Altogether, you wouldn't have known us for the same three people,
we had all grown so horrid and changed and mercenary. Nelly was
hankering to get married, while I was crazy to put in a radiator
with a forced water circulation (ours was a silly old kind that
boiled on you), and Harry wobbled one way and the other as though
he couldn't make up his mind--sometimes agreeing with her, and
sometimes frantic for a radiator. It looked as though the
Fearless was going to make it a lifetime engagement, and Harry,
said ruefully that their marriage was not only, made in Heaven,
but would probably take place there. I should have felt sorrier
for them if they hadn't been so horrid to me about it. From the
way they talked, you'd think I had started the syndicate idea
myself and had lured them into it against their own better
judgment. They were nasty about pa, too, and said he was acting
dishonorably with his blank days, and that as a new machine
always had to be broken in and notoriously cost more for repairs
the first year than ever afterward, he was meanly benefiting
himself at our expense. Harry called it pa's "unearned
increment" and seemed to think it was an outrage.

They struck a whole row of troubles about this time,
too--stripping a gear, losing a front wheel on the main street
and winding up by fracturing the whole transmission into finders.
Nelly would hardly speak to me on the street, and the Gasoline
Child told me they would be cheaply out of it at eighty dollars.
Pa was the only person who didn't share the general depression.
In fact, he never seemed to be so happy as when the car was
stripped in the shop and sure to stay there. He used to go
around there occasionally and tell them they needn't hurry--and
they didn't!