“Pooh! as easy as pie,” declared Patty. “And, anyway, I ran a big touring car once, in France. A big gasoline one. An electric is nothing to that.”
“What do you do to make it go?” asked her father, smiling.
“Oh, you just release the pawl that engages the clutch that holds the lever that sustains the spring that lets go the brake—and there you are!”
“Patty! where did you learn all that jargon?”
“’Tisn’t jargon; it’s sense. And now, my dear ones, will you all help me in my stupendous undertaking? For, when I engage in a contest, I want to win.”
“Is it winning, if you have so much help?” teased her father.
“Yes, it is. The contest is to get the answers to those hundred questions and send them in. It doesn’t matter where you get your answers. You don’t want to enter the contest yourself, do you, Mr. Van Reypen?”
“No, no, fair lady. I would but be thy humble knight, and render such poor assistance as I may.”
“All right, then; right after dinner, we’ll tackle that book of posers.”
And so, for a couple of hours that evening, Patty and Philip Van Reypen exerted the full force of their intellects to unravel the knotty tangles propounded by the little paper-covered book.