The old gentleman flushed angrily and the lady laughed, a delightful laugh of girlish amusement. The Watermelon smiled.
"We are a Packard," explained the old gentleman stiffly.
"Are you?" said the Watermelon, wholly unimpressed by the information. "Well, I ain't a Thomas."
"I called you by the name of your car," said the old gentleman. "I surmise that you have not had one long."
"I don't feel as if I owned it now," the Watermelon admitted.
The old gentleman smiled genially. Anything was pardonable but flippancy in response to his own utterances, none of which was ever lacking in weight or importance. The young man, it seemed, was only ignorant.
"Are you in trouble?" he asked with a gleam of anticipated pleasure in his eyes. To tinker with a machine and accomplish nothing but a crying need for an immediate bath was his dearest recreation.
"No," said the Watermelon, thinking of the three, ten, in the pocket of the new clothes and of the lonely swimmer. "I ain't—yet."
The old gentleman was vaguely disappointed. "Can you run your machine?" he asked, hopeful of a reply in the negative.
"No," said the Watermelon.