The crazy car having passed us, the noisiest piece of junk that I ever had seen on the road, I untangled myself from its smoky tail to find Poppy laughing his head off.
“The Galloping Snail!” he yipped, having read the name that was printed on the back of the car.
“It sure is a ‘Galloping Snail,’ all right. Why didn’t you jump in, Jerry?—you’ve been yelling for a ride.”
“I didn’t want to cheat the goose out of its seat,” I laughed.
“Goose?” says the other, looking at me.
“Didn’t you see the goose on the seat?”
“Who do you mean?—the old man?”
“No, a real goose.”
“I guess it was a pair of geese,” laughed Poppy, thinking of the queer driver.
Sometimes a fellow gets a hunch about things that he’s heading into. But we had no hunch that we’d ever see that old car again, much less get mixed up in a crazy, shivery adventure with its queer driver and his equally queer gander—for it was a gander that I had seen, as we learned later on, and not a goose.