She was positive that the picnic road of old had been a dirt road, and that first road had been paved. But of course it might have been improved since early days. Well, what should she do now? If she could only get her engine going, perhaps she could turn around and go back. Take that other road. Wouldn’t that be best?

But try as she would, she could not make her engine speak, and she drew an impatient sigh as she got out of her car and walked to the front. She was afraid of that hood. She had never succeeded in getting it open. The car had always been kept in order for her by the man at the garage, but now there was no one but herself to depend on. She hadn’t any idea what she was going to do when she got the hood open, but that was what all men did first when anything was the matter with a car—they opened the hood. So she struggled to open it and throw it back nonchalantly as she had seen the men in the filling stations do. But struggle as she might, that hood refused to open. Till suddenly the handle she held gave a lurch, and up it came! At least it came up about eight inches and then lurched back again and seemed to settle down harder than ever.

But Laurel was not a girl to give up easily, and she was becoming more and more conscious of that school committee she had promised to meet, where she was going to apply for a job. So she went at the matter more vigorously this time and finally managed to swing up that hood and anchor it. She cast a troubled glance inside that mysterious engine, but nothing came of it. She had never had experience in machinery of any sort, and none of those pipes and tubes and screws made sense to her. For the first time, it occurred to her as strange that anyone could have thought out and made a thing so complicated and that, being made, it could manage to carry people around the country. Before this she had always taken cars for granted and thought nothing about them.

And so, having walked all about that engine and studied each part carefully without getting any light, she straightened up and stood there, trying to think what she should do next. Was it thinkable that she could walk down to the village and send somebody back from a filling station or garage after her car? She hadn’t the slightest idea how far it would be, if indeed she was on the right road to Carrollton.

Then suddenly she heard the sound of a swiftly coming car. It was up around that curve ahead. She cast a quick, anxious glance at the road. It seemed so narrow, and her car was right in the middle. There was a deep gully at one side and a steep embankment edged by thick woods on the other.

And then Phil Pilgrim’s car came sweeping around the curve straight at her, and she stood petrified, her big blue eyes wide and startled.

He stopped just before he reached her.

Phil Pilgrim went over to the car and studied it a minute, swung himself in behind the wheel and tried out various parts of its mechanism with no result, swung out to the ground again and back to the engine, stooping to get a better view. Then he straightened up, looked at the girl, and said in a crisp, reproachful tone, as if it was entirely her fault, “Your generator’s shot.”

“Oh!” said Laurel meekly. “Just what does that mean? What do I have to do?”

“Well, it means you’ll have to have a new generator,” he said with a grim smile. “What are you doing here anyway? This isn’t a road. It’s only a cattle path.” He wanted her to understand that it was none of his affair. He had business in other directions.

“Oh!” she said again breathlessly. “I didn’t know. Well, would there be someplace near here where I could telephone for one?”

His smile became a half grin, or was there a shade of almost contempt in his tone as he answered?

“Well, not exactly!” He said it crisply. “They haven’t established public telephone service yet on this highway.”

“Oh, of course not,” said Laurel with a timid, apologetic smile.