The breakfast bell rang twice, but I did not hear it. Little Sister had
to come to awaken me. They were all at breakfast when I came down,
Thesis, the baby, and the boy.
"How soundly you must have slept!" she said, smiling. "I forgot to tell
you that the dear little fellow sometimes walks in his sleep; and do you
know, this morning I found him fast asleep on the first stair landing?"
Little Sister, however, was wiser. She looked at me in her quaint way
and said, funnily: "Uncle Jack, you look real tired; like you'd dropped
your candy last night, sure enough."
*CHAPTER IV*
*MY FIRST AUTOMOBILE*
It was one of those beautiful December mornings when the frost had hung
his laces everywhere, and a hunting fever fairly burned within me. It
comes over me at times, and then--well--I run away and obey it.
As though through mental telepathy my telephone rang. "Hello! Is that
you, Jack? This is Horace Raymond, your old neighbor. I'm in town
to-day. Ever see such a pretty day? Let's take a quail hunt."
"Glad to hear your voice again, Horace. No, I never did. I am ready
for a quail hunt any day except Sunday. Never had any luck on Sunday at
all."
"I have just bought a new automobile," he went on, "and I want to try it
out to-day. I will be right out in a hurry."
"Oh, say, Horace, now that's another thing. I have never ridden in one
of those things; they aren't bred right, don't like their gait; and
loving horses as I do, confound them, I've got religious scruples on the
subject. Now you come out here in the thing and I will have the little
mare and the buggy hooked up, a good lunch and the setters in, and--"
I heard him laugh derisively. "Nonsense! Why, man, we're going way out
beyond you on the Lebanon pike--ten miles--and we want to go in a hurry.
I'll have you there in thirty minutes. Now the little mare would be
fully an hour making it, and then dead tired for a long drive back, with
a pointer and two setters crowding us out of the buggy. I'll be at your
place in twenty minutes with two dogs--have that champion pointer of
yours ready." And he rang off.
I hung up the receiver. "I guess I'm up against it," I said, as I went
off to put on my hunting clothes, "but if it gets out on me I can prove
I didn't want to do it. Besides, this new hunting cap I've just bought
would make Moses look like a Turk in Hades; nobody would recognize me."
"Jack, I'm ashamed of you," said Eloise with becoming scorn. "What
would Satan say? But of course, if you are going in that thing, and
happen to bag any birds--which I know you'll never do--please remember
the luncheon I am going to give to-morrow, dear. But you'll never get
them, going back on your raising like that--see if you do!"
"No, see if you do," said one of the twins, now aged four.