kick skyward, and it went on jumping and jumping till finally there came a letter from Mr. Collenquest with a check for three thousand five hundred dollars, saying I must have forgotten about buying Gee-whizz back again, and that he had taken the liberty of exceeding my instructions about selling till my shares had touched that figure.  Then one morning, as we were at breakfast, a great big splendid Manton car—­my car—­came whisking up the drive and stopped in front of the house, and the expert—­they had thrown him in for a week for nothing—­him and an odometer and an ammeter, and a new kind of French spark-plug they wanted me to try—­and a gasoline tester —­the Mantons are such nice people to deal with in all those little ways—­and the expert sent in word:  would Miss Hardy come out and see her new car?  And, of course, Miss Hardy, went out, and Mr. Hardy went out, and my, aunt went out, and the five guests that were staying with us went out, and the servants went out—­and you never saw such a mix-up in all your life, nor such excitement and hurrah-boys generally.  For papa was ordering it off the place, and I was explaining about Great Western Preferred, and my aunt was trying to make us listen about a friend who had been burned to death with a gasoline stove, and the guests were taking my part and fighting for the first ride, and the expert was showing off the double vertical cylinders, and explaining splash lubrication to the butler, whom he must have mistaken for papa, and—­

“When it had settled down a bit and the battle-smoke drifted away and showed who had won—­which was me, naturally—­and I had promised aunt to be, oh, so careful, and papa that I’d cross my heart never to go into stocks again, and rides, of course, to the guests, and everything to everybody—­then they all went back to breakfast while I had mine brought out on the veranda—­mine and the expert’s—­and I guess I talked four speeds ahead while he ate his on the low gear—­for he had come ninety miles and wasn’t much of a talker at any time—­and I just sat there and gloated over my Manton.

“We had a perfectly delirious week together—­the expert and I —­for the Manton turned out perfectly splendid and everything they said it was, except for the rear tires blowing up three times, and a short circuit in the coil owing to a faulty condenser; and though it was all I could do to hold it down on the low speeds, you ought to have seen me on the forty-mile clip—­till they said I’d have to go to prison for the next offense without the option of a fine.  The expert was one of the nicest men you ever saw, and we used to take off cylinder heads, and adjust cams, and spend hours knocking everything to pieces and putting them together again so that I might be prepared for getting on without him.  He said he hated to think of that time, and what do you suppose he did?  I was lying under the machine at the time, studying the differential, while he was jacking up an axle.  Proposed, positively.