“I did too have permission!” Buster’s red crest reared. His black eyes flamed. “I had her opened up, and was studying the engine—gee, some peach!—and I told the doctor’s chauffeur that I’d bet him a box of Gibraltars I could take that car clear to Doctor Lake’s Boston office and back in two hours and not get pinched. And he said, ‘I’m from Saint Joe, son. You gotta show me.’ So I jumped aboard, and I’d beat it down the drive before he could say boo. And I made it in one hour and fifty-seven minutes, though I had to waste ten minutes, and a dollar besides, on the doctor’s mutt of a doorman—making him understand why he must sign his name to a card saying I’d reported there at five sharp. The big dummy, I don’t believe the real reason has dawned on him yet. But you oughter seen that chauffeur wilt when I whizzled her in, two minutes ago!” “I feel wilted myself. When I think of the apologies I must make to Doctor Lake—” “Apologies? What for? He ought to be delighted. It was a corking speed test for his car. Down that stem-winder cliff, let me tell you, she just naturally hung on by her eyebrows.” “Richard, the chauffeur did not mean to give you permission. You know that.” “W-Well. What if he didn’t?” “Richard, you are inexcusable.” Aunt Charlotte ruffled her feathers and dashed into the fray. Whereat Richard exploded. “Gee, ain’t it fierce? Ain’t it, now! How’s a fellow to learn about cars and engines and things if folks won’t ever give him a chance to try ’em out? And I’ve got to find out how to do things and make things and run things; I’ve _got_ to know!” His solid fists clinched; his voice skittered comically from a bass bellow to an angry treble crow. I choked. He was so exactly like a pin-feathered young Shanghai rooster, hotly contending his right to live his own life, against two glum, elderly hens. But that didn’t deter me from marching him over to Madam Hallowell’s later. “Nonsense, my dear Miss Edith!” Thus Doctor Lake, just a bit too Olympian in large white waistcoat and eminent calm. “It was my chauffeur’s doing. He will answer to me. I beg you, give the matter no more thought.” None the less, in his bland eye lurked a yearning to seize on Buster and boil him in oil. Buster saw that look. “Grown-up folks are so darn stingy!” he mused bitterly as we went away. He aimed a vicious kick at the box hedge. “You’d think any man would be glad to let a fellow take his car to pieces and study it out, then test it for speed and endurance, ’specially when the fellow has never owned anything better than a measly little runabout in all his life. But no. There he stands, all diked out like a cold boiled owl, with his eyes rolled up and his lip rolled out—‘My chauffeur will answer to me.’ When, all the time, he’d lick the hide off me if he just dasted. Old stuffed shirt!” “You need not speak so disrespectfully—”