He ought to have reciprocated by doing angel parent, but he talked horse-sense instead; how he couldn’t afford to buy me a whole car, and how in his experience divided ownership always ended in the people hating one another ever afterward, and how dangerous automobiling was anyway, and how much nicer it would be to have a beautiful little horse.

Then I gave him the iron-clad agreement.  He put on his spectacles and read it, asking me not to breathe on his neck, as it tickled him. (How different real life is from the stage!) And he began to giggle at the second page; at the third he could hardly go on; and finally, when mama came in and asked what was the matter, he couldn’t speak at all, but got up and stamped about the room till you thought he was going to have a fit.  Then he sat down again and wiped his eyes and asked as a favor whether he mightn’t have a copy for himself.  I said I might possibly manage it if he would come down with the two hundred and fifty.

Then he got kind of serious again; asked if I didn’t know any cheaper way of getting killed; said I might have appendicitis for the same money and be fashionable.  When pa is in the right humor he can tease awfully, and that agreement had set him off worse than I had ever remembered.  But I stuck to my bubble and wasn’t to be guyed out of the idea, and finally he lit a cigar and started, in to bargain.

Pa is the worst old skinflint in Connecticut, and never even gave me a bag of peanut candy without getting a double equivalent.  First of all, I had to give up Lewis Wentz entirely; I wasn’t to speak to him, or bow or bubble or dance or anything.  I put up a good fight for Lewis Wentz—­not that I cared two straws for him, now that I was going to have an automobile of my own, but just to head pa off from grasping for more.  I didn’t want to be eaten out of house and home, you know, and I guess I am too much pa’s daughter to surrender more than I could help.

It was well I did so, for on top of that I had to promise never to ride in any car except my own, and then he branched off into my giving up coffee for breakfast, going to bed at ten, only one dance a week, wearing flannel in winter, minding my mother more, and Heaven only knows what all.  But I said that Lewis Wentz alone was worth two hundred and fifty, and that I’d draw on the other things when I needed money for repairs.  Then pa suddenly had a new notion and said he wanted to be in the thing, too; would take a quarter interest of his own; that we’d change the syndicate to fourths instead of thirds.

I was almost too thunderstruck to speak.  Think of hearing pa saying he wished to buy in!  It was like an evangelist wanting to take shares in the devil.  I could only say “Pa!” like that, and gasp.

“I know I’m pretty old to change,” he said.  “But a fellow must keep up with the procession, you know.  And I always liked the way they smell.”

His eyes were dancing and I saw he meant mischief; but, after all, the bubble was assured now, and that was the great thing.  It wasn’t till up to that moment that I felt really safe.