The Scarlet Car | Page 4

in a hollow voice, "you have decided?"
"Ernest," cried Miss Forbes, "don't look at me as though you meant to hurl the curse of Rome. I have. Jump in. Please!"
"I will bid you good-by," said Peabody; "I have only just time to catch our train."
Miss Forbes rose and moved to the door of the car.
"I had better not go with any one," she said in a low voice.
"You will go with me," commanded her brother. "Come on, Ernest."
"Thank you, no," replied Peabody. "I have promised my sister."
"All right, then," exclaimed Sam briskly, "see you at the game. Section H. Don't forget. Let her out, Billy."
With a troubled countenance Winthrop bent forward and clasped the clutch.
"Better come, Peabody," he said.
"I thank you, no," repeated Peabody. "I must go with my sister."
As the car glided forward Brother Sam sighed heavily.
"My! but he's got a mean disposition," he said. "He has quite spoiled MY day."
He chuckled wickedly, but Winthrop pretended not to hear, and his sister maintained an expression of utter dejection.
But to maintain an expression of utter dejection is very difficult when the sun is shining, when you are flying at the rate of forty miles an hour, and when in the cars you pass foolish youths wave Yale flags at you, and take advantage of the day to cry: "Three cheers for the girl in the blue hat!"
And to entirely remove the last trace of the gloom that Peabody had forced upon them, it was necessary only for a tire to burst. Of course for this effort, the tire chose the coldest and most fiercely windswept portion of the Pelham Road, where from the broad waters of the Sound pneumonia and the grip raced rampant, and where to the touch a steel wrench was not to be distinguished from a piece of ice. But before the wheels had ceased to complain, Winthrop and Fred were out of their fur coats, down on their knees, and jacking up the axle.
"On an expedition of this sort," said Brother Sam, "whatever happens, take it as a joke. Fortunately," he explained, "I don't understand fixing inner tubes, so I will get out and smoke. I have noticed that when a car breaks down, there is always one man who paces up and down the road and smokes. His hope is to fool passing cars into thinking that the people in his car stopped to admire the view."
Recognizing the annual football match as intended solely to replenish the town coffers, the thrifty townsfolk of Rye, with bicycles and red flags, were, as usual, and regardless of the speed at which it moved, levying tribute on every second car that entered their hospitable boundaries. But before the Scarlet Car reached Rye, small boys of the town, possessed of a sporting spirit, or of an inherited instinct for graft, were waiting to give a noisy notice of the ambush. And so, fore-warned, the Scarlet Car crawled up the main street of Rye as demurely as a baby-carriage, and then, having safely reached a point directly in front of the police station, with a loud and ostentatious report, blew up another tire.
"Well," said Sam crossly, "they can't arrest US for speeding."
"Whatever happens," said his sister, "take it as a joke."
Two miles outside of Stamford, Brother Sam burst into open mutiny.
"Every car in the United States has passed us," he declared. "We won't get there, at this rate, till the end of the first half. Hit her up, can't you, Billy?"
"She seems to have an illness," said Winthrop unhappily. "I think I'd save time if I stopped now and fixed her."
Shamefacedly Fred and he hid themselves under the body of the car, and a sound of hammering and stentorian breathing followed. Of them all that was visible was four feet beating a tattoo on the road. Miss Forbes got out Winthrop's camera, and took a snap-shot of the scene.
"I will call it," she said, "The Idle Rich."
Brother Sam gazed morosely in the direction of New Haven. They had halted within fifty yards of the railroad tracks, and as each special train, loaded with happy enthusiasts, raced past them he groaned.
"The only one of us that showed any common sense was Ernest," he declared, "and you turned him down. I am going to take a trolley to Stamford, and the first train to New Haven."
"You are not," said his sister; "I will not desert Mr. Winthrop, and you cannot desert me."
Brother Sam sighed, and seated himself on a rock.
"Do you think, Billy," he asked, "you can get us to Cambridge in time for next year's game?"
The car limped into Stamford, and while it went into drydock at the garage, Brother Sam fled to the railroad station, where he learned that for the next two hours no train that recognized New Haven spoke