him go ask
for a left-handed monkey-wrench. He roomed at a machinists'
boarding-house, and enjoyed the furious discussions over religion and
the question of air _versus_ water cooling far more than he had ever
enjoyed the polite jesting at Mrs. Henkel's.

He became friendly with the foreman of the repair-shop, and was
promised a "chance." While the driver who made the road-tests of the
cars was ill Carl was called on as a substitute. The older workmen
warned him that no one could begin road-testing so early and hold the
job. But Carl happened to drive the vice-president of the firm. He
discussed bass-fishing in Minnesota with the vice-president, and he
was retained as road-tester, getting his chauffeur's license. Two
months later, when he was helping in the overhauling of a car in the
repair-shop, he heard a full-bodied man with a smart English overcoat
and a supercilious red face ask curtly of the shop foreman where he
could get a "crack shuffer, right away, one that can give the traffic
cops something to do for their money."

The foreman always stopped to scratch his chin when he had to think.
This process gave Carl time to look up from his repairs and blandly
remark: "That's me. Want to try me?"

Half an hour later Carl was engaged at twenty-five dollars a week as
the Ruddy One's driver. Before Monday noon he had convinced the Ruddy
One that he was no servant, but a mechanical expert. He drove the
Ruddy One to his Investments and Securities office in the morning, and
back at five; to restaurants in the evening. Not infrequently, with
the wind whooping about corners, he slept peacefully in the car till
two in the morning, outside a cafe. And he was perfectly happy. He was
at last seeing the Great World. As he manoeuvered along State Street
he rejoiced in the complications of the traffic and tooted his horn
unnecessarily. As he waited before tall buildings, at noon, he gazed
up at them with a superior air of boredom--because he was so boyishly
proud of being a part of all this titanic life that he was afraid he
might show it. He gloried in every new road, in driving along the Lake
Shore, where the horizon was bounded not by unimaginative land, but by
restless water.

Then the Ruddy One's favorite roads began to be familiar to Carl, too
familiar, and he so hated his sot of an employer that he caught
himself muttering, while driving, "Thank the Lord I sit in front and
don't have to see that chunk of raw beefsteak h