“Oodles,” said Philip. “I saw them doing up a little pat for Cathalina in a clean cloth and some oiled paper!”
“If I hadn’t seen those chickens in time up the road—” began Campbell, and the rest started to laugh.
“That fat old hen that decided to cross the road just before we got to her would have been about the right size.”
“Too tough, Campbell,” said Betty, laughing.
“I saw a man just out of Boston,” remarked Philip, “that had chicken sense.”
“What sort of sense is that?” inquired his mother.
“Same kind that Campbell tells about. Concluded he wanted to cross just before we got there, couldn’t have waited till we passed, and I honked and put on the brakes just in time! It’s a sort of disturbance of the mental gearing, I guess. Seeing the machine makes them think of trouble.”
“I remember the incident,” said Mrs. Van Buskirk. “But we have to be ready for things like that. It’s the easiest thing in the world to blame the pedestrian. But I was brought up in the good old days of the carriages that we had up to about ten years ago, and we were trained to protect the people on foot.”
“Hear, hear!” said Philip as he started the car. “Everybody hold on to the lunch. It’s just around the curve in the road, I believe.”
In a few minutes, Philip turned the machine into the shade of some trees and bushes by the roadside, while they looked up a gently rising little hill to a tangled wood and a succession of ravines and hills.