pile of junk off my place here
just as fast as you can, or, by the eternal, I'll have you all arrested
for trespassing!"

With them few remarks he stamps off across the lawn, bellerin' like a
bull.

"Well, Alex," I says, "at last you have hit somethin' in little old New
York that you can't do, eh?"

"That old boob gimme a pain anyways!" remarks the mechanic. "What does
he know about machinery? Gimme a cigarette!"

Alex sits down on the runnin' board of the Gaflooey chummy roadster and
lights a cigar. He puffs away, lookin' off in the air kinda sad and
mournful, like he had just been handed a wire readin', "Father has told
all. We are lost.--Agnes," or somethin' to that effect. Even though
he was a relative of the wife's and had spent every minute since he hit
New York confessin' to bein' a world beater, I felt sorry for him!
Runyon Q. Sampson was off the Gaflooey people for life, and Alex had
fell down on the biggest thing he'd tried yet. I knew how he must of
felt about it, so I went over and slapped him on the back.

"Cheer up, Alex," I says. "I know that was a tough one to lose, but a
guy can't finish in front all the time! You know you ain't up in dear
old Vermont now and this town's much harder to beat than the average.
I told you that when you first come here. I knowed it was only a
question of time before you'd hit the bumps--everybody does sooner or
later in New York--and then you--"

Alex gets up and throws away the cigar.

"All I hope," he says. "All I hope is that the one they deliver to him
works all right!"

"Deliver to who?" I says.

"Runyon Q. Sampson!" he comes back. "I come up here to sell that
feller a Gaflooey chummy roadster and that's what I'm a goin' to dew!
I'll have his check before the end of the week. I don't know how I'm
gonna do it now, but in some way this here sale is gonna occur, you can
gamble on that! D'ye think a little thing like this can discourage me?
Why if the car had exploded and blowed us all up in the air while we
was sittin' in it, I would of sold Sampson the speedometer for a watch
before we had hit the ground again!" He turns around on the mechanic
and rolls up his sleeves. "The faster you git away from here, the
longer you'll live!" he snarls. "What art was you follerin' before you
took up automobiles?"

"Well, to be on the level with you," says the mechanic, "I was second
man in a cigar store on Twenty-third Street. I got fired because me
and