Patsy actually stood up in the car before he could express his disgust. The occasion called for oratory.
“Lunch!” he howled. “We had a puncture for lunch, and we fed ourselves putting on a new tire and then fixing a stripped gear. Altogether we were three hours hung up on the road. When we got a start at last there was no time to think of eating anything. Where do you think we are now?”
“About thirty miles from a little town I have been in before,” was Nick Carter’s reply. “We’ll get supper and bedrooms there.”
“Thirty miles? We ought to make that in half an hour,” observed Patsy.
“Not on these roads,” corrected Nick. “Sixty miles an hour isn’t much when you’ve got a smooth surface. But along this trail I guess twenty miles will be enough.”
“Gee! That means an hour and a half!” grumbled Patsy. “Well, I’ll chew on my left boot. It looks a little softer than the other. Unless you’ll pull up a minute or two and let me scoop up a handful of sand from the side of the road. With some gasoline to wash it down, that ought to go all right.”
Nick Carter did not reply. He knew Patsy Garvan too well to take any notice of his complaints. No doubt the young man was hungry. But let any occasion arise for him to become active, and he would forget his inner wants at once. Having nothing else to do, he grumbled.
Chick laughed in the back of the car at Patsy’s comical distress, but sympathized with him, nevertheless.
It was true, as Patsy had intimated, that they had had nothing to eat since breakfast, and it certainly had been an unsatisfactory meal.
They were passing through a region where the population had too little work to do to keep them in health. Like Patsy, they grumbled, in consequence. They cultivated a little corn and a few beans, and lived on the fruits that grew ready to their hands for the remainder. But always they were dissatisfied.