The Motormaniacs | Page 9

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 my teeth together to keep from loving him to death. Nelly said I was just too proud and silly for anything, and pa looked as depressed as though there was another slump in Preferred Steel, and mama said he was such a catch that the first designing girl would snap him up, and Harry said you wouldn't know Morty now, he was so changed and different.
So that was how it was when Nelly and Harry started the Great Bubble Syndicate and wanted to take Morty and me into it as quarter share-holders each. But I wouldn't have joined in a heavenly chariot on those terms, and so we talked and talked till finally Morty was eliminated and we settled on a two-third and one-third basis. The next point was to choose the car, for it had to be a cheap car and we wanted to get the very best for our money. Harry said the Model E Fearless runabout at seven hundred and fifty was the bulliest little car on the market; and that the Fearless agent was so good and kind and looked so much like Henry Ward Beecher that you felt uplifted just to be with him; and that you knew instinctively that his car was sure to be