Then there ensued a humorous altercation in which they tried to beat her down to seventy-five cents.  But Grace, remaining firm, finally received her three dollars, though they made it a point of honor to pay her in the smallest change they could muster.  One fun-maker turned in three post-cards and a two-cent stamp; while another convulsed the company on the curb, now five deep and swelling rapidly, by volunteering to give his necktie in lieu of a quarter.  It was no small relief to Grace when at last they rode out of the depot amid the cheers of the multitude, and took their swift way down Fairfield Avenue.  But the three young rowdies, far from subsiding, egged one another on to fresh enormities.  They would whoop at every passing automobile, shout audible remarks about the personal appearance of its occupants, tell an old gentleman, cautiously picking his way across the street, to skin out or they’d take his leg off!  It was a wild and mortifying progress, and as the streets gradually gave way to country roads, and Grace anticipated that the worst was over, the three young men discovered a new means of making themselves objectionable.  They insisted on stopping at every roadhouse, tooting loudly for the bartender to come out and serve them, and tossing off, in the course of a dozen miles, an uncountable number of glasses of beer.

Had it not been for the presence of the farmer, seated placidly in the tonneau of the car with the rooster on his lap, Grace would have been terrified at her predicament.  But his large, friendly bulk, his heavy shoulders, his big hands and honest face were immensely comforting to her.  He resisted all the importunities of the others to drink with them, refusing with the greatest good-nature, and maintaining throughout a certain aloofness and detachment.  They called him Judge Hayseed, and guyed him mercilessly; but his deep, hearty laugh never showed the least sign of resentment, even when imaginary misadventures, of the blow-out-the-gas order, were fathered on him.

In the midst of an unceasing and vociferous hilarity, as they were bowling along at twelve miles an hour, which Grace would have made twenty if the engine hadn’t worked so queerly, she felt the sharp dig of a finger against her back, and one of the young men cried out:  “Say, young chafer, you’ve plunked a tire!”

She stopped the car and got out, and there, sure enough, one of the rear tires presented itself to her view in a state of melancholy collapse.  It had picked up a horseshoe together with the three jagged nails adhering to it, and was patently, hopelessly, irretrievably punctured.  Grace had seen a hundred repairs made on the road, but up to now she had never put her hands to the task herself.  She brimmed over with the most correct theory, but had invariably relegated the practice to a skilful young man.  As she dejectedly scanned the faces of her passengers, and met nothing in return but blank and dispirited stares, she manfully got out her little jack and started in on her own account.  But she had hardly raised the wheel free from the ground, and was in the act of unscrewing the valve, when the wrench was suddenly taken out of her hand by Judge Hayseed, who asked in a very businesslike manner if there was an inner tube in the kit.