hardly go on; and finally, when mama came in and asked what was
the matter, he couldn't speak at all, but got up and stamped
about the room till you thought he was going to have a fit. Then
he sat down again and wiped his eyes and asked as a favor whether
he mightn't have a copy for himself. I said I might possibly
manage it if he would come down with the two hundred and fifty.

Then he got kind of serious again; asked if I didn't know any
cheaper way of getting killed; said I might have appendicitis for
the same money and be fashionable. When pa is in the right humor
he can tease awfully, and that agreement had set him off worse
than I had ever remembered. But I stuck to my bubble and wasn't
to be guyed out of the idea, and finally he lit a cigar and
started, in to bargain.

Pa is the worst old skinflint in Connecticut, and never even gave
me a bag of peanut candy without getting a double equivalent.
First of all, I had to give up Lewis Wentz entirely; I wasn't to
speak to him, or bow or bubble or dance or anything. I put up a
good fight for Lewis Wentz--not that I cared two straws for him,
now that I was going to have an automobile of my own, but just to
head pa off from grasping for more. I didn't want to be eaten
out of house and home, you know, and I guess I am too much pa's
daughter to surrender more than I could help.

It was well I did so, for on top of that I had to promise never
to ride in any car except my own, and then he branched off into
my giving up coffee for breakfast, going to bed at ten, only one
dance a week, wearing flannel in winter, minding my mother more,
and Heaven only knows what all. But I said that Lewis Wentz