With nervous eyes, Aunt Kate searched the highway back of them for signs of approaching machines. “Obadiah, look out. Here comes a car,” she screamed.
Alarmed at her tone, his body stiffened to meet the shock of imminent collision. He jerked his head about fearfully to perceive a car following them a mile away. “Why did you startle me that way? I thought something was about to hit us,” he blurted.
The horn of the approaching machine demanded the road. Obadiah tugged at Archimedes anew. The horse answered but slowly.
“Hurry, Obadiah, they are running into us,” screamed Aunt Kate.
The mill owner redoubled his efforts to get out of the way as a series of frantic squawks and the grind of brakes sounded from behind them.
In desperation, Obadiah jerked out the whip and gave Archimedes a smart clip. The horse bounded clumsily and stopped in the middle of the road. The petted animal’s astonishment at this treatment was such that he had to pause for consideration.
“Don’t you strike my horse that way,” cried Aunt Kate indignantly, her mind diverted from the menacing automobile by the punishment of her property. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
Obadiah put up the whip, leaving the motionless Archimedes to meditate upon his injuries in the center of the highway while the automobile worked its way around. It came opposite to them, a flivver of the cheapest type–mere dust beside Obadiah’s own car.
A rough, angry man glared at the mill owner and bawled, “You old moss-back, do you think that you own this road? When somebody takes a wheel off of that old ark, it may”–the voice was very doubtful–“knock some sense into your bean. Don’t you know enough to put out your hand when you stop, you mutton-headed fool. If there was a constable about I’d have you chucked into the calaboose.”
Obadiah sat speechless under this insolence. Possibly he was becoming inured to unkind words. As the car disappeared in the distance his tongue was loosened, “Kate, did you get their number?” he inquired with great anxiety.