“One of us might; but the other ought to take up the electrical branches, I believe.”
While they were talking, they were at work upon the body and mechanism of their Breton-Melville. Before it was time to do the usual chores they had put the car in fine shape again, got an hour’s nap which did them a world of good, and they were loading up the wagons when their father came out of the house.
“Aren’t you boys paying rather dearly for your fun?” he asked, good-naturedly. “I hardly expected you’d get back here. Your mother and I did not hear you come in. And how does the car run?”
“Dandy and good, Dad!” cried Billy, while Dan said:
“Now, there wasn’t any need of your getting up so early. We’re not going to let you pay for our fun, that’s sure. When Billy and I get our schemes to working right, we’ll deliver this milk in half the time it takes now—and, naturally, at half the expense.”
“Yes,” interposed Billy, giggling. “Dan’s going to take the bottles around to the customers in a motor launch!”
But Dan only smiled quietly at this. They got off with the milk wagons in good season, and were back betimes, also, and without mishap. Mrs. Speedwell had a good breakfast ready for them, and they ate and were off again in the car at a few minutes past seven o’clock.
The run back to Karnac Lake was a more moderate one than that they had taken at midnight; nevertheless they arrived at the Stetson cottage about nine o’clock. They put their own car into the shed which did service as a garage and found the whole crowd out on the drive along the lakeside—a fine macadamized piece of road sixty feet wide and following the lake shore for nearly ten miles.
Chance Avery had Poole’s car out and was driving up and down, “doing stunts,” as Wiley Moyle called it.
“Why don’t you fellows bring out your bunch of scrap iron and show that chap some fancy running?” Fisher Greene demanded. “Perry won’t get our car in the ring. I hate to see Chance Avery always carrying off the honors.”