Say, they made a great team, them two, when it came to exchangin' persiflage. It was snappy stuff and it helped a lot towards taking my mind off Barry's jazz-style drivin'. For he sure does bear down heavy with his foot. If he plays the organ the way he runs a car I should think he'd raise the roof. And the speed he gets out of that dinky little roadster is amazin'. Might have been all right on smooth macadam, but on this country road he had her jumpin' around on that short wheel-base like a jackrabbit with the itch. We might have been so many kernels of pop-corn being shaken over a hot fire. Barry seems to be enjoyin' every minute of it, though. He makes funny cracks, whistles, and now and then breaks into song.
"Driving a car seems to go to his head," remarks Miss McLeod. "It appears to make him wild." "It does," says Barry. "For——
I'm a wild prairie flower,
I grow wilder hour by hour.
Nobody cares to cultivate me,
I'm wild. Whe-e-e-e!"
He warbles that for the next five minutes, until Miss McLeod suggests that it's time for lunch.
"Let's stop at the next shady place we come to," says she.
"Oh, bother!" says Barry. "Just when Adelbaran is striking his best pace. Why not take our nourishment on the fly?"
So she gets out the sandwiches and the thermos bottle and we take it that way. Rather than let Barry take either hand off the wheel she feeds him herself, even if he does complain about gettin' his countenance smeared up with mustard some. Anyway, we didn't lose any time if we did spill more or less of the coffee.
"Cheerie oh!" sings out Barry, readin' a sign board. "Only twenty miles more!"
"But such up-and-downy miles!" says Ann.
She was dead right about that, for the further we got into New Hampshire the more the road looked like it had been built by a roller coaster fan. I always had a notion this was a small state, from the way it looks on the map, but I'll bet if it could be rolled flat once it would spread out near as big as Texas. All we did was to climb up and up and then slide down and down. Generally at the bottom was one of these covered wooden bridges, like a hay barn with both ends knocked out, and the way we'd roar through those was enough to make you think you was goin' forward with a barrage. Then just ahead would be another long hill windin' up to the top of the world.