The amazing adventures of Letitia Carberry
run over anything, try to look as if you didn’t know we had.”
Luckily she had not noticed my traveling bag. After the affair of
the launch I was prepared for anything, and I had packed up three
nightgowns, a balsam pillow, a roll of bandage, a bottle of arnica,
a cake of soap, my sewing box and a prayer-book. Aggie had some
sandwiches; so we felt we were prepared for everything, from sudden
death to losing a button.
We got on to the ferry safely enough. Carpenter, who runs the cable
drum of the ferry with a gas engine, examined the machine with a great
deal of interest on the way over.
“It’s a pretty hot day, Miss Tish,” he called as we were starting off
the boat. “You’ll have to watch her; she’ll boil.”
Tish looked worried, but she said nothing.
“What is there to boil?” Aggie whispered to me.
“The gasoline,” I told her; “and if it boils it’ll explode. I’m no
mechanic, but I know that much.”
After a few moments’ silence Aggie leaned forward.
“Tish,” she said.
“Don’t take my mind off this machine!” Tish shouted back. “Isn’t that a
buggy coming?”
“It’s too far off to see. It’s either a buggy or a wagon,” I said.
“Tish, where’s the gasoline tank?”
But Tish wasn’t listening. “Why doesn’t that man turn out? Does he want
the whole road?” she snapped. There was a silence while we neared the
buggy ahead. Then Tish leaned over and began jerking at levers.
“I can’t stop the thing,” she gasped, “and there isn’t room to pass!”
There wasn’t time to pray. I saw Aggie shut her eyes, and the next
moment there was a terrific jar. Aggie and I were flung together in a
corner of the seat, a man yelled, and the next minute we had leaped
out of the ditch again and were going smoothly along the road. I
glanced behind. The man had halted his horse and was standing up in the
buggy, staring after us.
“I didn’t think I could do it,” said Tish complacently.
“Only the grace of God took you into that ditch and out again, Tish
Carberry,” I snapped. “And if you are going to do any more circus
performances I want to get out.”
She could stop the car well enough when there was no crying need to,
and now, to our alarm, she stopped every now and then and got out and
held her hand over the front of the machine, like testing the oven for
cake. Finally she said:
“It’s boiling!”
Aggie got ready to jump.
“It’ll explode, won’t it?” she quavered.
“I don’t see why it should explode,” Tish replied, wetting her finger
to see if it sizzled when she touched it. “But it’s hot enough, in all
conscience. A good rain would cool it.”
The sun was blazing down on us, however, and there was no sign of rain.
I said I would just as soon be blown up as melted down, and we got in
again. The machine would not start. We all took a turn at the handle in
front, but it was like winding a clock with a broken spring.
That is where the man and the girl and the little Pomeranian dog enter
the story. For they came along in a blue runabout car just as Tish
threw her book called _Automobile Troubles_ over the fence and said she
was going to walk home. The book said: “Beginners having trouble with
their engines should look under the headings Ignition, Carburation,
Lubrication, Compression, Circulation and Timing.” As Tish remarked,
the only one that was understandable was Circulation, and anybody could
tell without a book that the car wasn’t circulating to any extent.
Just as Tish threw the book away the young man in the blue runabout
stopped and got out.
“In trouble?” he asked. “Can I do anything for you?”
“It was boiling,” said Tish. “I suppose something has melted inside.”
“Oh, I think not.” He looked at the car, pushed something, went round
and turned the handle--crank, Tish called it, and it’s a good name--and
the engine started.
“You didn’t have your gas on,” said the young man. “And don’t worry;
you’re sure to heat up on a day like this, but nothing will melt.”
“Or explode?” asked Aggie.
“Or explode.”
He looked at the girl and smiled, and when we started off they were
still there, watching us. The dog yelped, and the girl smiled and waved
her hand. Aggie, who is far-sighted, turned around a second time. “He
reminds me of Mr. Wiggins,” she said with a sigh, still looking back.
Aggie was engaged years ago to a young man in the roofing business, who
fell off a roof.
After a minute, “He’s kissing her!” she gasped. After that she nearly
broke her neck watching them out of sight. Aggie is romantic. I turned
around, but I had on my near glasses.
I don’t know how we lost the Noblestown Pike. Tish blamed it on having
to drive with one eye shut, on account of something getting into the
other. Aggie’s nose was sunburned and swelling, and I would have given
a good bit for something heavy in my lap to anchor me. When I was a
girl I rode horseback, and with any kind of a steady horse you can tell
when the next jolt is coming; but Tish’s machine has a way of coming up
and hitting you when you are off guard, so to speak.
To go back, after an hour or so we found we were on the wrong road. It
kept growing narrower, and when at last it became only a dusty country
lane Tish realized it herself. There was a rickety farmhouse about two
hundred feet from the road, with a woman bending over a washtub outside
the door. I stood up and made a megaphone of my hands.
“Which way to the Noblestown Pike?” I yelled, while Tish got out and
stuck a wet finger on the hood over the engine.
The woman looked up and pointed sullenly in the direction from which
we had come. We looked at the road. There wasn’t a spot to turn--not
another road in sight to back into. It was hotter than ever. The engine
hummed like a teakettle on a hot stove, and there were little clouds
of blue smoke coming from somewhere or other about it. Aggie said she
thought the gasoline tank was on fire.
