were her expectations to be
disappointed. We still had a good deal to do before we should have ended
our first ride.

So far I had damaged property to a certain extent, but I had no one but
myself to reckon with, and I was providing work for people. I always
have claimed that he who makes work for two men where there was only
work for one before, is a public benefactor, and that day I was the
friend of carpenters and other mechanics.

Along the highway we flew, our hearts beating high, but never in our
mouths, and at last we saw a team approaching us. By "a team" I mean a
horse and buggy. I was raised in Connecticut, where a team is anything
you choose to call one.

The teamster saw us. Well, perhaps I should not call him a teamster
(although he was one logically): he was our doctor, and, as I say, he
saw us.

Now I think it would have been friendly in him, seeing that I was more
or less of a novice at the art of automobiling, to have turned to the
left when he saw that I was inadvertently turning to the left, but the
practice of forty years added to a certain native obstinacy made him
turn to the right, and he met me at the same time that I met him.

The horse was not hurt, for which I am truly glad, and the doctor joined
us, and continued with us for a season, but his buggy was demolished.

Of course I am always prepared to pay for my pleasure, and though it was
not, strictly speaking, my pleasure to deprive my physician of his
turn-out, yet if he _had_ turned out it wouldn't have happened--and, as
I say, I was prepared to get him a new vehicle. But he was very
unreasonable; so much so that, as he was crowding us--for the seat was
not built for more than two, and he is stout--I at last told him that I
intended to turn around and carry him home, as we were out for pleasure,
and he was giving us pain.

I will confess that the events of the last few minutes had rattled me
somewhat, and I did not feel like turning just then, as the road was
narrow. I knew that the road turned of its own accord a half-mile
farther on, and so I determined to wait.

"I want to get out," said the doctor tartly, and just as he said so
Araminta stepped on the brake, accidentally. The doctor got out--in
front. With great presence of mind I reversed, and so we did not run
over him. But he was furious and sulphurous, and that is why I have
changed to homeopathy. He was the only allopathic doctor in Brantford.

I suppose that if I had st