"Yes. Horrid wet!"
He merely shook his head in commiseration.
He fastened the tow-rope to the rear axle of his car, to the front of
hers. "Now will you be ready to put on all your power as I begin to
pull?" he said casually, rather respectfully.
When the struggling bug had pulled the wire rope taut, she opened the
throttle. The rope trembled. Her car seemed to draw sullenly back. Then
it came out--out--really out, which is the most joyous sensation any
motorist shall ever know. In excitement over actually moving again, as
fast as any healthy young snail, she drove on, on, the young man ahead
grinning back at her. Nor did she stop, nor he, till both cars were
safe on merely thick mud, a quarter of a mile away.
She switched off the power--and suddenly she was in a whirlwind of dizzy
sickening tiredness. Even in her abandonment to exhaustion she noticed
that the young man did not stare at her but, keeping his back to her,
removed the tow-rope, and stowed it away in his bug. She wondered
whether it was tact or yokelish indifference.
Her father spoke for the first time since the Galahad of the tin bug had
come: "How much do you think we ought to give this fellow?"
Now of all the cosmic problems yet unsolved, not cancer nor the future
of poverty are the flustering questions, but these twain: Which is
worse, not to wear evening clothes at a party at which you find every
one else dressed, or to come in evening clothes to a house where, it
proves, they are never worn? And: Which is worse, not to tip when a tip
has been expected; or to tip, when the tip is an insult?
In discomfort of spirit and wetness of ankles Claire shuddered, "Oh
dear, I don't believe he expects us to pay him. He seems like an awfully
independent person. Maybe we'd offend him if we offered----"
"The only reasonable thing to be offended at in this vale of tears is
not being offered money!"
"Just the same---- Oh dear, I'm so tired. But good little Claire will
climb out and be diplomatic."
She pinched her forehead, to hold in her cracking brain, and wabbled out
into new scenes of mud and wetness, but she came up to the young man
with the most rain-washed and careless of smiles. "Won't you come back
and meet my father? He's terribly grateful to you--as I am. And may
we---- You've worked so hard, and about saved our lives. May I pay you
for that labor? We're really much indebted----"
"Oh, it wasn't anything. Tickled to death if I could help you."
He heartily shook hands with her father, and he droned, "Pleased to meet
you, Mr. Uh."