"Why, Bess--you silly," retorted her sister. "Of course I'm glad, too. But I don't have to go into kinks to show it. We will have a glorious time, I'm sure, for they say Lookout Beach is a perfectly ideal place." "'Ideal'! Oh, there you go!" and Bess made a grimace of her pretty face. "'Ideal'! Belle, why don't you take a private room somewhere, just off the earth, so you can be just as perfectly proper as you wish. 'Ideal!' Whoop! Why not sweet? Oh, I say--Burr-r-r-r! It's going to be immense! Now there, and you can get mad if you want to," and with this parting shot Bess hurried off to the little garage in the rear of the house. "Is the car ready to take out, Patrick?" she asked the man of all work about the Robinson place. "Yes, miss. I poured the gasolene in the little hole under the seat where you showed me, and I filled up the oil tank, and I give it a drink. I put in ice-water, Miss." "Ice-water? Why, Patrick?" for Patrick was a new acquisition, and what he didn't know about automobiles would have made two large books of instructions to beginners. "Why ice water, Patrick?" and Bess raised her pretty eyebrows. "Well, sure, an' Miss Belle said the other day, as how the water b'iled on her, miss--that is, not exactly b'iled _on_ her, but b'iled in the tea kettle--I mean that thing punched full of holes--in the front of the car." "The radiator," suggested Bess, trying not to laugh. "Yes, that's it, miss, though why they calls it a radiator, when they want it to kape cool, is beyond me. Howsomever----" "About the ice water, Patrick." "Yes, miss, I'm comin' to that. You see when Miss Belle said as how it b'iled over the other day, I thinks to myself that sure ice-water will never boil, so I filled the radiator with some as cold as I could bear me fist in it. Arrah, an' it's no b'ilin' water ye'll have th' day, when ye takes this car out, Miss Bess." "Oh, Patrick, how kind of you!" exclaimed the girl. "And what a novel idea. I'm sure it will be all right," and she placed her hand on the radiator. It was as cold as a pump handle on a frosty morning. "I blew up the tires, too, miss," went on the man, "an' here's a four leaf clover I found. Take it along." "What for?" asked Bess, as she accepted the emblem. "Sure, fer good luck. Maybe ye'll not git a puncture now. Clovers is good luck." "Oh, thank you," said Bess earnestly, as she cranked up, for Patrick had not yet advanced this far in his auto-education. Then the girl, most becomingly attired in auto hood and coat, backed the pretty little silver-colored runabout, _Flyaway_, owned by herself and her sister, "the Robinson twins," out of the garage, and turned it on the broad drive. "Would ye mind that now!" exclaimed Patrick, admiringly. "It's as--as slick as a pig's whistle, miss, savin' yer presence." Bess laughed merrily.