CHAPTER IIISOMETHING NEW
Theusual loiterers on the dock were amused to see Janice Day’s eagerness; but she did not care. Walky Dexter hailed her cheerfully:
“I say, Janice, ye won’t miss the boat; don’t be in such a ’tarnal hurry. She’s going to stop long enough to take you aboard, I guess.”
“I don’t want to go aboard, Walky,” she declared, stopping breathlessly beside his wagon, and laying a kind hand on the bony hip of Josephus. “But I believe there is something aboard that belongs to me—Oh! I can hardly wait to find out if it’s mine.”
“If what’s yours, Janice?” asked the man, with waking interest.
“That! Right there on the deck! It’s partly covered with canvas, but you can see what it is,” cried Janice.
“Jefers pelters!” ejaculated the astonished Walkworthy, tipping back his cap and scratching his head to stir his slow wits. “You don’t meanthat contraption with all the shiny brass and leather, and them other dinguses—lamps, d’ye call ’em?—down front, with an in-gine cowcatcher, into the bargain?”
“You know very well that’s a four-passenger automobile, Walky!” she cried. “And they’ve got it ready to run ashore here. It must be for me! And Daddy sent it!”
“Well, Ma’am!” exclaimed the driver of Josephus, “it’ll be sure something new in Polktown. We ain’t never had one o’ them things here before—not to stop, at any rate. Us’ally,” added Mr. Dexter, with a wink, “they go through Polktown like what the Chinaman said about his ’sperience slidin’ down hill on the bobsled: ‘Whiz-z-z! Walkee back!’
“I don’t s’pose some o’ them ortermobilists even see Polktown as they go through. Sometimes I meet one o’ them—there’s a cloud of dust—somethin’ squawks like a frightened hen—Josephus gits up on his hind legs—and it’s all over! Some day I ’spect Josephus is goin’ to ditch me because of one of ’em. And if this one is going to be right here in town——”
He had climbed lazily down from his seat while he rambled on. Now Janice seized his arm and shook it a little.
“Oh, Talkworthy!” she said, giving him the nickname she often used when he was more thanusually garrulous. “Do, do find out if that’s for me!”
The man on the dock had already caught and fastened the two hawsers. The oldConstance Colfaxsnuggled in close to the dock. The broad gangplank was being run ashore and the deckhands stood ready with laden trucks to run freight and express over it.
The captain of the steamboat came to lean upon the landward rail. “Say,” he asked of the assembled spectators, “anybody know ‘J. Day’? Got something here for him. He’ll hafter come and run it off the boat, or tow it off, or something. Can’t let him git up steam in the thing while she stands on our deck.”
Janice could scarcely keep from dancing up and down. She clasped her hands and cried fervently under her breath: “Oh, Daddy! Just the most delightful thing you could have sent me!”
Walky took charge at once. “That ain’t no man—‘J. Day’ ain’t, Cap,” he drawled. “She’s this young lady here,” and he jerked an identifying thumb toward Janice. “Don’t that merchine run of itself? Ain’t there no power in it?”
“Power enough,” grunted the steamboat captain. “But it’s ag’in rules to run it ashore under her own power. Hitch a line to her and tackle that old crow-bait of yourn to her, Walky. You kin snake her ashore in a minute.”
“What! Josephus?” demanded the startled Walky. “My mercy! if Josephus should see that contraption tackled to him, I dunno what he would do!”
“He might move faster than a toad funeral for once in his life, eh, Walky?” suggested one of the interested spectators on the dock, and a laugh was raised against the talkative expressman.
“No, sir,” said Walky firmly; “we’ll just put Josephus out of the question,ifyou please. If there ain’t men enough here to run this young lady’s ortermobile ashore——”
Several came forward. Janice caught sight of Marty standing aside, grinning delightedly. She made a rush for him while the men were pushing the car ashore.
“Marty Day!” she exclaimed, seizing that youth by the shoulders. “You knew all about this—you did! you did!”
“Ouch! Ouch!” yelled Marty, in mock injury. “Don’t be so rough with a feller! Have a heart, Janice!”
“You knew about it—you did!” reiterated Janice.
“Oh! Uncle Brocky let us know it was coming,” said the boy, in an off-hand way. “That’s why Dad and me got busy on the gar-bage, Janice.”
“Garage!Goodness!” laughed Janice. “You talk as though it was something that the cat hadbrought in! ‘Garbage,’ indeed! But how nice of you and Uncle Jason to build it!”
“Dad kicked,” sniffed Marty. “Not about building the shack for you,” he hastened to add; “but because Uncle Brocky was wasting his money to buy one o’ them buzz-carts. But Marm—well, you know, Marm’s getting to be a reg’lar sport.”
“Oh, Marty!”
“Sure she is. She’s a dif’rent woman since she has had your board money to spend. She told Dad that she had sent to a catalogue house out west for an ortermobile coat and veil, and all the fixin’s, and she was just as anxious to wear ’em as she could be.”
