CHAPTER XIX
TURNING A TRICK FOR BEANY
Where’d I collect the Flemish oak tint on muh noble br-r-r-ow? No, not sunnin’ myself down to Coney Island. No such tinhorn stunt for me! This is the real plute color, this is, and I laid it on durin’ a little bubble tour we’d been takin’ through the breakfast doughnut zone.
It was Pinckney’s blow. He ain’t had the gasolene-burnin’ fever very hard until this summer; but when he does get it, he goes the limit, as usual. Course, he’s been off on excursions with his friends, and occasionally he’s chartered a machine by the day; but I’d never heard him talk of wantin’ to own one. And then the first thing I knows he shows up at the house last Monday night in the tonneau of one of these big seven-seater road destroyers, all fitted out complete with spare shoes, hat box, and a double-decker trunk strapped on the rack behind.
“Gee!” says I. “Why didn’t you buy a private railroad train while you was about it, Pinckney?”
“Precisely what I thought I was getting,” says he. “However, I want you and Sadie to help me test it. We’ll start to-morrow morning at nine-thirty. Be all ready, will you?”
“Got any idea where you’re going, or how long you’ll be gone?” says I.
“Nothing very definite,” says he. “Purdy-Pell suggested the shore road to Boston and back through the Berkshires.”
“Fine!” says I. “I’d love to go meanderin’ through the country with you from now until Christmas; but sad to say I’ve got one or two——”