"It's broken," she replied. "It's always the way with those newfangled things. It works ever so much nicer than this old one, though," she went on to Tom, "but it gets out of order easy."
"Let me look at it," suggested the young inventor. "I know something about machinery."
The churn, which worked by a system of cogs and a handle, was brought from the woodshed. Tom soon saw what the trouble was. One of the cogs had become displaced. It did not take him five minutes, with the tools he carried on his motor-cycle, to put it back, and the churn was ready to use.
"Well, I declare!" exclaimed Mrs. Blackford. "You are handy at such things!"
"Oh, it's just a knack," replied Tom modestly. "Now I'll put a plug in there, and the cog wheel won't come loose again. The manufacturers of it ought to have done that. I imagine lots of people have this same trouble with these churns."
"Indeed they do," asserted Mrs. Blackford. "Sallie Armstrong has one, and it got out of order the first week they had it. I'll let her look at mine, and maybe her husband can fix it."
"I'd go and do it myself, but I want to get home," said Tom, and then he showed her how, by inserting a small iron plug in a certain place, there would be no danger of the cog coming loose again.
"That's certainly slick!" exclaimed Mr. Blackford. "Well, I wish you good luck, Mr. Swift, and if I see those scoundrels around this neighborhood again I'll make 'em wish they'd let you alone."
"That's what," added Jed, polishing his badge with his big, red handkerchief.
Mrs. Blackford transferred the cream to the new churn which Tom had fixed, and as he rode off down the highway on his motor-cycle, she waved one hand to him, while with the other she operated the handle of the apparatus.