“I knew how poor Aunt ’Mira was disappointed,” sighed Janice, “when I had to give up the idea of buying a car.”
“Yep,” agreed Marty. “She kalkerlates to make the other wimmen on Hillside Avenue—if not all over Polktown—sit up and take notice when she ’pears out in them new duds.”
“But it’s a mystery to me,” said Janice slowly, and more to herself than to her cousin, “just how Daddy knew I wanted a car so, and still couldn’t buy one. It’s just as though he read my mind.”
She failed to see Marty’s face. That lad looked as though he knew a whole lot that he was not ready or willing to divulge.
“Now, Miss Janice!” puffed Walky Dexter, thenew car being run on the dock, “what do you kalkerlate’s to be done with this here do-funny? Whoa, Josephus! if that critter ever turns around and sees this thing, I dunno what he will do!”
“I know what he’ll do,” scoffed Marty. “He’ll wink his other eye; he winked the first one half an hour ago and hasn’t woke up since.”
“Now, now! you be more respectful to old age, sonny,” advised Mr. Dexter. “The old hoss bears an honorable name——”
“And has borne it a long time,” finished Marty. “Do you re’lly think, Walky, that a stick of dynamite would startle him?”
But Janice was not interested in this rough and ready repartee. She was wondering about the new car. The canvas had been stripped off and she looked all about it, admiring its shiny surface, the wonderful brass trimmings, and the mechanism that was in sight.
She knew something about a car. One of her friends in Greensboro had owned a similar vehicle, and she had often ridden in it, and had learned some of the technical terms, and what the parts of the machine looked like. But that had been more than two years before and, of course, at that time Janice had been too young to get a license and had not learned to run the car.
She longed to jump in behind the wheel and send the beautiful machine spinning up the long, easy hillinto Polktown, and up Hillside Avenue to the old Day house.
“But there isn’t any gasoline in it, of course,” she sighed. “We can’t run it up ourselves. And Walky’s old horse would never be able to drag it up the hill.”
“I’ll go git our team and haul it up,” proposed Marty, with an uncanny eagerness to do this favor.
“No,” said Janice. “It must go home under its own power. We won’t insult such a beautiful car by towing it like a derelict.”
“Many a time I ’xpect will I find ye broke down on the road, Miss Janice,” prophesied Walky, “and glad to have Josephus give first aid to the injured.”
“Don’t you believe it!” cried Janice. “I’m going to learn all about this car, and how to drive it and repair it. You wait and see!”
“But how?” demanded Marty, grinning. “Going to take a correspondence school course and learn to be a shuffer?”
“Oh!” cried Janice. “It has a self-starter. Why! it’s just the very up-to-datest thing!”
“Crackey! I’m going to run and git some gasoline. They keep it up the street. Let’s fill the tank, Janice, start her going, and try to work our passage up to the house.”
“Oh, Marty! I hardly dare,” gasped the girl, yet tempted sorely to try his desperate suggestion.
“Get the gasoline, anyway,” urged Marty.
“All right,” she agreed, and took out her purse and handed him some money. “You get it, Marty. But, after we get the engine to running, I don’t see what we shall do. Isn’t there a single person in town who knows how to manage an automobile?”
“I say!” exclaimed Marty suddenly. “I bet I know just the feller.”
“Who is that?” queried his cousin anxiously.
But the boy was off with a yell and without other reply. Meanwhile Walky and other willing workers had rolled the machine into the freight shed, and there it stood, the cynosure of the spectators in general.
The comments upon the first auto to be owned in Polktown would have amused Janice at another time. But many of them escaped her ear because she was so much interested herself in the machine and how she was going to get it home. But she did hear Mel Parraday observe:
“I opine one o’ them things is mighty handy to have around. I allus look at the pictures of ’em in the advertising pages of the magazines them drummers leave up to theho-tel. If the Inn makes me enough out o’ the boarders this summer, I kalkerlate to have me one.”
“What for, Mel?” drawled Lem Pinney of the hotel-keeper. “You ain’t got no more use for an ortermobile than a cat has for two tails, I vow!”
“Save payin’ Walky, here, for carting stuff up totheho-tel,” grinned Parraday. “And me and the old woman can ride to church in it on Sundays.”
“Go to church in it!” scoffed Walky. “If old Elder Concannon ever seen one o’ them things stop in front of the Union Church, he’d throw a conniption right there, in his best suit. He calls ’em ‘devil wagons,’ and says they was prophesied against in the Book of Daniel.”
Just then Marty reappeared, coming down the long dock. He was staggering under the weight of a five-gallon gasoline can. Beside him walked the tall, well-set-up young man whom Janice had seen with her cousin before.
“Oh, dear me!” thought she, with a little flutter. “That must be the civil engineer, Frank Bowman. Marty is bringing him right here! Perhaps he knows how to run an automobile.”