that--"

"Now, look here, dad," I cut in, getting a bit hot under the collar
myself, "by all the laws of nature, there must have been a time when _you_
were twenty-five years old and cut a little swath of your own. And, seeing
you're as big as your offspring--six-foot-one, and you can't deny it--and
fairly husky for a man of your age, I'll bet all you dare that said swath
was not of the narrow-gage variety. I've never heard of your teaching a
class in any Sunday-school, and if you never drove your machine beyond
the dead-line and cracked champagne-bottles on the wheels in front of the
Cliff House, it's because automobiles weren't invented and Cliff House
wasn't built. Begging your pardon, dad--I'll bet you were a pretty
rollicky young blade, yourself."

Now dad is very old-fashioned in some of his notions; one of them is that
a parent may hand out a roast that will frizzle the foliage for blocks
around, and, guilty or innocent, the son must take it, as he'd take
cod-liver oil--it's-nasty-but-good-for-what-ails-you. He snapped his mouth
shut, and, being his son and having that habit myself, I recognized the
symptoms and judged that things would presently grow interesting.

I was betting on a full-house. The atmosphere grew tense. I heard a lot of
things in the next five minutes that no one but my dad could say without
me trying mighty hard to make him swallow them. And I just sat there and
looked at him and took it.

I couldn't agree with him that I'd committed a grievous crime. It wasn't
much of a lark, as larks go: just an incident at the close of a rather
full afternoon. Coming around up the beach front Ingleside House a few
days before, in the _Yellow Peril_--my machine--we got to badgering each
other about doing things not orthodox. At last Barney MacTague dared me to
drive the _Yellow Peril_ past the dead-line--down by the Pavilion--and on
up the hill to Sutro Baths. Naturally, I couldn't take a dare like that,
and went him one better; I told him I'd not only drive to the very top of
the hill, but I'd stop at the Gift House and crack a bottle of champagne
on each wheel of the _Yellow Peril,_ in honor of the occasion; that would
make a bottle apiece, for there were four of us along.

It was done, to the delight of the usual Sunday crowd of brides, grooms,
tourists, and kids. A mounted policeman interviewed us, to the further
delight of the crowd, and invited us to call upon a certain judge whom
none of us knew.