“Please let me run it, won’t you?” she asked.
Whereupon the length of time it took Frank to permit her to take the wheel in hand and assume charge of their path was measured by the speed with which he could slip to one side and let her get into the pit.
“Girls, isn’t this fine? I’m going to capture that port yonder. Fire when you are ready, men!”
Minnie, a driver of an automobile herself, fearless of mechanical things, swung the Rocket far out of the midstream and made a run around the little island standing in the center of the Harrapin’s course just opposite the picnic grounds.
The crowd on shore had returned to the grounds, for, as Frank learned afterward, they too, had been caught in the rain and had sought shelter under benches, inside of cars and wagons, and under doubled cloths which had been spread as tents.
Some one from the picnic grounds noticed that Minnie was steering the Rocket, and sent the news around. This very largely accounted for the interest exhibited by all of them in gathering along the little bluff of the shore, watching.
Minnie took the speedy little craft gracefully around the island, making a three-quarter turn, and then dashed straight for shore.
Frank gave her directions to go slightly upstream before making the turn down again to the grounds, and then cut off the engine.
“It must be truthfully said,” laughed Lanky, as he watched, “that Frank’s nerve for one thing and his fear of hurting Minnie’s feeling for another thing, causes him to allow her to make the landing.”
But it was smoothly done, a feat of which Minnie herself was not sure when she essayed it, but which she was determined to try now that she had the wheel.