“You haven’t said ‘automobile’ once all the afternoon!” CHAPTER VIII TOM LEARNS TO RUN THE ARK On the following Tuesday morning the expressman backed up to the Bentons’ and lowered two heavy wooden cases to the sidewalk, subsequently trundling them up the short drive to the stable, and that evening Jimmy Brennan began to reassemble the engine. Tom was on hand, watching, helping where he might, and asking a hundred questions. Jimmy, whom the boys had grown to like tremendously, was patience itself. In fact, he seemed to like to share his knowledge with Tom. Scarcely a part was assembled without Tom learning the why and wherefore of it. Jimmy wasted good time often enough while he explained and illustrated. Jimmy had gained his knowledge of engines in a machine shop in Providence, and of automobiles in an automobile factory in Springfield, where he had worked two years. How he had managed to land in Audelsville is best told in Jimmy’s own language. “You see,” he confided to Tom one evening while he worked on the car, “after I’d been at the bench about a year and a half I thought I’d sort of like to run one of the things. So I got ’em to shift me and I used to try the cars out after they were built. Then one day they wanted a demonstrator――one of the chaps was sick or something――and they took me. When the other chap came back again they said I could keep on if I wanted to, and I did. Then, maybe it was two or three months after that, I was showing a big ‘sixty’ to a man. I had him out two or three times and, finally, he decided to buy the car. Then he asked me would I come to Audelsville, where he lived, and be his chauffeur. I mulled it over and finally I said I would. He offered good big wages.” “Who was he?” asked Tom. “James U.,” replied Jimmy. “James U. Martin, to be sure.” “Oh! And didn’t you like the work?” “I did and I didn’t. I liked driving the car, but they wanted me to wear a uniform. I’d have done that, too, I guess, but Mrs. Martin and me, we――well, we didn’t hit it off very well. She said my hands were always dirty――which they were, I guess, seeing as I was always tinkering with the engine or something――and she didn’t like the color of my hair. She said red hair wasn’t genteel for a chauffeur. I said I wasn’t goin’ to change the color of my hair for nobody, and so I quit. James U. offered me a job in the mill, but I didn’t take it. Went to work for Gerrish and Hanford instead. Some day, likely, I’ll pull up and go back to the automobile factory. So that’s how I came to be living in this old burg.” “Don’t you like Audelsville?” asked Tom in surprise. “Oh, it’s good enough, I guess. Now, then, where’s that box of cotter pins?”