Down the road ahead of them a man and his wife were quarreling. They were so much in earnest that they did not hear the machine sneaking swiftly up on rubber shoes.
As the Benzine Buggy was about to fall upon the quarreling man and wife Uncle Gilbert squeezed a couple of hoarse "Toot toots" from the horn, whereupon the woman in the road threw up both hands and leaped for the man. The man threw up both feet and leaped for the fence.
The last Aunt Miranda saw of them they were entering their modest home neck and neck, and the divorce court lost a bet.
Then the machine began to climb a telegraph pole, and as it ran down the other side Aunt Miranda wanted to know for the tenth time if it would explode.
"How did John tell you to handle it?" she shrieked, as the Rowdy Cart bit its way through a stone fence and began to dance a two-step over a strange man's lawn.
"The only way to handle this infernal machine is to soak it in water," yelled Uncle Gilbert as they hit the main road again.
"I don't see what family pride has to do with it; there isn't a soul looking," moaned Aunt Miranda.
"Oh if I could only be arrested for fast riding and get this thing stopped," wailed Uncle Gilbert as they headed for the river.
"Let me out, let me out," pleaded Aunt Miranda, and the machine seemed to hear her, for it certainly obliged the lady.
I found out afterwards that in order to make good with Aunt Miranda the machine jumped up in the air and turned a double handspring, during the course of which friend Uncle and his wife fell out and landed in the most generous inclined mud puddle in that part of the state.