The Motor Maid

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The Motor Maid

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Motor Maid, by Alice Muriel
Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson, Illustrated by F. M. Du
Mond and F. Lowenheim
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Title: The Motor Maid
Author: Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

Release Date: December 17, 2005 [eBook #17342]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE MOTOR MAID
* * * * *
BOOKS BY C. N. AND A. M. WILLIAMSON
LORD LOVELAND DISCOVERS AMERICA SET IN SILVER THE
LIGHTNING CONDUCTOR THE PRINCESS PASSES MY FRIEND
THE CHAUFFEUR LADY BETTY ACROSS THE WATER
ROSEMARY IN SEARCH OF A FATHER THE PRINCESS
VIRGINIA THE CAR OF DESTINY THE CHAPERON
* * * * *
THE MOTOR MAID
by
C. N. AND A. M. WILLIAMSON
Authors of "Lord Loveland Discovers America," "My Friend the
Chauffeur," "The Princess Virginia," etc.
With Four Illustrations in Color by F. M. Du Mond and F. Lowenheim

[Illustration: "We raced along a clear road, the Etang shimmering blue
before us"]

A. L. Burt Company Publishers New York All rights reserved,
including that of translation into foreign languages, including the
scandinavian Copyright, 1910, By Doubleday, Page & Company
Published, August, 1910 The Country Life Press, Garden City, N.Y.

To The Three Gertrudes

ILLUSTRATIONS
"We raced along a clear road, the Etang shimmering blue before us"
Frontispiece facing page "While I wrestled ... with a bodice as snug as
the head of a drum, the lord of all it contained appeared in the
doorway" 48
"It took half an hour to dig the car out, and push her up from the hollow
where the snow lay thickest" 272
"Jack's hand, inside Mr. Stokes's beautiful, tall collar, shook Bertie
back and forth till his teeth chattered like castanets" 328
CHAPTER I
One hears of people whose hair turned white in a single night. Last
night I thought mine was turning. I had a creepy feeling in the roots,
which seemed to crawl all the way down inside each separate hair,
wriggling as it went. I suppose you couldn't have nervous prostration of
the hair? I worried dreadfully, it kept on so long; and my hair is so fair
it would be almost a temptation for it, in an emergency, to take the one
short step from gold to silver. I didn't dare switch on the light in the
_wagon-lit_ and peep at my pocket-book mirror (which reflects one's
features in sections of a square inch, giving the survey of one's whole
face quite a panorama effect) for fear I might wake up the Bull Dog.
I've spelt him with capitals, after mature deliberation, because it would
be nothing less than _lèse majesté_ to fob him off with little letters

about the size of his two lower eye-tusks, or chin-molars, or whatever
one ought to call them.
He was on the floor, you see, keeping guard over his mistress's shoes;
and he might have been misguided enough to think I had designs on
them--though what I could have used them for, unless I'd been going to
Venice and wanting a private team of gondolas, I can't imagine.
I being in the upper berth, you might (if you hadn't seen him) have
fancied me safe; but already he had once padded half-way up the
step-ladder, and sniffed at me speculatively, as if I were a piece of meat
on the top shelf of a larder; and if half-way up, why not all the way up?
_Il était capable du tout._
I tried to distract my mind and focus it hard on other things, as
Christian Scientists tell you to do when you have a pin sticking into
your body for which les convenances forbid you to make an exhaustive
search.
I lay on my back with my eyes shut, trying not to hear any of the
sounds in the _wagon-lit_ (and they were not confined to the snoring of
His Majesty), thinking desperately. "I will concentrate all my
mentality," said I to myself, "on thoughts beginning with P, for instance.
My Past. Paris. Pamela."
Just for a few minutes it was comparatively easy. "Dear Past!" I sighed,
with a great sigh which for divers reasons I