Tommy also hesitated. Then he said: “If you think I can help I'll be glad to, Bill. But you must do exactly as you wish. I don't want to pry--” “You big chump!” interrupted Bill, “I've been afraid to ask you. You know I don't hit it right every time, and you may lose patience with me and--” “Tut-tut, me child!” said Tommy. “Well, I'm only warning you.” “Bill, I'd like to talk all night, but I guess we'd better go to bed.” “I sha'n't sleep a wink all night,” Bill spoke accusingly. “Same here,” retorted Tommy. He was in bed trying not to think about Bill's carburetor and the new cars he would sell by the thousand, when his door opened. Bill stuck his head into the room. “Tommy!” he whispered. “Yes, what is it?” “I--I am much obliged.” “Did you wake me up to tell me that?” “Yes. And I have a sneaking notion--” “My business hours, Mr. Byrnes, are five a.m. to ten p.m.,” interrupted Tommy, because what he really wanted was to listen to Bill all night, and he knew he had to fight against the feeling that he was a kid tickled to death with a new toy. “All right,” said Bill, meekly; “but I wanted to tell you I was much obliged--” “You have. Now go to sleep.” “I can't!” “Then go to blazes.” “It's your fault!” “Good night, Bill.” “Good night, Tommy. Say, a coil in the manifold intake--” Tommy snored loudly. Bill's sigh was almost as audible. Then the door closed softly. CHAPTER XI TOMMY devoted himself whole-souledly to the study of the car Mr. Thompson had told him to play with. It delighted him to put flesh on what hitherto had been but the bones of theory. He was certain the car would make him very valuable to the Tecumseh Company as a salesman. As soon as he could drive with confidence he began to drive with pleasure, and as soon as he could do that he dragged Bill from the little shop in Mrs. Clayton's woodshed and gave him a joy-ride. Together they made a long list of improvements, nearly all of them suggested by Tommy, who, not being a mechanic, found difficult and complicated what to Bill was a simple matter to fix and adjust. “The Beginner's Delight” was what Tommy, the salesman, called the Tecumseh car as it ought to be, the car that would sell itself. Bill, the mechanic, called it “The D. P.'s Dream.” Tommy at first dutifully reported the needed improvements to the men in the shop, but they laughed at him and called him Daredevil Dick; or, when they took him seriously, told him that the suggestions were either impractical or unavailable, because they involved structural changes that were either commercially extravagant or mechanically inexpedient. “In a piece of machinery, as in everything else in life, Tommy,” La Grange told him one day, because he saw the disappointment in Tommy's eyes, “we are up against a series of compromises. One must try to lose as little as possible in one place in order to gain more somewhere else. It is a matter of weighing profits and losses.”