The Motormaniacs | Page 9

we are the best of friends, and if I ever see him again I'll give
him a double toot on my French horn."
"And what became of the curate and Gerard's sister?"
"Oh, they married and went into steam."

THE GREAT BUBBLE SYNDICATE
I suppose it was a fool arrangement, but anyway we did it; and Harry
Prentiss, who is learning how to be a corporation lawyer and has
specialized on contracts, spent a whole week making it what he called
iron-clad. When it was typewritten it covered nine pages, and was so

excessively iron-clad that nobody could understand it but Harry. He
said it undoubtedly covered the ground, however, and would be worth
all the trouble it cost him in the friction it would save afterward. You'd
hardly know Harry as the same boy that played Yale full-back, he's
grown so cynical and suspicious, and he's got that lawyer way of
looking at you now, as though you were a liar and he was just about to
pounce on you with the truth. I thought he might have brought Nelly
and himself into the agreement under one head, considering he was
engaged to her and they were only waiting to save a thousand dollars in
order to get married; but he couldn't see it in that way at all, and spoke
about people changing their minds, and how in law you must be
prepared for everything (especially if it were disagreeable and
unexpected) and put supposistious cases till Nelly broke down and
cried.
They had got five hundred toward the thousand when they were both
taken with automobile fever--and taken bad; and then they decided that,
though marriage was all right, they were still young, and the bubble had
the first call. Harry had been secretly taking the Horseless Age for three
months, and as for Nelly--anybody with a four-cylinder tonneau could
have torn her from her happy home. Not that she didn't love Harry
tremendously. She was crazy about him--but crazier for a bubble. It's
an infatuation like any other, only worse, and I guess I was no better
than Nelly myself, for I used to ride regularly with Lewis Wentz and
you know what Lewis Wentz is. And he only had a wheezy old steam
carriage anyway, and sometimes blue flames would leap up all around
you till you felt like a Christian martyr, and his boiler was always
burning out when he'd try to hold my hand instead of watching the gage.
You paid in every kind of way for riding with Lewis Wentz, and people
talked about you besides--but I always went just the same. Oh, I know I
ought to be ashamed to admit it, and I said to myself every time should
be the last; yet he only had to double-toot at the front door for me to
drop everything and run. This naturally made him awfully forward and
troublesome, not to speak of complicating me with pa, who didn't
approve of him the least bit, and who used to regale me with little talks
beginning: "I would rather see you lying dead in your coffin," and
winding up with, "Now, won't you promise your poor old dad?" till I
was all broken up. But, as I said before, Lewis Wentz had only to toot

for me to forget my old dad and the coffin and everything.
With only five hundred dollars to go on, Harry and Nelly, of course,
had to look about for more capital; and that was why they chose me to
go in with them. I didn't have any capital except a rich father, but I
suppose they thought that was the same thing. People are so apt
to--though I never found it the same thing at all. Then, too, Nelly and I
were bosom friends, and they naturally wanted to give me the first
chance. Their original plan had been to have the bubble held in four
equal shares, taking in Morty Truslow as the fourth. I think there was a
little scheme in that, too, for Morty and I hadn't spoken for three
months, and it was all off between us. There was a time when I thought
there was only one thing in the world, and that was Morty Truslow--but
that was over for good, with nothing left of it but a great big ache. I can
never be grateful enough to Mrs. Gettridge for putting me on to it, for,
however much a girl cares for a man, her pride won't let her--and she
was Josie's aunt, you know, and if anybody was on the inside track, she
was--and I cut him dead and sent back his letters unopened, though he
wrote and wrote--and it was awfully hard, you know, because I just had
to grit