Page:Three speeds forward.djvu/27

 I got the more I wanted it, till finally papa, in sheer desperation, handed down the moon, and an expert came from Wiskigee to teach me how to run it. It was a little Maxwell, ten-horse, horizontal double-opposed, speeding up to thirty-five miles on the level, everything incased, and the cooling thermo-syphon. I took bounds of recovery from that moment, and a fresh bound every time I managed to coax an extra out of papa. A bound for my baskets, a bound for my Jones speedometer, a bound for my Latham spirals, a bound for my search lights, and two more for a yellow Cape top and a new coil, found me so pink and well that I was forced to buy two wet cells out of my poor little allowance. (Don't you prefer voltage batteries? I do.)

I was in the mood when people were a torment to me, and I wanted to get away from everything and everybody. Studdingham was so small that there wasn't room in it for a pair that hated each other as much as I and Charlie Lepperts. Had he been any way a gentleman,