"We'll get other work to do," declared Tom. "To tell you the truth, I'm not over anxious to clutter the shop up with any other stuff until I get my House on Wheels well out of the way."
"Say, just what is this new invention, anyhow?" asked Ned. "I've been so busy I haven't paid much attention to it."
"Well, the name tells just what it is," said Tom. "Briefly, it is a glorified auto—a veritable house that one can not only live in but travel in."
"You mean a house with rooms and a bath and—and—everything?" asked Ned.
"That's it—a bath and everything. Of course, the rooms aren't large, and the beds are to be folded back against the wall when they aren't in use."
"What about eats?" asked Ned.
"There's to be a kitchen with an electric stove," replied Tom.
"Run a stove from a storage battery?" exclaimed Ned. "Say, it can't be done! You'd have to have such a big battery that it would be a job to cart it around."
"Not a storage battery," explained Tom. "My House on Wheels is to be operated like some of the new, big jitneys, by a gas-electric motor. There's a gasolene engine of twelve cylinders, and, by the way, it's just arrived from Detroit, so Koku told me. Well, that motor operates a dynamo which furnishes the current that drives the auto, operates the stove and other appliances."
"Then you don't take power directly from the gasolene engine?" asked Ned.