Tears, almost hysterics, from the woman who for seven years had been the quiet, cheerful little wife, humming to herself while she did the housework—it was more than startling, it was terrifying.
Ford realized then, probably for the first time, how much the making of the automobile had cost her.
He quieted her as well as he could, and promised that he would take her back to Greenfield. He would give up his job at the Edison plant and move to the farm to live, since she cared so much about it, he said. His work on the machine could wait.
He took her into the house and made her a cup of hot tea. When she was sitting comfortably warming her feet at the heating stove and sipping the tea, he said he would just run out and fasten the shed door for the night.
The machine was almost finished. A few more screws, a tightening of the leather belt, the placing of the steering lever, and it would be complete. He had spent four years of hard work, and harder thought, on its building—delayed first by his poverty, then by the building of the house, and always held back for twelve hours out of every day by his work at the Edison plant. Now he would have to put it aside again, to spend precious days and weeks disposing of his equity in the house, moving, settling in Greenfield, struggling with new hired men, beginning again the grind of managing a farm.
It was only another delay, he said doggedly to himself; he would make the machine run yet. In the meantime he could not resist taking up his tools and working on it, just a minute or so.
The engine was in place, the gears adjusted. He tightened the leather belt and tested the pulley again. Then he set the rear axle on blocks of wood, lifting the wheels from the ground and started the engine. The cough of the cylinder quickened into a staccato bark, the flywheel blurred with speed. Then Ford tightened the pulley, the broad leather belt took hold. The rear wheels spun.
She was running!
It remained only to test the machine in actual going on the ground. Ford went to work on the steering gear. He had thought it all out before, he had made all the parts. Now he must put them together, fit them into place and test them.
He forgot about his wife, waiting in the house; he did not notice that the fire in the stove was getting low and the hour was growing late. He bent every thought and energy to placing the steering gear.