The Scarlet Car | Page 4

us to sit?" she asked.
She mounted to the rear seat, and made room opposite her for Peabody.
"Do I understand, Beatrice," began Peabody in a tone that instantly
made every one extremely uncomfortable, "that I am to tell my sister
you are not coming?"
"Ernest!" begged Miss Forbes.
Winthrop bent hastily over the oil valves. He read the speedometer,
which was, as usual, out of order, with fascinated interest.
"Ernest," pleaded Miss Forbes,
"Mr. Winthrop and Sam planned this trip for us a long time ago--to
give us a little pleasure----"
"Then," said Peabody 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