“I have nothing to do with my father’s affairs,” said the girl coldly, noting out of the corner of her eye Jared’s figure slinking around the side of the porch; “how much do you want to help me get my car out of the ditch, for that’s really what it amounts to, you know?”
Ignoring the quiet sarcasm in her voice, old Applegate’s face took on its crafty expression.
“Wa’al, it’s three times now you’ve run over Jake. Say five dollars each time,—that ud be yer fine for overspeedin’, anyhow,—that makes it fifteen dollars.”
“Fifteen dollars!” The girl’s voice showed her amazement at such a figure.
“It ort’er be twenty,” snorted old Applegate; “thar’s ther injury to Jake’s feelin’s. You bang over him at sixty mile an hour an’ scare him out’n all his fat an’ six months’ growth. Fifteen dollars is cheap, an’—you don’t go till yer pay up, neither.”
“Why, it’s simply extortion. I’ll pay no such sum. Send your bill to my father. He’ll settle it. And now help me out of this ditch, if you please.”
“Now, don’t you git het up, miss. Thar’s a speed law on Long Island, an’ by heck, you pay er I’ll hev yer up afore the justice. Lucindy!” he raised his voice in a call for his wife; Jared had vanished. A slovenly-looking woman, wiping her hands on a gingham apron, appeared on the porch.
“Lucindy, how many miles an hour? Jake’s bin run over agin,” he added suggestively.
“Wa’al,” said Lucindy judicially, “it looked like sixty; but I reckin h’it warn’t more’n twenty-five.”
“Humph!” snorted Applegate triumphantly, “an’ ther speed limit’s fifteen.”