Page:Three speeds forward.djvu/91

 was the good of a four-thousand-dollar car, in tiptop shape, if it couldn't be trusted for an eighteen-mile run? Papa said that was all very well, but a pretty figure he'd cut trying to push it in shining armor, and stumbling over his broadsword in the dark. In fact, he was so morbid and apprehensive and harrowing that it was about as easy as persuading a French aristocrat in the Revolution to get aboard the tumbril that was to land him at the guillotine. Then, after he had been reduced to pulp, he said weakly that he would leave it to mamma to decide, and threw himself on a hall chair and waited—to think up fresh reasons why it was impossible to take the Dauntless without Albert.

I fully thought she'd join with him and insist on the horses, but for once, in a family disagreement, she came out splendidly on the right side—my side—and said, "Oh, my dear, it would be perfectly crazy not to take the car, when it is standing there all ready." So there was nothing left for papa to do but sigh, and