Page:Three speeds forward.djvu/104

 he said. "For Heaven's sake, let me lie back and smoke a cigar, and get the taste of that filthy stuff out of my gullet!"

So we all hopped in, and I speeded her up with an uneasy feeling that it was all too good to last. Sure enough, we hadn't gone fifty yards, when we began to miss and splutter and die all over again. Then the engine gave a dreadful cough, and went finally and completely out of business.

I was for getting out and having another fight with it, but papa laid his hand on my arm and said No, he'd be hanged if he'd monkey with the blankety-blank thing again, or allow me to do it, either. Said we'd just wait there till the ball broke up, and somebody happened along to tow us, or give us a lift. I never saw the bounce so taken out of papa; even his voice was changed and dreary, as though he had suddenly grown twenty years older in an hour. So we all sat there in the most awful gloom, and said things about that engine that ought to have made it squirm.