“It seemed to stick,” he says. “It’s all right now.”
“And where’s the floor board?” I says.
“It can’t be very far away,” says he. “I ain’t been out o’ the place, so I couldn’t of carried it nowheres.”
At 11:20 he found the floor board. At a quarter to twelve, he had it squeezed into place. At five minutes to one, I pulled up in front of Alice’s, just behind the chummy roadster.
Alice answered the doorbell.
“Where’s your friend?” she ast me.
“Out in the car,” says I.
“Bring him in,” she says. “I won’t be ready for five or ten minutes.”
“He never goes in anywheres,” I told her. “He’s an outdoor bug.”
“Well,” she says, “I’ll hurry as fast as I can. But Mr. Boles is here and it don’t seem right to dash off and leave him.”
“Why not?” I says. “He’s just like one o’ the family.”
“He’s no such a thing,” says she. “But we all like him because he’s such a gentleman and so good about takin’ us out for rides.”
“I guess,” I says, “that a man’s got to have a machine to make a hit with you.”
“It does help,” she says, laughin’. “But I do like some people for themself; you, for instance; that is, when you’re not mean and sarcastical.”
“If I had a car, though,” says I, “you’d like me a whole lot better.”
“O’ course,” she says, laughin’ again. “Why, I’d like you enough to marry you.”
“Do you mean that?” says I.
“Certainly,” she says, and led me into the house.
Mr. Boles was settin’ on the lounge in the livin’ room.
“Don’t get up,” I says to him. It was like tellin’ Mr. Bryan not to get stewed.
Alice left us together while she went to put on her things. If I had a nickel for every word that was spoke, I’d ask you for carfare.
When she come back, he says:
“I guess I’ll stay and talk to your mother a while. How soon do you expect to be home?”
“That’s up to Charley,” she says.
“Never,” says I.
And I left him to chew on that.
Alice pretty near fainted, when I sprung my surprise. “Why, Charley Graham!” she says. “Where did you get it?”
“I forget now,” says I. “Kresge’s or Woolworth’s.”
“And can you drive it?” she ast me.
“I don’t know,” I says. “When I come here from home today, I brought it in my pocket, on the elevated.”
For some peculiar reason, the starter worked. We was soon tearin’ northwards, twelve miles an hour. It was a swell day, and the first Sunday that had been really decent. The boulevards was jammed with cars, and I’ll admit I was nervous. I guess Alice was, too, but she was game enough to keep it to herself.
But the only danger was that somethin’ would hit us from behind, and nothin’ did.
I’m gettin’ so now that I can talk when I drive; then I was scared to open my mouth. Alice made a couple o’ starts about the weather, but her heart wasn’t in it. What she wanted to say was “Look out!” or “Be careful!” and I liked her all the better for not sayin’ it.
At five p.m., we’d got as far as Lake Forest, havin’ drove forty miles in a fraction under four hours.
“My! It’s pretty out here,” says Alice. “I wisht I could stay here a while.”
She got her wish.
The Swift Six liked Lake Forest, too. Between five and dark, I done nothin’ but crank and cuss, crank and cuss. When the daylight was gone, I’d lost some o’ my independence, and I stopped a guy that was goin’ past.
“Mister,” I says to him, “what I know about automobiles you could write on the back of a small flea. Will you see if you can spot the trouble with this masterpiece o’ human ingenuity?”
He looked her all over.
“For one thing,” he says, “your left rear tire is down.”
“But that wouldn’t keep me from startin’, would it?” I ast him.
“No,” he says, “but I thought I’d mention it before I forgot it. It’s another thing that keeps you from startin’. You’re out o’ gasoline!”
Who that guy was I don’t know. But if he ever runs out o’ cigarettes, I’ll loan him the rollin’s. First he drove to the nearest garage and brought us back enough gas so’s we could get there and fill our tank. Then he blowed up the tire with his engine drove pump. (They wasn’t nothin’ the matter with it, only the valve was loose.) And finally he rode ahead of us to the garage, so’s we’d be sure and find it.
“Alice,” I says, when he’d left us, “there’s the best fella I ever met.”
“I know one I like better,” says she.
“Don’t tell me it’s Boles,” I says.
“I won’t tell you nothin’,” she says. “I ain’t goin’ to bother you while you’re drivin’ ”
“But I want to hear it,” I says, and I stopped the Swift Six in the middle o’ the road.
“Well,” she says, “I always like people that likes me. And anybody that likes me well enough to go head over ears in debt to buy a car, because he thinks he’ll make good with me that way—well—”
Well.
I hadn’t kissed her more’n twenty-nine times when we was interrupted. The brightest lights I ever seen was shinin’ right in our face. And the guy behind the lights was George Boles.
“I’ve found you,” he says, runnin’ up beside us. “Your mother’s worried to death.”
“What for?” says Alice.
“Because you didn’t come home,” says Boles.
“Didn’t Charley tell you that I was never comin’ home?” says Alice. “We thought o’ course you’d tell mother.”
“Now,” I says, “we’ll have to go there and tell her ourself.”
It’s a good thing we telephoned her from Evanston. Because, owin’ to the fact that I wasn’t sure of the road and that my drivin’ was bein’ seriously interfered with, it wasn’t so darn far from breakfast time when we landed.
The old lady didn’t take it very hard.
“All I wonder,” she says, “is what you’re goin’ to live on.”
“Charley makes enough,” says Alice, “and
