“Yes, and you got a swell breath, too. I wish you’d quit testing that old Spirits Frumentus bottle at the drug store!”
“’At a girl! But honest, listen!”
“I will not!” She bussed him heartily. “Nothing doing about driving to Los Angeles this summer. Too far, with all the brats squalling.”
“Sure. All right. But I mean: Let’s pack up and light out and spend a week touring ’round the state. Say to-morrow or next day. Got nothing to keep me now except that obstetrical case, and we’ll hand that over to Winter.”
“All right. We can try out the new thermos bottles!”
Dr. Coughlin, his lady, and the children started at four in morning. The car was at first too well arranged to be interesting, but after three days, as he approached you on the flat road that without an inch of curving was slashed for leagues through the grassy young wheat, you saw the doctor in his khaki suit, his horn-rimmed spectacles, and white linen boating hat; his wife in a green flannel blouse and a lace boudoir cap. The rest of the car was slightly confused. While you motored by you noticed a canvas Egyptian Water Bottle, mud on wheels and fenders, a spade, two older children leaning perilously out and making tongues at you, the baby’s diapers hanging on a line across the tonneau, a torn copy of Snappy Stories, seven lollypop sticks, a jack, a fish-rod, and a rolled tent.
Your last impression was of two large pennants labeled “Leopolis, N. D.,” and “Excuse Our Dust.”
The Coughlins had agreeable adventures. Once they were stuck in a mud-hole. To the shrieking admiration of the family, the doctor got them out by making a bridge of fence rails. Once the ignition ceased and, while they awaited a garageman summoned by telephone, they viewed a dairy farm with an electrical milking machine. All the way they were broadened by travel, and discovered the wonders of the great world: the movie theater at Roundup, which had for orchestra not only a hand-played piano but also a violin; the black fox farm at Melody; and the Severance water-tower, which was said to be the tallest in Central North Dakota.
Dr. Coughlin “dropped in to pass the time of day,” as he said, with all the doctors. At St. Luke he had an intimate friend in Dr. Tromp—at least they had met twice, at the annual meetings of the Pony River Valley Medical Association. When he told Tromp how bad they had found the hotels, Tromp looked uneasy and conscientious, and sighed, “If the wife could fix it up somehow, I’d like to invite you all to stay with us to-night.”
“Oh, don’t want to impose on you. Sure it wouldn’t be any trouble?” said Coughlin.