"How can I tell Hairy and Nelly you're such a pig?" I said, half
crying.

"I'm not a pig," said pa, "though now I'm the next thing to it
--an automobilist. And, anyway, it's a straight business
proposition. Take it or leave it."

"Pa," I said, "if you'll stay out of it altogether, I'll take it
back about coffee for breakfast and not minding mama more."

"It's too late," he returned. "I've got the automobile fever now
myself. For two cents I'd buy out Harry and Nelly and keep the
red bug in the family."

Certainly pa has the most ingenious mind of anybody I know. He
ought to have been in the Spanish Inquisition just to think up
new torments. I don't wonder they like him so well on the Stock
Exchange: he probably initiates new members and makes them ride
goats. Anyway, nothing could change him about the automobile,
and I closed the deal quick, lest he might carry out his other
plan and absorb seventy-five per cent of the syndicate's stock.


The Fearless was even prettier than its picture, and there wasn't
a runabout in town in the same class with it. Then our lessons
began, which we took separately, because there was only room on
the seat for two, and nobody wanted the other members of the
syndicate to see him running into the curb or trying to climb
trees. The agent turned out less like Henry Ward Beecher than