The amazing adventures of Letitia Carberry
while, would get up and pick up the soundest of the bridge timbers, put
it under the dropped end of the car and push with all her might.
“Call this a bridge?”--push--“Why, this is nothing”--push--“but a
rotten old fence-rail!”--bang!--the timber broke. Tish stood with her
back to us and kicked the pieces; then she turned on us. “As far as
I’m concerned,” she snapped, “the thing can sit there till it takes
root. You’re very much mistaken if you think I’m going to walk to that
telephone, after bringing you out on a pleasure trip.”
“Pleasure trip!” Aggie retorted. “I can get more pleasure out of
a three-dollar rocking-chair. The next time you ask me to go on a
pleasure trip, Tish Carberry, just push me off the porch backward. It’s
a good bit quicker.”
By four o’clock I had a rash out all over my shoulders and chest, and
my mouth was so full of dust that my teeth felt gritty. I had not cared
particularly about going up to the house, but every few minutes between
three and four the woman had come out, pumped some water, making a
mighty splash, and gone back into the house again. It was more than
human nature could stand. At a quarter after four o’clock I got up from
the baked earth, glared at Tish, looked through Aggie, and walked with
as much dignity as I could muster up the path to the well. There was
a sign hung on it by a string around the nail in the top. It read:
“Water, one dollar a tin. For automobiles, five dollars a bucket.”
The woman came out and pumped some. The water ran cool and clear into
a trough and then spread over the ground in dreadful waste. I could
have lapped it up out of the trough; every bit of skin on me and lining
membrane in me yelled “Water!” and--I had no money with me! The woman
stood and waited, Theodore beside her.
“That’s an outrage,” I fumed. “How dare you put up such a sign! I--I
shall report you!”
“Who to?” she inquired. “I ain’t askin’ you to drink it, am I? It’s my
well, ain’t it?”
“I’ll send the money to you by mail.” I had lost all my pride. “I’ll
come back and pay you.”
“Cash in advance,” said the creature; and, pumping enough into a tin
basin to have cooled me inside and out, she put it down for the dog to
drink!
CHAPTER III
A DIFFERENCE OF OPINION AND A BARGAIN
I have always felt that we did the right thing that night. It was all
very well for Charlie Sands, Tish’s nephew, when he heard the story,
to say: “And they talk about giving women the vote! Why, for sense
they would substitute sentiment; they would buy their opinions at the
department stores along with their bargains, and a little two-penny
love affair could upset the Government!”
Tish was raging.
“It does not matter whether you approve or not, Charlie,” she said
loftily, “as long as our consciences approve.”
“Approve!” He nearly fell back out of his chair. “My dear ladies,
you should every one have been jailed! As for conscience, I’d give a
thousand dollars to have a conscience that would set the seal of its
approval on assault and battery, highway robbery and abduction.”
“The end justifies the means,” I retorted; “and when did you get a
conscience, Charlie Sands?”
“I think I got one Aunt Tish used to have,” he said, and I got up and
went into the house.
Well, I left the dog drinking, to go back, and at that instant I
happened to look at Tish, who was standing on the bank waving her
handkerchief at something in the road. I stepped to the corner of the
house and saw what it was--creeping along a lane we had not noticed was
the blue runabout car. Creeping is the word. It would crawl forward
a dozen feet and stop, and it kept on repeating the performance. But
what puzzled me was a spot of pink, just in front of the car and moving
slowly forward.
At the end of the lane the pink spot hesitated and then turned our way.
Once beyond the hedge, it proved to be the girl with her pink motor
veil. She was walking with her hands in the pockets of her ulster, and
she was limping. About a dozen feet behind her, and stopping every now
and then so as not to overtake her, came the runabout. It was very
peculiar. The young man had his jaws set tight, and as he was staring
at the girl, and as she was staring straight ahead, neither of them saw
us on the bank just above their heads.
The girl--she was a very pretty girl, although streaky just then--had
a tight grip on the Pomeranian. She had it tucked under her arm and it
was wriggling and yelping to be free. Just after the blue machine had
turned the corner the little beast got loose, and with a yelp he dashed
to the car and into the empty seat.
The girl stopped. So did the car. She faced about and the young man
gazed over her head.
Suddenly the girl looked up and saw us, and with a quick glance she
spied the lamps of Tish’s machine around a curve. No one would have
guessed from the front end of the thing that the rear had died in a
gutter.
“Oh!” she said. “Oh, I’m so glad you’re here! Are you going back to
town?”
“We are not going anywhere,” Tish replied shortly, “unless your young
man can help us.”
“He is not my young man,” the girl retorted, with distinctness; “but if
there isn’t very much the matter I daresay he can do something.”
“I am not an automobile expert,” he said, “but I probably can help
a little, as, for instance, stuffing a puncture with rags until we
get back to the city.” The girl flushed. It was evidently a personal
allusion.
“We haven’t any rags,” said Aggie, “and it isn’t a puncture.”
“There are two things we might do,” said the young gentleman as he
eyed our machine critically. “I might go to the nearest telephone and
have help sent out from town, but as it’s almost sunset it’s pretty
late for that; or, with a jack and a little help, we might fix it
ourselves.”
