Pa is the worst old skinflint in Connecticut, and never even gave me a bag of peanut candy without getting a double equivalent. First of all, I had to give up Lewis Wentz entirely; I wasn't to speak to him, or bow or bubble or dance or anything. I put up a good fight for Lewis Wentz—not that I cared two straws for him, now that I was going to have an automobile of my own, but just to head pa off from grasping for more. I didn't want to be eaten out of house and home, you know, and I guess I am too much pa's daughter to surrender more than I could help.
It was well I did so, for on top of that I had to promise never to ride in any car except my own, and then he branched off into my giving up coffee for breakfast, going to bed at ten, only one dance a week, wearing flannel in winter, minding my mother more, and Heaven only knows what all. But I said that Lewis Wentz alone was worth two hundred and fifty, and that I'd draw on the other things when I needed money for repairs. Then pa suddenly had a new notion and said he wanted to be in the thing, too; would take a quarter interest of his own; that we'd change the syndicate to fourths instead of thirds.
I was almost too thunderstruck to speak. Think of hearing pa saying he wished to buy in! It was like an evangelist wanting to take shares in the devil. I could only say "Pa!" like that, and gasp.
"I know I'm pretty old to change," he said. "But a fellow must keep up with the procession, you know. And I always liked the way they smell."
His eyes were dancing and I saw he meant mischief; but, after all, the bubble was assured now, and that was the great thing. It wasn't till up to that moment that I felt really safe.
"I read here in the agreement," he went on, "that the automobile is taken in rotation by every member of the syndicate; and that when it's my day it's my day, and nobody can say a word or use it themselves, even if I don't care to."
"That's how we'll save any possibility of friction," I returned. "For instance, to-day it is absolutely my car; to-morrow it's yours; day after to-morrow it is Harry's; the day after that it's Nelly's—and if anything breaks on your day it's up to you to pay for it."
"Oh, I'm not going to break anything," said pa with the satisfied look of a person who doesn't know anything about it.
"Don't you be too sure about that," I said. "I've been around enough with Lewis Wentz to know better."
"Well, you see," said pa, "that depends on how much you use your automobile. If you never take it out at all you eliminate most of the bothers connected with it."
"Never take it out at all?" I cried.
"On my day it stays in the barn," he said.
I began to see now what he was smiling at. Wasn't it awful of him? He simply meant to tie it up for a quarter of the time.
"Now, Virgie," he said, "you mustn't think that I am not stretching a point to promise you what I have. It's too blamed dangerous and you're all the little girl I have. Well, if you must do it, I am going to cut the risk by twenty-five per cent and my automobile days will be blanks."
I flared up at this. It's awful when your father wants to do something you're ashamed of. It was such a dog-in-the-manger idea, too, and so unsportsmanlike. But nothing could shake pa, though I tried and tried, and said things that ought to have pierced a rhinoceros. But pa ran for governor once, and his skin's thicker. I felt almost sorry we hadn't taken in Morty Truslow instead—not really, you know, but just for the moment.
"How can I tell Hairy and Nelly you're such a pig?" I said, half crying.
"I'm not a pig," said pa, "though now I'm the next thing to it—an automobilist. And, anyway, it's a straight business proposition. Take it or leave it."
"Pa," I said, "if you'll stay out of it altogether, I'll take it back about coffee for breakfast and not minding mama more."
"It's too late," he returned. "I've got the automobile fever now myself. For two cents I'd buy out Harry and Nelly and keep the red bug in the family."
Certainly pa has the most ingenious mind of anybody I know. He ought to have been in the Spanish Inquisition just to think up new torments. I don't wonder they like him so well on the Stock Exchange: he probably initiates new members and makes them ride goats. Anyway, nothing could change him about the automobile, and I closed the deal quick, lest he might carry out his other plan and absorb seventy-five per cent of the syndicate's stock.
The Fearless was even prettier than its picture, and there wasn't a runabout in town in the same class with it. Then our lessons began, which we took separately, because there was only room on the seat for two, and nobody wanted the other members of the syndicate to see him running into the curb or trying to climb trees. The agent turned out less like Henry Ward Beecher than Harry had thought, and it was sickening how he lost interest in us after he got his money. But he threw in a tooter for nothing and a socket-wrench, and in some ways lived up to the resemblance. He would not take me out himself, but gave me in charge of a weird little boy we called the Gasoline Child. The Gasoline Child was about thirteen, and was so full of tools that he rattled when he walked, and I guess his head rattled, too—he knew so much about gas engines. He was the greasiest, messiest, grittiest and oiliest little boy that ever defied soap; and Harry always declared he was an automobile variety of coddling-moth or Colorado beetle or june-bug, who would wind up by spinning a cotton-waste cocoon in the center of the machinery and hatch out a million more like himself. Perhaps he was too busy to start his happy home, for I never saw him at the garage but his little legs were sticking out of a bonnet, and you could hear him hammering inside and telling somebody to "Turn it over, will you?" or "Now, try it that way, Bill."
But with all the heaps he knew, the Gasoline Child was a good deal like the man who got rich by never spending anything. His knowledge was imbedded in him like gold in quartz; you could see it there all right, but couldn't take it out. He tried so hard to be helpful, too; would plunge his little paw into the greasy darkness below the seat and say:
"That's a nut you ought to remember now it works on the babbitt of the counter-shaft"—or something of the kind—"and you must see to it regular." Or, "Watch your valves, Miss, and be keerful they don't gum on you." Or, "Them commutators are often the seat of trouble, for oftentimes they wear down and don't break the spark right." When I'd grow dizzy with these explanations he would reassure me by saying that "I'd soon fall into it, like he did." But I didn't fall into it nearly so well as I could have wished. On the contrary, the more I learned the more intricate the whole thing seemed to grow, and I looked forward to taking the car out alone by myself with the sensations of a prisoner about to be guillotined. Not that I had lost heart in automobilism. The elation of those rides was delicious. The little car ran with a lightness that was almost like flying; it was as buoyant, swift and smooth as a glorified sledge; one awoke with joy to the fact that the world contained a new and irresistible pleasure.
The Gasoline Child soon taught me to run it for myself. With him by my side I was as brave as a lion, and I took the corners and shaved eternity in a way to make him gasp. He said he had never been really scared in an automobile before, and he used to look at me with a ready-to-jump expression, as though I were a baby playing with a gun. You see, I had graduated on Lewis Wentz's steamer and a twenty-mile clip didn't feaze me any, though there were times when I'd forget which things to pull, and this always seemed to rattle his little nerves. It was strange, however, what a coward I was when I first went out by myself. There was no devil left in me at all, and I was certainly the crawly-crawliest bubbler you ever saw, and I teetered at street-car crossings till everybody went mad. It might have been worse than it was, though, for the only real trouble I had was chipping the tail off a milk wagon and ramming a silly horse on Eighth Avenue. When his friends helped him up (he had been standing still at the time, and I had forgotten the low gear always started with a jump) they said his front legs were barked flve dollars' worth. I wouldn't have minded if he had got the five dollars, poor thing, for after ramming him once I became confused at the notoriety I attracted, and, instead of reversing, I threw in the highspeed clutch and rammed him some more. Oh, yes, he had some right to have a kick coming, though all he did was to look at me reproachfully and then