"Eight or ten dollars! Two dollars an hour to run it!" gasped Jessica. "Why, Herbert, what shall we do? There is only ten dollars now of the household money to last the rest of the month; and there 's this week's grocery bill and a dollar and a half for the laundry to pay!" "That's exactly it--what shall we do?" snapped Herbert. This thing was getting on his nerves. "But we must do," laughed Jessica hysterically. "The idea of giving up a three-thousand-dollar automobile because one owes a grocery bill and a dollar and a half for laundry!" "Well, we can't eat the automobile, and 't won't wash our clothes for us." "Naturally not! Who wants it to?" Jessica's nerves, also, were feeling the strain. "We might--sell it." "Sell it! Sell our automobile!" flamed Jessica; and to hear her, one would think the proposition was to sell an old family heirloom, beloved for years. Her husband sighed. "Isn't there something somewhere about selling the pot to get something to put into it?" he muttered dismally, as he rose to lock up the house for the night. "Well, I fancy that's what we 'll have to do--sell the automobile to get money enough to move it!" Two days later the automobile came. Perhaps the grocer waited. Perhaps the laundry bill went unpaid. Perhaps an obliging friend advanced a loan. Whatever it was, spic and span in Dearborn's garage stood the three-thousand-dollar automobile, the admired of every eye. June had gone, and July was weeks old, however, before the preliminaries of license and lessons were over, and Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Wheeler could enter into the full knowledge of what it meant to be the joyous possessors of an automobile which one could run one's self. "And now we'll take our friends," cried Jessica. "Who'll go first?" "Let's begin with the A's--the Arnolds. They 're always doing things for us." "Good! I'll telephone Mrs. Arnold to-night. To-morrow is Saturday, half-holiday. We'll take them down to the lake and come home by moonlight. Oh, Herbert, won't it be lovely?" "You bet it will," exulted Herbert, as he thought of the Arnolds' admiring eyes when their car should sweep up to their door. At three o'clock Saturday afternoon the Wheelers with their two guests started for the lake. It was a beautiful day. The road was good and every one was in excellent spirits--that is, every one but the host. It had come to him suddenly with overwhelming force that he was responsible not only for the happiness but for the lives of his wife and their friends. What if something should go wrong? But nothing did go wrong. He stopped twice, it is true, and examined carefully his car; but the only result of his search was a plentiful bedaubing of oil and gasoline on his hands and of roadway dust on his clothing. He was used to this and did not mind it, however--until he went in to dinner at the Lakeside House beside the fresh daintiness of his wife and their friends; then he did mind it.