“I read here in the agreement,” he went on, “that the automobile is taken in rotation by every member of the syndicate; and that when it’s my day it’s my day, and nobody can say a word or use it themselves, even if I don’t care to.”

“That’s how we’ll save any possibility of friction,” I returned.  “For instance, to-day it is absolutely my car; to-morrow it’s yours; day after to-morrow it is Harry’s; the day after that it’s Nelly’s—­and if anything breaks on your day it’s up to you to pay for it.”

“Oh, I’m not going to break anything,” said pa with the satisfied look of a person who doesn’t know anything about it.

“Don’t you be too sure about that,” I said.  “I’ve been around enough with Lewis Wentz to know better.”

“Well, you see,” said pa, “that depends on how much you use your automobile.  If you never take it out at all you eliminate most of the bothers connected with it.”

“Never take it out at all?” I cried.

“On my day it stays in the barn,” he said.

I began to see now what he was smiling at.  Wasn’t it awful of him?  He simply meant to tie it up for a quarter of the time.

“Now, Virgie,” he said, “you mustn’t think that I am not stretching a point to promise you what I have.  It’s too blamed dangerous and you’re all the little girl I have.  Well, if you must do it, I am going to cut the risk by twenty-five per cent and my automobile days will be blanks.”

I flared up at this.  It’s awful when your father wants to do something you’re ashamed of.  It was such a dog-in-the-manger idea, too, and so unsportsmanlike.  But nothing could shake pa, though I tried and tried, and said things that ought to have pierced a rhinoceros.  But pa ran for governor once, and his skin’s thicker.  I felt almost sorry we hadn’t taken in Morty Truslow instead—­not really, you know, but just for the moment.

“How can I tell Hairy and Nelly you’re such a pig?” I said, half crying.

“I’m not a pig,” said pa, “though now I’m the next thing to it —­an automobilist.  And, anyway, it’s a straight business proposition.  Take it or leave it.”

“Pa,” I said, “if you’ll stay out of it altogether, I’ll take it back about coffee for breakfast and not minding mama more.”

“It’s too late,” he returned.  “I’ve got the automobile fever now myself.  For two cents I’d buy out Harry and Nelly and keep the red bug in the family.”

Certainly pa has the most ingenious mind of anybody I know.  He ought to have been in the Spanish Inquisition just to think up new torments.  I don’t wonder they like him so well on the Stock Exchange:  he probably initiates new members and makes them ride goats.  Anyway, nothing could change him about the automobile, and I closed the deal quick, lest he might carry out his other plan and absorb seventy-five per cent of the syndicate’s stock.