Will Hamilton explained the car and went back and explained it again. His customers were wide-eyed, interested as terriers, cooperative, and did not interrupt, but as he began for the third time Will saw that he was getting no place.

“Tell you what!” he said brightly. “You see, this isn’t my line. I wanted you to see her and listen to her before I made delivery. Now, I’ll go back to town and tomorrow I’ll send out this car with an expert, and he’ll tell you more in a few minutes than I could in a week. But I just wanted you to see her.”

Will had forgotten some of his own instructions. He cranked for a while and then borrowed a buggy and a horse from Adam and drove to town, but he promised to have a mechanic out the next day.

[2]

There was no question of sending the twins to school the next day. They wouldn’t have gone. The Ford stood tall and aloof and dour under the oak tree where Will had stopped it. Its new owners circled it and touched it now and then, the way you touch a dangerous horse to soothe him.

Lee said, “I wonder whether I’ll ever get used to it.”

“Of course you will,” Adam said without conviction. “Why, you’ll be driving all over the county first thing you know.”

“I will try to understand it,” Lee said. “But drive it I will not.”

The boys made little dives in and out, to touch something and leap away. “What’s this do-hickey, Father?”

“Get your hands off that.”

“But what’s it for?”

“I don’t know, but don’t touch it. You don’t know what might happen.”

“Didn’t the man tell you?”

“I don’t remember what he said. Now you boys get away from it or I’ll have to send you to school. Do you hear me, Cal? Don’t open that.”

They had got up and were ready very early in the morning. By eleven o’clock hysterical nervousness had set in. The mechanic drove up in the buggy in time for the midday meal. He wore box-toed shoes and Duchess trousers and his wide square coat came almost to his knees. Beside him in the buggy was a satchel in which were his working clothes and tools. He was nineteen and chewed tobacco, and from his three months in automobile school he had gained a great though weary contempt for human beings. He spat and threw the lines at Lee.

“Put this hayburner away,” he said, “How do you tell which end is the front?” And he climbed down from the rig as an ambassador comes out of a state train. He sneered at the twins and turned coldly to Adam, “I hope I’m in time for dinner,” he said.

Lee and Adam stared at each other. They had forgotten about the noonday meal.

In the house the godling grudgingly accepted cheese and bread and cold meat and pie and coffee and a piece of chocolate cake.