So far I had damaged property to a certain extent, but I had no one but myself to reckon with, and I was providing work for people. I always have claimed that he who makes work for two men where there was only work for one before, is a public benefactor, and that day I was the friend of carpenters and other mechanics. Along the highway we flew, our hearts beating high, but never in our mouths, and at last we saw a team approaching us. By “a team” I mean a horse and buggy. I was raised in Connecticut, where a team is anything you choose to call one. The teamster saw us. Well, perhaps I should not call him a teamster (although he was one logically): he was our doctor, and, as I say, he saw us. Now I think it would have been friendly in him, seeing that I was more or less of a novice at the art of automobiling, to have turned to the left when he saw that I was inadvertently turning to the left, but the practice of forty years added to a certain native obstinacy made him turn to the right, and he met me at the same time that I met him. The horse was not hurt, for which I am truly glad, and the doctor joined us, and continued with us for a season, but his buggy was demolished. Of course I am always prepared to pay for my pleasure, and though it was not, strictly speaking, my pleasure to deprive my physician of his turn-out, yet if he _had_ turned out it wouldn’t have happened--and, as I say, I was prepared to get him a new vehicle. But he was very unreasonable; so much so that, as he was crowding us--for the seat was not built for more than two, and he is stout--I at last told him that I intended to turn around and carry him home, as we were out for pleasure, and he was giving us pain. I will confess that the events of the last few minutes had rattled me somewhat, and I did not feel like turning just then, as the road was narrow. I knew that the road turned of its own accord a half-mile farther on, and so I determined to wait. “I want to get out,” said the doctor tartly, and just as he said so Araminta stepped on the brake, accidentally. The doctor got out--in front. With great presence of mind I reversed, and so we did not run over him. But he was furious and sulphurous, and that is why I have changed to homeopathy. He was the only allopathic doctor in Brantford. I suppose that if I had stopped and apologized, he would have made up with me, and I would not have got angry with him; but I couldn’t stop. The machine was now going as she had done when I left the barn, and we were backing into town. Through it all I did not lose my coolness. I said: “Araminta, look out behind, which is ahead for us, and if you have occasion to jump now, do it in front, which is behind,” and Araminta understood me. She sat sideways, so that she could see what was going on, but that might have been seen from any point of view, for we were the only things going on--or backing.