He started his engine again and climbed back to the seat. Puff started off well, and Tom was congratulating himself on having unwittingly repaired the trouble, when again the engine began to miss fire. It seemed very puzzling. His errand made it necessary for him to reach Bristol before the bank closed at twelve, and so he did not dare to spend too much time on the road. As long as Puff made its twenty miles an hour—and it was doing that and more, as the small speedometer showed—he decided that he would keep on. After he had delivered the envelope that was in his pocket at the bank and thus done his father’s errand, he would look for the trouble.
“If I can’t find it,” he said to himself with a smile, “maybe I’ll drop round to the Spalding factory and exchange Puff for one of those ‘six-sixties’! Only,” he added half aloud as he swung round the turn, “they’ll have to give me something to boot!”
The next instant he was staring ahead with interest. Beyond, drawn up at the side of the road, stood the big car. The chauffeur was leaning under the raised hood and the passenger was watching from the car. As Tom approached he slowed Puff down a little. He would have been less than human had he not experienced an instant of mild satisfaction. Puff had cost him something like eighty dollars, whereas the big Spalding, as Tom well knew, was priced at nearly four thousand dollars; and certainly, as far as the quality of “get there” was concerned, the big car was at that moment inferior to the little one.
As Tom approached, he noticed that the man in the gray overcoat looked cross and irritated, and that the chauffeur was worried. It seemed rather ridiculous for him to offer assistance, he reflected, but, nevertheless, he stopped. “I don’t suppose I can be of any help, sir?” he inquired.
The man in the car shook his head impatiently, with only a glance toward him; but the chauffeur, casting a quick and wondering look over the small car and wiping his hands upon a bunch of waste, replied sarcastically, “Not unless you’ve got a spare cylinder.”
“What!” cried the man in the car. “Cylinder gone?”
“Piston’s broken, sir. Thought maybe it was only the valve was stuck or something, but I guess it’s the piston, all right.”
“But jumping cats!” snapped the man in the gray coat. “You can’t mend a broken piston rod!”
“No sir.”
“And she won’t run?”