Poppy was thorough. He unscrewed everything that wasn’t riveted down. At one time we had enough junk spread around in the sand to build six engines. And the funny part is that the more stuff we took away from it the healthier the old gas eater sneezed.
We worked till six o’clock. Then we gave up. It was no use, Poppy said. And if you could have seen how greasy and fagged out that poor kid was you sure would have had a hunk of pity for him.
What should we do now—get a garage man from Neponset Corners, or go on afoot? I knew something about garage bills. One time I fiddled with Dad’s car and it cost him seventeen dollars and fifty cents to find out that my new way of attaching the sparkplug wires wasn’t a complete success. All we had with us was eighteen dollars. And what could any garage man do to this old junk-pile with eighteen dollars? Certainly, with the big end of our hitch-hike still ahead of us we would need every cent that we had. So we decided to hoof it for home. Yet the thought of that long sandy walk had us licked before we started in.
Weak as he was, Poppy still had a voice.
“Anyway,” says he, as a final effort, “we’ll give it ten more cranks apiece, and then if it won’t start we’ll kiss it good-by ... and hope that in the next world it suffers as much as it has made us suffer.”
“I’ll crank it first,” says I, seeing how fagged out he was.
Well, can you imagine our great joy when the old hunk of iron, at the first twiddle of the crank, grabbed the bit in its teeth and started off as friskily as a two-year-old colt!
“There you are,” says I, acting big. “Any time you want it started, kid, call on a real mechanic.”
“Quick!” cried the driver. “Jump in before it stops,” and joining him in a flying leap, away we went down the skyline at our usual break-neck speed.
But the jinx that was trying to chloroform us with bad luck hadn’t used up all of its dope. Bang! went a hind tire. That meant another hour. It was growing dark now. Instead of getting a look at Pardyville that day, we’d be lucky if we saw the inside of the big stone house before midnight. A whole day wasted! And the two of us done up for nothing, as you might say. No wonder we were out of sorts.