“Garage! Goodness!” laughed Janice. “You talk as though it was something that the cat had brought in! ‘Garbage,’ indeed! But how nice of you and Uncle Jason to build it!”
“Dad kicked,” sniffed Marty. “Not about building the shack for you,” he hastened to add; “but because Uncle Brocky was wasting his money to buy one o’ them buzz-carts. But Marm—well, you know, Marm’s getting to be a reg’lar sport.”
“Oh, Marty!”
“Sure she is. She’s a dif’rent woman since she has had your board money to spend. She told Dad that she had sent to a catalogue house out west for an ortermobile coat and veil, and all the fixin’s, and she was just as anxious to wear ’em as she could be.”
“I knew how poor Aunt ’Mira was disappointed,” sighed Janice, “when I had to give up the idea of buying a car.”
“Yep,” agreed Marty. “She kalkerlates to make the other wimmen on Hillside Avenue—if not all over Polktown—sit up and take notice when she ’pears out in them new duds.”
“But it’s a mystery to me,” said Janice slowly, and more to herself than to her cousin, “just how Daddy knew I wanted a car so, and still couldn’t buy one. It’s just as though he read my mind.”
She failed to see Marty’s face. That lad looked as though he knew a whole lot that he was not ready or willing to divulge.
“Now, Miss Janice!” puffed Walky Dexter, the new car being run on the dock, “what do you kalkerlate’s to be done with this here do-funny? Whoa, Josephus! if that critter ever turns around and sees this thing, I dunno what he will do!”
“I know what he’ll do,” scoffed Marty. “He’ll wink his other eye; he winked the first one half an hour ago and hasn’t woke up since.”