The burgess felt entirely too surrounded by Chesbros, with Artie babbling on one side and the wife, silent on the other. Then they turned into Sycamore. The burgess leaned forward. Funny, he could hardly see the highway junction at the bottom of the hill. They rolled down at forty or so, and then everything happened at once. Something jumped up out of the pavement ahead of them. "Watch out!" yelled the burgess. "Jesus!" cried Artie Chesbro, slamming on the brakes and skidding. It looked like a figure, some crazy kind of figure hard to make out in the rain, that suddenly started to get up in the middle of the road; it humped itself and flopped back, and then leaped high in the air, higher than the roof of the car. Mrs. Chesbro laughed out loud, nervously. "Busted water pipe!" cried Artie Chesbro. "Look, Henry, it's a whole fountain!" It was a fountain, all right, but it wasn't anything broken. The burgess swallowed hard. Not in '35, not even in '39, had the storm sewers backed up hard enough and fast enough to send their manhole lids flying into the air. CHAPTER FOUR Dick McCue started off like a jet pilot. "What's the hurry?" Mrs. Goudeket demanded. "Better go slow and we'll get there." She was feeling uneasier than ever; because though she had heard the rain pounding on the house, and seen the rain sluicing down the windows, she hadn't _felt_ the rain until that two-yard dash from the door to the station wagon that had wet her to the skin. "Sure, Mrs. Goudeket," he said cheerfully, and slowed down--briefly. Fast, slow--he could drive that blacktop road down to the highway in his sleep. This was what he liked; something happening. He never would have taken the agency's offer of this job if he'd known it would involve running putting contests for rained-in guests who blamed it all on him. Girls, dances, a chance to sharpen up his game for the all-important Inter-Collegiate Medalist next year--the agency had made it sound pretty great. Of course, he had a lot to offer, too--his maidenhead, for instance, as far as the world of golf was concerned; now he was definitely and permanently a pro, and some of the doors in golfing were forever closed to him. Maybe he should have held out for more money. But what was the difference; Dick McCue knew well enough that his game wasn't going to support him all his life; he had a good, powerful drive and a touch with the putter, but everything between the tee and the cup was hard work. It made him a splendid golf pro for Mrs. Goudeket's guests, most of whose future golfing would be either on a driving range or on one of those miniature courses that were coming back, but that was as far as his talents went. Dick McCue didn't kid himself--or anyway, not about his golf.