C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson

“ We bade good-bye to the five men, for whom we had emptied our not-too-well filled pockets, and forged, bumbling, past St. Flour. It was a great strain for a heavy car, and the chauffeur only said, "I thought so!" when a chain snapped five or six miles farther on.
"What a good thing Lady Turnour is n't here!" said I, as he doctored the wounded Aigle.
"It took half an hour to dig the car out, and push her
up from the hollow where the snow lay thickest"
"Lots of girls would be in a blue funk," said he. "I could shake that beastly woman for not taking you with her." ”

“ I swallowed something much harder and bigger than a cannon ball, and said nothing.
"Of course you 're covered with snow up to your knees, foolish child!" He was glaring ferociously at me.
"It doesn't matter." "It does matter most infernally. Don't you know that you make no more than a featherweight of difference to the car?"
"I feel as if I weighed a thousand pounds, now."
"It's that snow!"
"No. It's you. Your crossness. I can't have people cross to me, on lonely mountains, just when I 'm trying to help them." ”

“ The chauffeur proposed that I should sit inside the car; but I had regained all my courage in the hot inn-kitchen. I was not cold, and did n't feel as if I should ever be cold again.
The road mounted almost continuously. Sometimes, as we looked ahead, it seemed to have been broken off short just in front of the car, by some dreadful earth convulsion; but it always turned out to be only a sudden dip down, or a sharp turn like the curve of an apple-paring. At last we had reached the highest peak of the Roof of France—a sloping, snow-covered roof ”

“ If I had n't quite known before, I knew suddenly, all in a minute, that I was in love, oh, but humiliatingly deep in love, with the chauffeur! It seemed to me that no nice, well-regulated girl could ever have let herself go tobogganing down such a steep hill, splash into such a sea of love, unless the man were at the bottom in a boat, holding out his arms to catch her as she fell. But the chauffeur had n't the slightest intention of holding out his arms to the poor little motor maid. He went on mending the chain, and when he got into the car beside me again he began to talk about the weather. ”

“ I looked where his nod indicated, and saw a town as dark and seemingly as old as the rock out of which it grew, climbing a conical hill, to dominate all the wide, white reaches above which it stood, like an armoured sentinel on a watch-tower. ”

“ Whereas, I 've been calculating, if you start now and go as quick as you can, you ought to be at the château (he pronounced it "chattoe") before us. Our train does n't leave for more than an hour, and it 's a very slow one. Still, it will be warm, and we have cards and Tauchnitz novels. Then, you know, you can unload the luggage at the château and run back to the railway station at Clermont-Ferrand, see to having our big boxes sent out (they 'll be there waiting for us) and meet our train. What do you think of the plan?"
"It ought to do very well—if I 'm not delayed on the road by snow." ”

“ I echoed, defending him against himself. "Why, do you suppose wild horses would have dragged Lady Turnour in any other direction, now that she 's actually invited to be the guest of a marquis in a real live castle?"
"A railway train could very well have dragged her in the same direction and got her to the castle as soon, if not a good deal sooner than she 's likely to get in this car, if we have to fight snow. I proposed this way originally because I wanted you to see the Gorge of the Tarn, and because I thought that you 'd like Clermont-Ferrand, and the road there. ”

“ I could have hinted at horrors, and they would have gone by rail like lambs, taking you with them."
"Lady Turnour can do nothing like a lamb," I contradicted him. "I should never have forgiven you for sending me away from—the car. Besides, Lady Turnour wants to teuf-teuf up to the château in her sixty-horse-power Aigle, and make an impression on the aristocracy."
"Well, we must hope for the best now," said he. "But look, the snow 's an inch thick by the roadside even at this level, so I don't know what we may n't be in for, between here and St. ”

“ He coughed, and floundered into explanations. "The waiter, who can speak some English, has been frightening her ladyship," said he. "After the day before yesterday she 's grown a bit timid, and to hear that the cold she has suffered from is nothing to what she may have to experience higher up, and later in the day, as the sun gets down behind the mountains, has put her off motoring. ”