"Naw-I'll tell you! Slow down, Jack, and everybody keep your faces
shut. When we're just past I'll shoot down at the ground by a hind
wheel. Make 'em think they've got a blowout--get the idea?"

"Some idea!" promptly came approval, and the six subsided immediately.

The coming car neared swiftly, the driver shaving as close to the
speed limit as he dared. Unsuspectingly he swerved to give plenty of
space in passing, and as he did so a loud bang startled him. The brake
squealed as he made an emergency stop. "Blowout, by thunder!" they
heard him call to his companions, as he piled out and ran to the wheel
he thought had suffered the accident.

Jack obligingly slowed down so that the six, leaning far out and
craning back at their victims, got the full benefit of their joke.
When he sped on they fell back into their seats and howled with glee.

It was funny. They laughed and slapped one another on the backs, and
the more they laughed the funnier it seemed. They rocked with mirth,
they bounced up and down on the cushions and whooped.

All but Jack. He kept his eyes on the still-heaving asphalt, and
chewed gum and grinned while he drove, with the persistent sensation
that he was driving a hydro-aeroplane across a heaving ocean. Still,
he knew what the fellows were up to, and he was perfectly willing to
let them have all the fun they wanted, so long as they didn't
interfere with his driving.

In the back of his mind was a large, looming sense of responsibility
for the car. It was his mother's car, and it was new and shiny, and
his mother liked to drive flocks of fluttery, middle-aged ladies to
benefit teas and the like. It had taken a full hour of coaxing to get
the car for the day, and Jack knew what would be the penalty if
anything happened to mar its costly beauty. A scratch would be almost
as much as his life was worth. He hoped dazedly that the fellows would
keep their feet off the cushions, and that they would refrain from
kicking the back seat.

Mrs. Singleton Corey was a large, firm woman who wore her white hair
in a marcelled pompadour, and frequently managed to have a flattering
picture of herself in the Sunday papers--on the
Society-and-Club-Doings page, of course. She figured prominently in
civic betterment movements, and was loud in her denunciation of Sunday
dances and cabarets and the frivolities of Venice and lesser beach
resorts. She did a lot of worrying over immodest bathing suits, and
never went ne