“Aw, g’wan, Janice,” he said, trying to fight her off.
But she was as strong as he. She held his arms tightly and implanted a kiss on one of his freckled cheeks and then on the other.
“There, sir!” she declared. “You are a most blessed boy. I can’t approve of your tattling to Daddy; but you meant well, and I certainly am crazy about that car! Let’s go out and look at it again, Marty.”
“All right,” he agreed, vigorously rubbing his cheek with his coat sleeve. “But no more kissing. I’m no girlie-boy.”
They viewed the car by lantern light; and in the night when Janice chanced to wake up, she was almost tempted to run out in her night clothes, unlock the garage door, and make sure that the automobile was a reality!
Frank Bowman came the next afternoon to take out the car and give Janice her first lesson in its management. They went up on the Upper Road, so called, and that was where Elder Concannon lived.
The Elder had built up and had ministered unto the flock of the Polktown Union Church for a great many years. Now superannuated, and grown moderately wealthy in this world’s goods, he was not only a power in the church, but influential in the town’s politics as well.
A new idea to the Elder was usually like a red rag to a bull. Improvement and change he sniffed from afar and when the smell of it was in his nostrils, as Walky Dexter irreverently expressed it, “pawed the ground like a he-goat!”
On several occasions Elder Concannon had opposed changes suggested by Janice, or in which she was deeply interested. Of late, however, he had begun to think “that Day girl” not quite so flighty as he had at first maintained.
The old gentleman—a grim-faced, prophet-like figure—sat on his porch as the new car went by his house on the Upper Road. He started when he saw Janice, her hair flying, her face flushed, and all her youthful eagerness displayed in attitude and countenance as she clung to the wheel and felt the throb of the engine. Frank sat close to her, guiding the car in reality, but showing her from minute to minute just what pedal or lever to use, and how to manage the wheel.