The Motormaniacs | Page 5

want to help that dressmaker pay off her mortgage, or give a boost to a poor family who have had diphtheria--don't you think to help them by tipping off Great Western Preferred. That sort of charity may sound cheap, but it's likely to cost me hundreds of thousands. Let me know, and I'll send them checks.'
"'Don't you worry about me,' I said.
"'I am told you are engaged to an Englishman,' he said; 'an Embassy man at Washington. You aren't making any kind of mental reservation in his case, are you?'
"'He's the last person I tell anything to,' I said. 'That is, --anything important, you know.'
"'Then, Miss Jess Hardy,' he said, with his eyes twinkling as though he were giving an Apostolic benediction at a Vanderbilt wedding, 'if you'll bring me your four-fifty we'll close the deal.'
"'Perhaps it would be as well to leave papa out of this,' I hinted. 'I mean about telling him anything, you know'
"'Oh, distinctly,' he said. 'Fred's a bit old-fashioned and we must respect his prejudices. Wait till you get him on the cowcatcher of your Manton, anti then break it to him gently.'
"'And, Mr. Collenquest,' I said, 'if you should really think it awfully low and horrid of me to do this--I won't do it.'
"'My dear little girl,' he returned, 'get that out of your head right here. I hope your car will prove everything you want it to be, and the same with your Englishman, and I'm only too grateful that it wasn't a steam yacht you had set your heart on, or a palace on the Hudson.'
"There isn't much more to be said about this part of the afair. Papa paid me four-fifty for Gee-whizz, and I handed the check to Mr. Collenquest, and Mr. Collenquest went away, and then the market began to turn bullish (isn't that the word?) and Great Western went up with a whoop, and it got whoopier and whoppier; and whenever anybody was certain it had reached the top-notch it would take another kick skyward, and it went on jumping and jumping till finally there came a letter from Mr. Collenquest with a check for three thousand five hundred dollars, saying I must have forgotten about buying Gee-whizz back again, and that he had taken the liberty of exceeding my instructions about selling till my shares had touched that figure. Then one morning, as we were at breakfast, a great big splendid Manton car--my car--came whisking up the drive and stopped in front of the house, and the expert--they had thrown him in for a week for nothing--him and an odometer and an ammeter, and a new kind of French spark-plug they wanted me to try--and a gasoline tester --the Mantons are such nice people to deal with in all those little ways--and the expert sent in word: would Miss Hardy come out and see her new car? And, of course, Miss Hardy, went out, and Mr. Hardy went out, and my, aunt went out, and the five guests that were staying with us went out, and the servants went out--and you never saw such a mix-up in all your life, nor such excitement and hurrah-boys generally. For papa was ordering it off the place, and I was explaining about Great Western Preferred, and my aunt was trying to make us listen about a friend who had been burned to death with a gasoline stove, and the guests were taking my part and fighting for the first ride, and the expert was showing off the double vertical cylinders, and explaining splash lubrication to the butler, whom he must have mistaken for papa, and--
"When it had settled down a bit and the battle-smoke drifted away and showed who had won--which was me, naturally--and I had promised aunt to be, oh, so careful, and papa that I'd cross my heart never to go into stocks again, and rides, of course, to the guests, and everything to everybody--then they all went back to breakfast while I had mine brought out on the veranda--mine and the expert's--and I guess I talked four speeds ahead while he ate his on the low gear--for he had come ninety miles and wasn't much of a talker at any time--and I just sat there and gloated over my Manton.
"We had a perfectly delirious week together--the expert and I --for the Manton turned out perfectly splendid and everything they said it was, except for the rear tires blowing up three times, and a short circuit in the coil owing to a faulty condenser; and though it was all I could do to hold it down on the low speeds, you ought to have seen me on the forty-mile clip--till they said I'd have to go to prison for the next offense without the option of a fine.