“What’s that whizzing, Nurse?” asked Peggy, as she was picking a bunch of double snowdrops in the garden the next afternoon. “A motor, I expect,” said Nurse, who was talking to the gardener—and she ran to peep down the drive through the bushes. “Callers, I’ll be bound. Yes, here it comes, a big red car. There’s a fat lady in behind, and a girl chauffeur driving it.”
“Let’s see,” said Peggy, pressing into the bushes too.
Nurse was not quite like she had been the evening before, because, of course, Peggy’s wishes never lasted on to the next day, but still she wasn’t nearly as cross as usual, and she had been playing hide-and-seek with Peggy quite half the afternoon, until the gardener came up to talk.
“Now they’ve heard your Mother’s not here, and are going away again,” Nurse went on. “There, look! They’ve stuck at the difficult turn, and the engine’s stopped! My, doesn’t that girl look cross? Get back, Miss Peggy, they’ll see us! Now you can hide once more if you like before tea. I’ll just finish giving John the message about the vegetables.”
“I wish I knew how to drive a motor,” thought Peggy longingly, as she trotted off to hide behind some laurels. “I’d go like the wind, and wouldn’t stop at any corners——Why—what’s happened?”
For she was driving the big red car as fast as lightning down the drive!
[36]“You never noticed you had the Ring on!” chuckled the Giant. “Well turned! Never mind the gate-post.”
He was sitting at the back, but with his legs sticking right out in front beyond the bonnet; and his elbows kept knocking great pieces out of the hedges as they whizzed along.
“What’s—what’s happened to the fat lady and the chauffeur?” gasped Peggy, clutching the steering-wheel for dear life, her cheeks scarlet, her hair streaming out behind her.
“I put them out in the drive,” said the Giant. “I expect they’ll follow us if they want to.”
“Weren’t they angry?” asked Peggy, bumping over a sheep because she didn’t know how to stop the car. “Oh dear, did I hurt him?”
“He’s all right, he’s up again,” said the Giant, turning round. “The Ring won’t let you hurt anything or anybody however much you knock into them. Angry? Oh, I really hadn’t time to stop and see. It’s all forgotten afterwards, you see. Look out for this corner. Oh well, never mind, we may as well be out of the road as in it!” For the car, not having been turned quick enough, had neatly leapt the hedge, and was now speeding across a ploughed field.
“Let her out, let her out!” said the Giant. “You said you wanted to go fast, I thought. Go on, let her out!”
Peggy didn’t know exactly what he meant, or what to do, but she whispered a wish that they might go still quicker, and the car rose in the air and raced along just a little above the level of the hedges.
“I think this is lovelier than anything we’ve done at all!” she shouted back to the Giant. “Oh, look! we’re coming to a town, I do believe! I wish I could drive through it just as though I was a real chauffeur. It would be so grand!”
[37]“Steady, steady! Wishes don’t grow on blackberry bushes,” cried the Giant warningly, but at once the car slowed down, and dropped into the high road, and Peggy found herself dressed exactly like the girl she had seen, and driving slowly along at the rate of about fifteen miles an hour. At first she tried to steer the car herself, but when she found t............