"Take care of that horse, mister," said he, warningly. "He's young and a
little bit wild."

"Wild?" gasped the dude. "I--I don't want to drive a wild horse."

"Oh, he'll be all right if you keep an eye on him," went on the stable
boy.

"Young and a little bit wild!" thought Felix to himself. "Oh, dear, what
in the world shall I do? I never drove a horse before. If I get back
with less than a broken neck I'll be lucky! I'd give a thousand to be
out of this pickle."

"Hadn't we better start, Mr. Gussing?" asked one of the young ladies,
after a pause.

"Oh, yes--certainly!" he stammered. "But--er--you can drive if you
wish."

"Thank you, but I would prefer that you drive."

"Won't you drive?" he asked of the other young lady.

"Oh, no, not to-day. But I'll use the whip if you say so," she answered.

"Not for the world!" cried the unhappy Felix. "He is a bit wild already
and there is no telling what he'd do if he felt the whip."

At last the carriage drove off. Joe gazed after it thoughtfully.

"Unless I miss my guess, there is going to be trouble before that drive
is over," he thought. And there was trouble, as we shall soon learn.

CHAPTER IX.

AN UNFORTUNATE OUTING.

Fortunately for the unhappy Felix the horse walked away from the hotel
in an orderly fashion, and soon they gained the highway leading to the
resort the party wished to visit.

Had the dude left the horse alone all might have gone well. But he
deemed it necessary to pull on first one line and then the other, which
kept the carriage in a meandering course.

"I don't think, Mr. Gussing, that you can be much used to driving," said
one of the young ladies, presently.

"That's a fact," answered the dude.

"Why don't you keep to the right of the road?"

"Well,--er--the fact is, this horse is a very difficult one to drive. I
don't believe I ever drove one which was more so."

As this was the first horse Mr. Gussing had ever driven, this assertion
was true in every particular.

"Oh, I can't travel so slow!" cried one of the young ladies, and seized
the whip, and before Felix could stop her, used it on the steed.

The effect was magical. The horse started up like a racer, and tore
through the street as if trying to win a race for a thousand dollars.

The dude clung to the reins in the wildest terror. To his frenzied
imagination it seemed that his final hour was approaching.

"Whoa!" he screamed, jerking on the lines. "Stop, you