“If it is you’ll soon know it,” said Tish grimly. “It’s under the seat.
I’m going to back up on to this bridge business over the gutter. I
think I can make it.”
“Do you know how to back up?” I asked; and just at that minute the
woman left her tub and started to run down the walk.
Tish backed. With an awful grinding of wheels she got the right lever
finally; the machine gave a jerk that would have decapitated a chicken,
and we backed slowly on to the timbers that bridged the gutter and made
a road toward the house. When it gave the first crack we shouted--Aggie
and I. It might not have been too late, but Tish put on the emergency
brake by mistake and for a minute we hung on the verge. Then we began
to settle. We went down slowly, with Tish above us and rising; and when
we stopped, there we were, Aggie and I and the rear of the machine, a
good four feet below Tish and the engine, with something grinding like
mad and clouds of smoke everywhere.
When we crawled out the woman who owned the bridge was standing on the
bank looking down at us, and her face was something awful.
“You’ll fix that bridge before you leave!” she said, shutting her mouth
hard on the last word.
“You’ll fix that automobile before I’m through with you!” said Tish,
pointing at the thing, which looked like a horse sitting down in a
gutter.
“Oh, rats!” the woman said rudely. “That’s four of them things that’s
gone through that bridge this week, and I’m good and sick of it. Ain’t
there any other bridges in Chester county?”
“Not like that,” retorted Tish, eying the ruins. “You don’t call that a
bridge, do you?”
“It was,” said the woman.
She came forward and a ferocious-looking dog stepped from behind her.
Tish looked at the dog.
“It wasn’t much of a bridge,” she said, more politely. “If you’ve got
any men on the place I’ll give them a dollar apiece to get my machine
out of there.”
“No men around,” said the woman shortly. “Theodore,”--to the
dog--“don’t you go around bitin’ until I give you the word. Sit down.”
The dog sat down.
“Before you leave,” she said to Tish, “you’ll mend that bridge or I’ll
know the reason why. Meantime your automobile is trespassin’, and the
fine is twenty dollars.”
Then she sat down on the bank and began to tickle the dog’s ears with a
blade of grass.
“Theodore,” she said, “if them three old maids think they can bluff us,
they don’t know us, do they?”
I had stood about as much as I could, so I walked around in front of
her and glared at her.
“I wouldn’t sit so close to the automobile if I were you,” I remarked
emphatically. “Something is likely to explode.”
“I feel like it,” she said. “When I get mad I’m good an’ mad. Anyhow, I
own this place, and I’ll sit where I please. Theodore, let’s put the
washing-machine on wheels and go round the country bustin’ down folks’
bridges and playin’ hell generally!”
An oath always rouses Tish. She got the engine stopped. Then she came
around beside me with her goggles shoved up on her forehead.
“Woman,” she said sternly, “how dare you mention the place of
punishment so lightly!” Tish had been superintendent of a Sunday-school
for thirty years.
The woman stared at her. Then she got up slowly.
“I wasn’t alludin’ to the next world,” she said bitterly. “Ninety-five
degrees of heat, seven inches of dust, five miles to a telephone and
ten miles to town, with an automobile sittin’ down in your front
yard--that’s all the hell I want.”
Then she walked up the path. We stared after her; between her
shoulder-blades her blue wrapper was wet through with sweat, and the
dog trailed at her heels. Aggie, who is always sentimental, took a step
after her.
“I say,” she called. “If we come back for you some nice afternoon, will
you let us take you for a ride?”
But she got no answer. To our amazement, the woman turned around at the
top of the path and put her thumb to her nose!
We did not see her again for some time, but after Tish had climbed in
twice and started the engine, to see if the car couldn’t climb out--the
only result being that it almost turned over--the woman appeared
again. She carried a board that looked like a breadboard nailed to a
broom-handle, and on it, in fresh ink, as if she had done it with her
finger, were the words:
“Trespassing--fifty dollars.”
“You said twenty before,” I protested.
“That was for those little dinky, one-seated affairs,” she said,
jabbing the broom-handle into the dirt beside the road. “Two seats,
forty dollars; two seats and a folded back buggy-top, fifty.” She
adjusted the sign carefully, looked up and down the road, and then went
back to the house.
So we sat down on the bank and Tish explained how she happened to do
it. I am a Christian woman, and Aggie is so gentle that she has to
scratch twice to light a match, but I must say we were bitter. We told
Tish we didn’t care how she happened to do it, and that some day she
would be punished for a temper that made her throw away books that she
would be sure to need some time; and that, anyhow, an unmarried woman
of fifty has no business with an automobile.
“It’s my belief,” Tish retorted, “that she keeps her old bridge for
this very purpose. She could make a good living off it, and all the
work she’d have to do would be to build it up after every accident.”
“Oh, no,” Aggie said bitterly. “We are going to repair it, I believe.”
The back of my neck began to smart from the sun, and the dust eddied
around us. A white hen came down the path, hopped on to the sloping
step of the machine, perked its head at us, and then, with a squawk,
flew up into Tish’s seat behind the wheel. I was thirsty and my neck
prickled.
Early in the afternoon we had a difference of opinion about who should
walk the five miles to telephone for help, and after that we did not
speak to each other. Tish talked to the machine and Aggie to the
chicken. Every now and then Tish, after staring at the machine for a