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 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 comer 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 comer 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 toolbox. "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
