“Dear me, but it’s a-goin’!” Aunt Mary exclaimed, as the thing began to whiz and she felt suddenly impelled to clutch wildly at her flanking escorts.  “Suppose we met a dog.”

“We’d leave a floor mat,” shrieked Mitchell.  “Oh, but isn’t this great—­ greater—­greatest?”

“Time of your life, Aunt Mary!” Jack howled, as they went over a boarded spot in the pavement, and the old lady nearly went over the back in consequence.  “You’re in for the time of your life!”

“How do you like it?” yelled Clover, throwing a glance over his shoulder.

Aunt Mary started to answer, but they came to four car tracks one after another, and the successive shocks rendered her speechless.

“Where are we going?” Burnett asked.

“Nowhere,” said Clover.  “Just waking up the machine.”  And he turned on another million volts as he spoke.

“Oh, my bonnet!” cried poor Aunt Mary, and that bit of her adornment was in the street and had been run over four times before they could slow up, turn around, and get back to the scene of its output.

It speaks volumes for the permeating atmosphere of “having the time of your life” that its owner laughed when the wreck was shown to her.

“I don’t care a bit,” she said.  “I can go down to Delmonico’s an’ get me another to-morrow mornin’, easy.”

“What a trump you are, Aunt Mary!” said Jack admiringly.  “Here, Burnett, fish her out that extra cap from the cane rack; there’s always one in the bottom.  There—­now you won’t take cold, Aunt Mary.”

The cap, with its fore-piece, was the crowning glory of Aunt Mary’s get-up.  The brain measurements of him who had bought the cap being to its present wearer’s as five is to three, the effect of its proportions, in addition to the goggles and the ear-trumpet, was such as to have overawed a survivor of Medusa’s stare.

“Oh, I say,” said Mitchell, “it’s a sin to keep as good a joke as this in the family!  We must drive her around town until the night falls down or the battery burns out.”

“I say so too,” said Burnett.  “This is more sport than oiling railroad tracks and seeing old Tweedwell brought up for it.  Say, set her a-buzzing again.  It’s a big game, isn’t it?”

Clover thought so, with the result that they speeded through tranquil neighborhoods and churned leisurely where the masses seethed until countless thousands were wondering what under the sun those four young fellows had in the back of their car.

The sad part about all good fun is that it has to end sooner or later; and about six o’clock the whole party began to be aware that, if refreshments were not taken, their end was surely close at hand.  They therefore called a brief halt somewhere to get what is technically known as a “sandwich,” and the results were thoroughly satisfactory to everyone but Aunt Mary.  She took one bite of her sandwich, and then opened it with an abruptness which merged into disgust when it proved to be full of fish eggs.