been all right on smooth macadam,
but on this country road he had her jumpin' around on that short
wheel-base like a jackrabbit with the itch. We might have been so many
kernels of pop-corn being shaken over a hot fire. Barry seems to be
enjoyin' every minute of it, though. He makes funny cracks, whistles,
and now and then breaks into song.

"Driving a car seems to go to his head," remarks Miss McLeod. "It
appears to make him wild." "It does," says Barry. "For----

I'm a wild prairie flower,
I grow wilder hour by hour.
Nobody cares to cultivate me,
I'm wild. Whe-e-e-e!"

He warbles that for the next five minutes, until Miss McLeod suggests
that it's time for lunch.

"Let's stop at the next shady place we come to," says she.

"Oh, bother!" says Barry. "Just when Adelbaran is striking his best
pace. Why not take our nourishment on the fly?"

So she gets out the sandwiches and the thermos bottle and we take it
that way. Rather than let Barry take either hand off the wheel she feeds
him herself, even if he does complain about gettin' his countenance
smeared up with mustard some. Anyway, we didn't lose any time if we did
spill more or less of the coffee.

"Cheerie oh!" sings out Barry, readin' a sign board. "Only twenty miles
more!"

"But such up-and-downy miles!" says Ann.

She was dead right about that, for the further we got into New Hampshire
the more the road looked like it had been built by a roller coaster fan.
I always had a notion this was a small state, from the way it looks on
the map, but I'll bet if it could be rolled flat once it would spread
out near as big as Texas. All we did was to climb up and up and then
slide down and down. Generally at the bottom was one of these covered
wooden bridges, like a hay barn with both ends knocked out, and the way
we'd roar through those was enough to make you think you was goin'
forward with a barrage. Then just ahead would be another long hill
windin' up to the top of the world.

"Only five miles to go!" sings out Barry at last, along about three
o'clock. "Now, Ann, it's nearly time for you to be saying a few kind
words to Adelbaran and me."

"I'll be thinking them up," says Ann.

Perhaps she did. I can't say. For it was somewhere in the middle of the
second or third hill after this that the little roadster began to
splutter and cough like it had swallowed a monkey wrench.

"Come, come now, Adelbaran!" says Barry coaxin'. "Don't go misbehav