CHAPTER V
“THE WORLD’S RUN MAD!”
The approach to the old Day house was a triumph. Not only Aunt ’Mira and Uncle Jason, but most of the neighbors were out to see the homecoming of Janice’s new car.
Molly, the brindle cow, put her head over the corner of the pasture fence, caught sight of the car and its glistening brass work and dust-guard flashing in the sunlight, and immediately set out for the upper end of the pasture, tail up and head down.
The dogs barked a welcome; the sorrel ponies put their heads out of their stable windows and snorted disapproval; and the Day tabby cat, with its tail twice as big as usual, went up the poplar tree in fright as Frank turned the car into the lane.
“My goodness me!” gasped Aunt Almira, coming down the porch steps in her eagerness to view the car. “Ain’t that the han’somest thing you ever see? My soul and body, Janice! I am glad I spent my money for them ortermobile fixin’s, after all!”
Janice introduced Frank Bowman.
“And he knows all about the car and is kind enough to offer to teach me to run it. If you approve, Auntie,” the girl added.
“There! that’s neighborly, I declare for’t!” agreed Mrs. Day, wiping her hand on her apron before she offered it to the young engineer. “Sure, I’ve no objection. I expect to l’arn to run it myself after a while.”
“Good Land of Goshen, Almiry!” gasped Uncle Jason. “You’d look harnsome sittin’ up there a-drivin’ that contraption.”
“Why not, I’d like to know?” demanded she, bridling at his sarcasm.
“One thing sure,” grunted her husband, after a moment. “You can’t make that kind of a spectacle of yourself, even if ye want to.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause you couldn’t git in behind that wheel in the fust place to steer it. You’re too fat.”
Janice tried to smooth over this very plain speaking on her uncle’s part by introducing him to Frank Bowman.
“Yes,” put in Marty. “He’s the chap I was telling you about. He’s working for the V. C. Railroad Company, and is going to build the bridge over Mr. Cross Moore’s brook.”
“Glad to meet you, Mr. Day,” said the young man, shaking the farmer’s hardened hand. “Marty and I are already great friends and your niece is kind enough to call me an acquaintance. Hope we shall know each other better.”
“It’ll be your fault, young man, if we don’t. You’ll be welcome here when you fancy coming. Won’t he, Almiry?”
“That’s right,” agreed Mrs. Day heartily.
Janice saw that both her uncle and aunt were much taken with the manner and good looks of Frank Bowman. She was glad of this for she did so want to learn all about running the new Kremlin car—and in a hurry!
Frank backed the automobile around and they rolled it into the new shed. The latter made a very good garage, indeed; and although Uncle Jason saw fit to consider the automobile an extravagance on his brother’s part, Janice kissed him soundly for his work in preparing for the reception of the gift.
The young civil engineer promised to come the very next day to give Janice her first lesson in the actual handling of the car, and then took his leave.
“Mighty smart-actin’ young feller,” commented Uncle Jason. “Got some git-up-an’-git about him—don’t ye say so, Almiry?”
“He’s got such pretty eyes!” exclaimed Mrs. Day. “And he says he ain’t never had a mother since he was nine years old. Wouldn’t his mother be proud of him now?”
“I’ve heard you say, ‘Handsome is as handsome does,’ Aunt ’Mira,” said Janice roguishly. “He’s too new a friend to praise yet.”
“Huh!” said Marty. “He got us home in the buzz-cart, didn’t he? Shows he’s a good feller. But crackey! wouldn’t it make him sore if he knew Marm said he had pretty eyes?” and the boy giggled.
Janice was off in a brown study again. She was wondering, wondering, wondering! And the burden of her surmises and suspicions was: “How did Daddy know I still wanted the car, when he had once sent me money to get it? He must know about little Lottie.”
Yet she had been very careful to say nothing in her letters regarding her help toward paying for the operation that had aided Lottie Drugg to see again. Janice Day had never hoped “to have her cake and eat it, too.”
Through supper that evening she watched Marty closely. He began to notice her observation and wriggled under it. No other word could just express his fidgeting.
“Do keep still, Marty,” begged his mother. “Can’t you be quiet in your chair long enough to eat a meal of victuals?”
“Well! what’s Janice looking at me like that for?” grumbled the boy. “I ain’t a penny peep-show; am I, now?”
“Nobody would give a penny to look at you,” said his father tartly. “You’re like an eel.”
“Marty!” exclaimed Janice suddenly, “when was it you wrote last to my father? I forget.”
“It was right after Christmas, wasn’t it, sonny?” suggested his mother, “when you thanked Mr. Broxton Day for the present of the gold piece?”
“Aw, I wrote him since then,” said Marty cheerfully. “You know, he sent me a rattlesnake skin for a band to my hat.”
“That was in May,” Janice said quickly. “Did you thank him for that, too?”
“Yep,” returned the boy.
“And that was after I’d spent my thousand dollars—or most of it,” said Janice softly. “It was so thoughtful of Daddy to notice that I didn’t spend my money for a car.”
“Huh! why wouldn’t he notice it?” retorted Marty, dipping half a doughnut in his tea and then eating it quickly so as not to lose any of the soft confection.
“I told him I’d got something different—and he never even asked me what it was,” continued Janice.
Marty began to giggle.
“Look out, young man!” warned his father, “you’ll choke yourself again.”
