The younger boy giggled, but the older answered in very good, soft-spoken English, “At Browning, fifty miles away.”
A hundred dollars for towing, and days of delay! I caught at a straw.
“Is there by any chance an electrician back at the lumber camp?”
“No, ma’am.”
Then noticing my despair, he added diffidently, “I studied electricity at Carlisle. Perhaps I can help you.”
Our guardian angels fluttered so near we could almost see their wings. Here was Albert Gray, for so he was hight, transplanted from his Chippewa reservation for a two days’ visit to his Blood cousins, for the sole purpose of rescuing us from our latest predicament. Efficiency and economy must have been the watchword of those ministering spirits of ours, for not only did they send the only electrician within fifty miles, but then sent one whose knowledge, combined with our own, was just sufficient. I do not believe Albert really knew a fuse from a switchbox, but he did remember one essential we had forgotten,—that the points should be a sixteenth of an inch apart. But without tools he said he could do nothing. So we proffered a nail-file, by happy inspiration, with which he ground the points. We screwed together all the parts, connected the mysterious wire by a counting-out rime, and turned the engine. Nothing moved.
I turned my back on the exasperating car, and started to walk the seven miles back to the lumber camp. Then, on remembering my hunch it seemed as if all conditions were now fulfilled, so I returned, put my foot on the starter,—and the engine hummed. And until we reached Boston again, it never ceased to hum.
A prouder moment neither Toby nor I ever had, when by grace of a Chippewa and a nail-file we monkeyed with our ignition fifty miles from a garage,—and conquered it.
I shall always remember slow spoken, polite Albert Gray. Like Lucy of the same sur-name, he made oh, the difference to me!
******