“A jack!” Tish said with scorn. “What kind of a jack--a bootjack or a
jackass? I daresay they have them both at that farmhouse; I know they
have one.”
“A jack--a lever,” explained the young man, beginning to work at the
lock of the tool-box. “Where are you going--to Noblestown?”
“To the lake,” I replied. Tish was fumbling for the keys to the machine
which she kept in a pocket in her petticoat. “We have a summer cottage
there.”
“I’ll make a bargain with you,” he suggested. “The--the--er--young lady
refuses to go back in my car. We--the fact is, we have had a small
difference of opinion, and--she insists on walking home. If I get your
machine in shape, will you take her to the city?”
We would have taken her anywhere short of a planet to get away
ourselves, and that was how it began; for the young gentleman took off
his coat and fell to work immediately. Once, when he had raised the car
on the jack and Tish was holding the ends of the boards that he shoved
under, while Aggie and I pushed, something gave way and the whole thing
settled back with a jerk. Mr. Lewis--that was his name--lifted the
broken fence-rails off Tish and helped her to her feet.
“There’s something almost alive about automobiles occasionally,” he
said. “They are so blamed vicious.”
“If it was alive,” Tish gasped, hunting for her glasses, “I’d kill it.”
But it never occurred to her that she was going to drown it that very
night!
By seven o’clock we had lifted the thing on five fence-rails and the
breadboard sign, and Mr. Lewis announced it was now or never. The girl
had not come near us. She had taken off her veil and smoothed up her
hair, and was busy with a bit of a silver mirror. She was very pretty.
Mr. Lewis got into the car and put on the power. There was a terrible
grinding, but nothing moved. From behind, the three of us shoved, and
Aggie said between gasps that if anything gave way her niece was to
have her amethyst pin.
“Anne!” cried the young gentleman. But Miss Anne was powdering her nose
and we all saw her turn it up.
“Anne!” called the young man who was not her young man, “you’ll have to
help here.”
“Help yourself,” said Anne coolly, and, moistening her finger, she
proceeded to wipe the powder off her eyebrows.
Mr. Lewis shut off the engine, got out of the car and put on his
coat. The girl did not turn her head, but she was watching through
the mirror, for as he picked up his cap she rose lazily, put away her
toilet things and started in our direction.
“What shall I do?” she asked Tish, ignoring him.
“Push,” said Tish sharply--“unless you are too lame.”
“My being lame won’t matter, unless you wish me to kick the machine
out,” retorted the girl sweetly; and with that, the power being on,
she put her brown arms against the car and her shoulder-muscles leaped
up under her thin dress, and before I had planted my feet in the ditch
the car rose, clung for a minute to the edge, and was over into the
road. The girl said nothing. She looked at her hands, stepped out of
the ditch, patronizingly helped Aggie out of it, and swung up the path
with her head in the air. When I saw her again she had taken the sign
off the pump and thrown it in the grass, and was washing her hands
unconcernedly while the woman stood in the door and yapped at her.
If she had a mite of sense she would have gone back to the city in
the blue car and let us go home to bed. But when she had come back
to the road and the young man suggested it--not to her, of course,
but casually to us--she whistled to her dog and started to limp down
the road. You can’t do anything with a girl in that state of mind.
I took her in the tonneau with me, and Aggie, who prefers a love
affair to a scandal and always reads the marriage licenses with the
obituaries--Aggie went in the blue car to keep Mr. Lewis from being
lonely.
CHAPTER IV
THE APPETIZERS AND THE HOTEL BUREAU
We didn’t talk very much. Tish was anxious to show she could drive, for
all she had sat us down in a ditch, and after she took a wrong turning
and stampeded a herd that was being milked in a barnyard, I could not
keep my mind off the road. Once I looked at the girl, and there were
tears running down her nose and dropping into her lap. I gave her my
smelling salts, which I always carry in Tish’s machine, and after a
while she reached over and slid her hand into mine.
“I shouldn’t care if the car went to pieces,” she said. “I’d be happier
dead.”
“If you are always as unpleasant to that young man as you were this
evening, I doubt it,” I snapped.
“Didn’t you ever quarrel with your husband before you were married?”
she demanded, looking at me sideways.
“I thank Heaven I never had a husband,” I replied, and with that she
looked uncomfortable and drew her hand away.
“Is your--friend married?” she inquired. And it took me a moment to
realize that she meant Aggie and that the minx was jealous. Aggie is
fifty, and so thin that when she wears a tailor-made suit she has
to build out with pneumatics. You remember, at the Woman’s Suffrage
Convention, how Mrs. Bailey pinned a badge to Aggie, and how there was
a slow hissing immediately, and Aggie caved in before our very eyes?
Mr. Lewis checked our wild career after a few miles by getting ahead of
us, and we got into town about eight. But after we had left the girl at
her house--an imposing place, with a man at the door and a limousine at
the curb--it was too late to go back home. Aggie and the blue car were
waiting down the street, and they piloted us to the hotel.
Now, Tish belongs to the Ladies’ Relief Corps of the G. A. R., and when
Mr. Lewis said we looked tired and that he was going to order supper
for us all, and three Martinis, Tish said it was all right, although
she didn’t see why we needed guns. It looked like a safe place. But
they were not guns--that’s part of the story.
While we were washing for supper Aggie told us what the quarrel was
about.