the Horseless Age for three months, and as for Nelly--anybody
with a four-cylinder tonneau could have torn her from her happy
home. Not that she didn't love Harry tremendously. She was
crazy about him--but crazier for a bubble. It's an infatuation
like any other, only worse, and I guess I was no better than
Nelly myself, for I used to ride regularly with Lewis Wentz and
you know what Lewis Wentz is. And he only had a wheezy old steam
carriage anyway, and sometimes blue flames would leap up all
around you till you felt like a Christian martyr, and his boiler
was always burning out when he'd try to hold my hand instead of
watching the gage. You paid in every kind of way for riding with
Lewis Wentz, and people talked about you besides--but I always
went just the same. Oh, I know I ought to be ashamed to admit
it, and I said to myself every time should be the last; yet he
only had to double-toot at the front door for me to drop
everything and run. This naturally made him awfully forward and
troublesome, not to speak of complicating me with pa, who didn't
approve of him the least bit, and who used to regale me with
little talks beginning: "I would rather see you lying dead in
your coffin," and winding up with, "Now, won't you promise your
poor old dad?" till I was all broken up. But, as I said before,
Lewis Wentz had only to toot for me to forget my old dad and the
coffin and everything.

With only five hundred dollars to go on, Harry and Nelly, of
course, had to look about for more capital; and that was why they
chose me to go in with them. I didn't have any capital except a
rich father, but I suppose they thought that was the same thing.
People are so apt to--though I never found it the same thing at
all. Then, too, Nelly and I were bosom friends, and they