage it though. I've done it on a lighter car. But
it's a man's job, really."