“Lem’me try it. Mebbe you ain’t got strength enough to push it along,” remarked Sam.
Norma expressed a sneer at this statement and Sam tried to make the machine work. It balked exactly as it had for Norma. But it always acted perfectly when the wheels were being backed the reverse way.
“I reckon we’d better get a screw-driver and loosen the nuts up a little bit,” suggested Sam, after he had rattled the various parts of the mower.
One of the girls ran for a screw-driver and Sam began taking the wheels off; next the outside frame was removed and then the blades. When the entire mower was in sections, Sam searched anxiously for whatever it was that blocked the action of the blades. But he found nothing.
“It looks all right to me,” he announced in the tones of a specialist who has been summoned to diagnose a fatal disease.
“Put it together again and we’ll try it once more. It may work now that it has been doctored,” laughed Natalie.
But Sam could not assemble the parts as they had been before. He screwed wrong parts together and did other erroneous things that caused the girls who were watching him to laugh merrily. Finally he threw down the screw-driver and said angrily:
“I never said I was a machinist! I can’t fix the ole thing.”
Farmer Ames drove in just now with the goslings. When he saw the group of interested girls standing about Sam he pulled on the reins to stop the horse. Then he called out to ask what was the matter with the mower.
“That’s what we want to know,” retorted Natalie.