Every time I yanked the lever the snap would let a chortle out of its
puzzle department and fly 400 feet straight through the air.
We were headed for an old ash heap, and my market price had gone down
to three cents a ton.
"Don't jump!" I yelled to my lady friend, but the wind whisked the
first half of my sentence away.
Clara Jane gathered her skirts in a bunch and did a flying leap out
of the crazy cab.
She landed right in the middle of that heap of fresh ashes--and she
made good.
All I could see was a great, gray cloud as I pushed on to the next
stand. About half a mile further down the road the machine concluded
to turn into a farm-yard and give the home folks a treat.
It went through a window in the barn, out through a skylight, did the
hula dance over the lawn, and then fell in the well and stayed there,
panting as though its little gas-engine heart would break.
When I limped back to Clara Jane the storm signals were flying.
She was away out on the ice.
The feather boa looked like the hawser on a canal boat, and the ashes
had changed the pattern of her dress goods.
We were stingy talkers on the road home.
It will take me two years to square myself.
Hereafter, me to the trolley!
Me to the saucy stage coach when I'm due to gallop away and away!
No more benzine buggies for yours sincerely!
Never again for the bughouse barouche! Not me.
I have only one consolation: The chap we pried off the bicycle was
Clarence Edgerton Montrose.
It will take him about three years and two months to find all the
spots that foolish-wagon knocked off him.
Meantime, I hope to be Clara Jane's sugar buyer again.