“Try us,” said Tommie. “We’re only a few.”
At this juncture, all former passengers descended from the car.
“Yours is the route we have been planning,” said the long-haired young man.
All the young men boarded the car, singing loudly a song about their dear old something or other.
Thomas advanced to the front platform, and 809 gathered herself and hit the irons per record. She passed would-be passengers as the City Council passes a bill for more salaries for faithful services. She was a gallant sight.
Once when Jimmie went aft to tell a funny story he had heard the night before, 809 rammed a street-piano with such insistence and velocity that it landed on top of a load of furniture, still playing one of Sousa’s marches. The Italian burned his thumb in blazing away at the departing monster with an eighty-nine-cent revolver. The young men gathered on the back platform and encouraged him to shoot with a little more art.
Three blocks away, speeding toward them, there came a red thing, coughing, with inhuman rapidity. There were four things in it that looked like Mr. H. G. Wells’ inhabitants of the moon.
“Here’s where your nice, red, hand-painted autymobile either takes to its own side of the road or to the trees!” shouted Jimmie back to the carload.
The young men swung themselves out to see the sight. The road was narrow. The approaching bedevilment, streaming dust at every pore, bestrode (or, better, bewheeled) one rail of the track.
“There is your nice little bubble,” chanted the young men. “‘Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble!’ Get peevish there, Jimmie! Hit her on the end!”