“Yes, I noticed, Eddie; but it looked to me more like a man than a job. How do you think we’d come out if I gave you a stroke and a half a hole?”
Eddie was too perturbed even to answer.
In the meantime, Crystal was spinning along Bellevue Avenue, forgetting to bow to her friends, and wondering why the car was going so badly until, her eye falling on the speedometer, she noticed that she was doing a mild thirty-five miles an hour. Sooner, therefore, than the law allowed, she reached a small park that surrounds a statue of Perry, and there she picked up a passenger.
Ben got in and shut the little door almost before she brought the car to a standstill.
“When you were little,” he said, “did you ever imagine something wonderful that might happen—like the door’s opening and a delegation coming to elect you captain of the baseball team, or whatever is a little girl’s equivalent of that—and keep on imagining it and imagining it, until it seemed as if it really were going to happen? Well, I have been standing here saying to myself, Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Crystal should come in a little blue car and take me to drive? And, by Heaven! you’ll never believe me, but she actually did.”
“I’ll Be There in Five Minutes, In a Little Blue Car”
“Tell me everything you’ve done since I saw you,” she answered.
“I haven’t done anything but think about you. Oh yes, I have, too. I’ve reappraised the universe. You see, you’ve just made me a present of a brand-new world, and I’ve been pretty busy, I can tell you, untying the string and unwrapping the paper, and bless me, Crystal, it looks like a mighty fine present so far.”