“He giggles every time I speak about Daddy’s giving me the car and asking no questions,” said Janice reflectively. “I smell a mouse, Marty! You told!”
“Told what? I never!” demanded and denied the boy in a breath, but all one broad grin.
“You wrote Daddy about my—my helping Lottie Drugg.”
“Aw, shucks! You don’t know so.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Who told you?” demanded Marty.
“A boy.”
“What boy?” cried Marty, in flushed wrath. “I didn’t tell no boy.”
“You’re a boy yourself, Marty,” laughed Janice gaily, and with shining eyes, “and you have just told me!”
“Aw, you cheated,” grumbled Marty, very red in the face.
“What did you do it for?” asked Janice.
“Well! he ought to know that you didn’t do anything foolish with that money. I don’t care what you say, Dad,” he added, bristling up. “Poor little Lottie Drugg tumbled down the cellar steps and might have been killed. By crackey! I’d have give money myself to have her see. Yes, I would.”
Then he suddenly grinned slily across the table at Janice, and added: “B’sides, I wanted to run a car myself. I thought he’d buy you one if he knew what you’d done with your money.”
“I don’t believe you were so selfish in your thought, Marty,” said the girl, her eyes misty. “I can’t scold you, now it’s done, and the car is here, but I am going to punish you just the same.”
She jumped up from her seat and started around the table. Marty looked scared for a moment. She bore down on him with such plain intention, however, that he began to grin sheepishly again.
“Aw, g’wan, Janice,” he said, trying to fight her off.
But she was as strong as he. She held his arms tightly and implanted a kiss on one of his freckled cheeks and then on the other.
“There, sir!” she declared. “You are a most blessed boy. I can’t approve of your tattling to Daddy; but you meant well, and I certainly am crazy about that car! Let’s go out and look at it again, Marty.”
“All right,” he agreed, vigorously rubbing his cheek with his coat sleeve. “But no more kissing. I’m no girlie-boy.”
They viewed the car by lantern light; and in the night when Janice chanced to wake up, she was almost tempted to run out in her night clothes, unlock the garage door, and make sure that the automobile was a reality!
Frank Bowman came the next afternoon to take out the car and give Janice her first lesson in its management. They went up on the Upper Road, so called, and that was where Elder Concannon lived.
The Elder had built up and had ministered unto the flock of the Polktown Union Church for a great many years. Now superannuated, and grown moderately wealthy in this world’s goods, he was not only a power in the church, but influential in the town’s politics as well.
A new idea to the Elder was usually like a red rag to a bull. Improvement and change he sniffed from afar and when the smell of it was in his nostrils, as Walky Dexter irreverently expressed it, “pawed the ground like a he-goat!”
On several occasions Elder Concannon had opposed changes suggested by Janice, or in which she was deeply interested. Of late, however, he had begun to think “that Day girl” not quite so flighty as he had at first maintained.
The old gentleman—a grim-faced, prophet-like figure—sat on his porch as the new car went by his house on the Upper Road. He started when he saw Janice, her hair flying, her face flushed, and all her youthful eagerness displayed in attitude and countenance as she clung to the wheel and felt the throb of the engine. Frank sat close to her, guiding the car in reality, but showing her from minute to minute just what pedal or lever to use, and how to manage the wheel.
Coming back, the automobilists saw Elder Concannon down at his front gate. He raised his hand commandingly as the car drew near, and Frank, with an amused glance at Janice, brought the Kremlin to an easy stop.
“I’m surprised to see you in one of those ungodly things, Janice,” said the old man seriously. “Many who ride in them are led into wrong ways. They are an invention of the devil, I verily believe.”
“Oh, Mr. Concannon!” cried Janice. “I hope you don’t really believe that! You will have to take a ride in this one sometime and give it a trial. You see, it belongs to me. Daddy just sent it as a present. I am learning to run it.”
“You surprise me, Janice!” repeated the Elder, frowning. “The world has run mad over those things. I am sorry that your father was so thoughtless as to spend good money for one.”
“Don’t say that, please,” begged Janice again. “Daddy did it to give me pleasure, and I shall want to give other people pleasure with it, too. I hope you will take a ride in it with me before you utterly condemn the car. Do!”
“I have observed them on the road, and the reckless manner in which people who ride in them run the machines,” said the old gentleman. “I disapprove—thoroughly and irrevocably! Had I my way I would get a law through the Legislature refusing automobilists the use of the public highways. I scarcely dare drive from here to Middletown because of the numbers of those devil wagons on the Middletown Pike.”
“But you don’t know how quietly and easily this runs, sir,” put in Frank Bowman, with perfect gravity. “Like every good thing, reckless and foolish people misuse it. You would not condemn the printing press because bad books are printed on it as well as good?”
“Sophistry—sophistry, young man,” croaked the Elder. “I am sorry to see two young people like you and Janice engaged in such pleasures. The world’s run mad after these things, I tell you!” and he turned about, shaking his head warningly, and retired again to his porch.
Yet Janice and Frank noticed that, as they speeded up and down the road for the next hour, Elder Concannon watched the running of the car with increasing interest.
And it did run beautifully! Janice quickly learned the uses of the guiding wheel, the switch, the pedals and levers, how to start the car, and all that. Frank pronounced her an apt pupil and declared all she needed was practice to make her a proficient chauffeur.