"Hmph!" grunts Sampson.
"I'll fall," I says, hopin' to break the embarrassin' silence. "Why not?"
"Shut up!" hisses Alex. "Would you allow us to give you a little spin?" he asks.
"Ha, ha!" pipes the mechanic all of a sudden. "That's a hot one, ain't it?" he grins at Sampson. "Sure, old top, we'll give you a spin!" he says, jabbin' the floor board with his feet. "That's if this boiler will roll. Some of you guys will have to give the motor a little spin, if you want to go away from here. She's gone cold on me again! Gimme a cigarette, will you?"
Alex presented him with a glance that would of froze boilin' oil.
"Step right in, Mister Sampson," he says. "We'll run around the roads here and—"
"We'll do nothing of the sort!" snaps Sampson. "I've got to be at my office by three o'clock and you can drive me down there. In that way I'll be wasting no time and I can see what your car can do through traffic as well as on the road."
"Elegant!" says Alex. "Step right in."
Runyon Q. Sampson steps right in and after gettin' a cigarette from me, the mechanic steps on the gas. We run every bit of a hundred yards across the lawn and then all of a sudden the Gaflooey roadster stops deader than Columbus. The mechanic tried everything from blowin' the horn to crawlin' underneath it again, but they was nothin' stirrin'.
"Well," he says to Alex, finally, "there's only one way we can get away from here now!"