Pretty soon we passed the wreck of the buggy, and then we saw the horse grazing on dead grass by the roadside, and at last we came on a few of our townfolk who had seen us start, and were now come out to welcome us home. But I did not go home just then. I should have done so if the machine had minded me and turned in at our driveway, but it did not. Across the way from us there is a fine lawn leading up to a beautiful greenhouse full of rare orchids and other plants. It is the pride of my very good neighbor, Jacob Rawlinson. The machine, as if moved by _malice prepense_, turned just as we came to the lawn, and began to back at railroad speed. I told Araminta that if she was tired of riding, now was the best time to stop; that she ought not to overdo it, and that I was going to get out myself as soon as I had seen her off. I saw her off. Then after one ineffectual jab at the brake, I left the machine hurriedly, and as I sat down on the sposhy lawn I heard a tremendous but not unmusical sound of falling glass.... I tell Araminta that it isn’t the running of an automobile that is expensive. It is the stopping of it. THE DECEPTION OF MARTHA TUCKER AN AUTOMOBILE EXTRAVAGANZA THE DECEPTION OF MARTHA TUCKER AN AUTOMOBILE EXTRAVAGANZA It was not that Martha Tucker was particularly fond of horses so much as that she was afraid of automobiles of every sort, kind, or description. That was why she said that she would never consent to her husband’s purchasing a motor carriage. “Horses were good enough for my father, and I guess that horses will do for me as long as I live and John is able to keep them,” said she to various friends on numerous occasions. But if she was ridiculously old-fashioned in her notions, John was not, and he cast about in his mind for some way to circumvent Martha without her knowing it. The thing would have been easy to do if it had not been for the fact that they were a very loving couple. John seldom went anywhere without taking his wife along, and as his business was of such a nature that he carried it on under his roof-tree, he was unable to speed along in happy loneliness on a locomobile or electric motor. Besides all this, John Tucker’s conscience was such a peculiar affair that if he hoodwinked Martha it must be in her sight. The Tuckers always spent their summers at Arlinberg, the roads around which were famous for driving; and almost their only out-door recreation, aside from wandering afoot in the fields, was found in riding behind any one or two of his half-dozen horses. The fact that he was abundantly able to maintain the most expensive automobile extant made it doubly hard for John to abstain from the use of one.