"Gee," he said. "I don't think I can make it tonight, Mary Jane. I've, er ... well, something's happened." It seemed to Woody that the temperature around him fell about ten degrees when he said that, and the slight silence that followed seemed to last about five years. "What's happened?" asked Mary Jane, and Woody could have sworn that there was cold water trickling from the receiver which he held to his ear. "Well ... I just haven't got the dough right now," he said lamely. "Woody Hartford," said Mary Jane. "You knew ten days ago about this date. You asked for it then. You had plenty of time to call me before--" "But, honey--" said Woody. "Never mind," snapped Mary Jane. "I'm going to the movie, and it won't be with you. I just hope I never see you again--you and that silly old car of yours." Woody thought he heard a sob before the receiver clicked in his ear. At ten minutes to seven, Bob Peters came round with the manifold. He swept into the service station in a yellow Buick convertible that Woody knew he'd bought out of spare-time earnings. Woody took one look at him, and his heart sank. Mary Jane, dressed up as lovely as a princess, was seated beside Bob, and she looked right through him. "The manifold's in the back," said Bob cheerfully. "Do you mind getting it out? I don't want to soil my duds." Woody opened up the back of the convertible and took out the manifold. When he had put it on the ground carefully, Bob said, "That'll be ten bucks--cash." Woody gave the money, a five and five singles, to Bob, and Mary Jane said, "Oh," putting more scorn and contempt into the word than Woody would have thought possible. Then the two drove off, Mary Jane with her nose very high in the air and her brown eyes surprisingly stony. "What have ye got there, laddie?" Worm asked when they had gone. Woody looked at the manifold and after the departing car. He thought of Worm's book, Davie's _Problems and Principles of Internal Combustion Engines_. "I think I've got the same sort of girl friend that you had in Scotland," he said. 2 In the week that followed, Woody caught only a few glimpses of Mary Jane. She cut him dead each time. They'd had their quarrels before, but Woody realized that this time it was pretty serious, and there was little he could do to alter the situation. "When a dame spends five bucks fixing up her hair to be taken out and you spend ten bucks fixing up a hot rod and don't take her out, you're back in the stag line again," his friend Steve Phillips told him philosophically. "Why don't you forget about that pile of junk and spend your time straightening things out with Mary Jane? She's a nice kid. You ought to take more care of her."