"It depends," said a dry, dark man with a look of rebuke, "on our work.
To-morrow night, perhaps. Perhaps the next morning."
"Where shall I drive you?"
"Go out by Thionville. We are going up the Moselle to Treves."
Anxious to dispose of such a mountain of a man, it was suggested that
the Bearskin should climb in beside the driver. Instantly Fanny was
smothered up as he sat down, placing so many packages between himself
and the outer side of the car that he sank heavily against her arm, and
the fur of his coat blew into her mouth.
In discomfort she drove them from the town, brooding over her wheel,
unhappily on and on till Metz had sunk over the edge of the flat
horizon. The weary way to Thionville unfurled before them, furnaces to
the left and flat grass prairie to the right--little villages and
clustering houses went by them, and Thionville itself, with its
tramlines and faint air of Manchester, drew near. Beyond Thionville the
road changed colour abruptly, and stretched red and gravelly before
them. The frost deepened, the wheels bit harder on the road surface, the
grass-fields sparkled with a brittle light, and scanty winter orchards
sprang up beside the road, which narrowed down and became a lane of
beautiful surface. Not for long, however, for the surface changed again,
and long hours set in when the car had to be held desperately with foot
and hand brake to save the springs, and the accelerator could only be
touched to be relinquished.
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