In the stable, therefore, one afternoon he had taken his place at the wheel.  Affecting a jovial ease of mind, he commanded the company of his stableman, Elihu Titus, on the seat beside him.  He wished a little to show off to Elihu, but he wished even more to be not alone if something happened.  With set jaws and a tight grip of the wheel he had backed from the stable, and was rendered nervous in the very beginning by the apparent mad resolve of the car to continue backing long after it was wished not to.  Elihu Titus was also rendered nervous, and was safely on the ground before the car yielded to the invincible mass of a boxwood hedge that had been forty years in growing.  Sharon pointed his eyebrows.

“It makes you feel like a helpless fool,” he confided to his hireling.

“She’s all right on this side,” said Elihu Titus, cannily peering at the nether mechanism in pretense that he had left his seat to do just that.

The next start was happier in results.  Down the broad driveway Sharon had piloted the monster, and through the wide gate, though in a sudden shuddering wonder if it were really wide enough for his mount; then he had driven acceptably if jerkily along back streets for an exciting hour.  It wasn’t so bad, except once when he met a load of hay and emerged with frayed nerves from the ordeal of passing it; and he had been compelled to drive a long way until he could find space in which to turn round.  The smarty that had sold the thing to him had turned in a narrow road, but not again that day would Sharon employ the whimsically treacherous gear of the retrograde.

He came at last to a stretch of common that permitted a wide circle, and took this without mishap.  A block farther along he had picked up the Cowan boy.  He was not above prizing the admiration of this child for his mechanical genius.  Wilbur exclaimed his delight at the car and lolled gingerly upon its luxurious back seat.  He was taken full into the grounds of the Whipple Old Place, because Sharon had suddenly conceived that he could not start the car again if he stopped it to let down his guest.  The car entered the wide gateway, which again seemed dangerously narrow to its driver, and purred on up the gravelled drive.  When half the distance to the haven of the stable had been covered it betrayed symptoms of some obscure distress, coughing poignantly.  Sharon pretended not to notice this.  A dozen yards beyond it coughed again, feebly, plaintively, then it expired.  There could be no doubt of its utter extinction.  All was over.  The end had come suddenly, almost painlessly.

They got out and blankly eyed the lifeless hulk.  After a moment of this, which was fruitless, Sharon spoke his mind concerning the car.  For all the trepidation it had caused him, the doubts and fears and panics, he took his revenge in words of biting acidity—­and he was through with the thing.

“Let’s get it out of sight,” he said at last, and the three of them pushed it on along the drive to the shelter of the stable.