Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r-r!
"Bet he missed it!" offers some one with vague gambling instincts.
"..INS.NEEDLES..1¼..ZINC..CON..4½..WASHN..
THE CENSUS.OFFICE.ESTIMATES.THE CONSUMPTION.OF
COTTON.WASTE.IN.THE.MFGR.OF.AUTOMBLE.HOODS.AS.
66.991.059 LBS..INCLUDING.LINTERS.AND.HULL FIBER.."
And just then some one comes in from the outside, all fresh and disagreeably cheery, and wants to know what the score is and if there have been many forward passes tried and who is playing quarter for Yale, and if any one has got a cigarette.
It is really just the same sort of program as obtains in the big college club, only on a small scale. They are all watching the same game and they are all wishing the same thing and before their respective minds' eyes is the picture of the same stadium, with the swarm of queen bees and drones clinging to its sides. And every time that you, who are one of the cold and lucky ones with a real ticket, see a back break loose for a long run and hear the explosion of hoarse shouts that follows, you may count sixty and then listen to hear the echo from every big city in the country where the old boys have just got the news.
XV
A LITTLE DEBIT IN YOUR TONNEAU
Motorists, as a class, are not averse to public discussion of their troubles. In fact, one often wonders how some of them ever get time to operate their cars, so tied up do they seem to be with these little experience-meetings, at which one man tells, with appropriate gestures, how he ran out of gas between Springfield and Worcester, while another gives a perfect bit of character acting to show just how the policeman on the outskirts of Trenton behaved.
But there seems to be one phase of the motorist's trials which he never bares to the public. He will confide to you just how bad the gasoline was that he bought at the country garage; he will make it an open secret that he had four blow-outs on the way home from the country-club; but of one of his most poignant sorrows he never speaks. I refer to the guests who snuggle in his tonneau.