The Adventures of a Suburbanite

by Ellis Parker Butler

“Not a thing!” he repeated firmly. “Not a sound; not one bad symptom. Every—everything was running just as it should—just as they do in other automobiles.”

“Millington!” I said reproachfully.

“It is the truth!” he declared. “I swear it is the truth. Nothing seemed broken or about to break. I could not hear a sound of distress, or a symptom of disorder. Do you wonder I was overcome?”

“Millington,” I said seriously, “this is no light matter. I shall not accuse you of wilfully lying to me, but I know your automobile, and I cannot believe your automobile could proceed four hundred feet without making noises of internal disorder. It is evident to me that your hearing is growing weak; you may be threatened with deafness.” At this Millington seemed to cheer up considerably, for deafness was something he could understand. I proposed that we both get into the automobile again, and I, too, would listen. So we did. It was almost pathetic, it was most pathetic, to see the way Millington looked up into my face to see what verdict I would give when he started the motor.

My verdict was the very worst possible. We ran a block at low speed and I could hear no trouble. We ran a block at second speed, and no distressful noise did I hear. We ran two blocks at high speed, with no noise but the soft purring of motors and machinery. As Millington brought the automobile to a stop we looked at each other aghast. It was true, too true, nothing was the matter with the automobile! It sparked, it ignited, it did everything a perfect automobile should do, just as a perfect automobile should do it. We got out and stared at the automobile silently.

“John,” said Millington at length, “you can easily see that I would not dare to start on a long trip like that to Port Lafayette when my automobile is acting in this unaccountable manner. It would be the most foolhardy recklessness. When this machine is running in an absolutely perfect manner, almost anything may be the matter with it. My own opinion is that a spell has been cast over it, and that it is bewitched.”

“I never knew it to come as far as this without stopping,” I said, “and to come this far without a single annoying noise makes me sure we should not attempt Port Lafayette to-day in this car. I shall take a little jaunt into the country behind my horse, and—”

“But don't go to Port Lafayette,” pleaded Millington. “Perhaps the automobile will be worse to-morrow. If she only develops some of the noises I am familiar with I shall not be afraid of her.”

One of the pleasures of being a suburbanite is that you can have a horse, and one of the pleasures of having a horse is that you keep off the main roads when you go driving, lest the automobiles get you and your horse into an awful mess. In driving up cross roads and down back roads you often run across things you would like to own—things the automobilist never sees—and Isobel and I had heard of a genuine Windsor chair of ancient lineage. I imagine the chair may have been almost as old as our horse. When Mr. Millington told me we could not go to Port Lafayette in his automobile that day, I hurried home and had Mr. Prawley harness Bob, and it was that day, when we were hunting the Windsor chair, that we ran across Chesterfield Whiting. Since Isobel had begun to like suburban life, she liked it as only a convert could, and the moment she saw Chesterfield Whiting she declared we must, by all means, keep a pig, and that Chesterfield Whiting was the pig we must keep.

Personally I was not much in favour of keeping a pig. I like things that pay dividends more frequently. I would not give much for a vegetable garden that had to be planted in the spring, worked all summer, tended all fall, and that only yielded its product in the winter. I prefer a garden that gives a vegetable once in awhile. Mine does that—it gives a vegetable every once in awhile. But a pig is a slow dividend payer.