She's safe enough with him." It had been arranged that Wally should drive Helen to Hartford to do some shopping, and they were expected back about nine o'clock in the evening.
But nine o'clock, ten o'clock, eleven o'clock and midnight came--and still no sign of Wally's car.
"They must have had an accident," thought Mary, and at first she pictured this as a slight affair which simply called for a few hours' delay at a local garage--perhaps the engine had overheated, or the battery had failed.
But when one o'clock struck, and still no word from the absent pair, Mary's fancies grew more tragic.
By two o'clock she imagined the car overturned at the bottom of some embankment, and both of them badly hurt.

At three o'clock she began to have such dire forebodings that she went and woke up Aunt Cordelia, and was on the point of telephoning Wally's mother when the welcome rumbling of a car was heard under the porte cochere.

It was Wally and Helen, and though Helen looked pale she had that air of ownership over her apologetic escort which every woman understands.
Mary already divined the end of the story.
"We were coming along all right," said Wally, "and would have been home before ten.

But when we were about nine miles from nowhere and going over a bad road, I had a puncture.
"Of course that delayed me a little--to change the wheels--but when I tried to start the car again, she wouldn't go.
"I fussed and fixed for a couple of hours, it seems to me, and then I thought I'd better go to the nearest telephone and have a garage send a car out for us.

But Helen, poor girl, was tired and of course I couldn't leave her there alone.