"Now we'll get something done! Look! It's a bug--a flivver or a Teal or
something. I believe it's the young man that got us out of the mud."
Milt Daggett stopped, casually greeted them: "Why, hello, Miss Boltwood.
Thought you'd be way ahead of me some place!"
"Mrwr," said Vere de Vere. What this meant the historian does not know.
"No; I've been taking it easy. Mr., Uh--I can't quite remember your
name----"
"Milt Daggett."
"There's something mysterious the matter with my car. The engine will
start, after it's left alone a while, but then it stalls. Do you
suppose you could tell what it is?"
"I don't know. I'll see if I can find out."
"Then you probably will. The other two men knew everything. One of them
was the inventor of wheels, and the other discovered skidding. So of
course they couldn't help me."
Milt added nothing to her frivolity, but his smile was friendly. He
lifted the round rubber cap of the distributor. Then Claire's faith
tumbled in the dust. Twice had the wires been tested. Milt tested them
again. She was too tired of botching to tell him he was wasting time.
"Got an oil can?" he hesitated.
Through a tiny hole in the plate of the distributor he dripped two drops
of oil--only two drops. "I guess maybe that's what it needed. You might
try her now, and see how she runs," he said mildly.
Dubiously Claire started the engine. It sang jubilantly, and it did not
stop. Again was the road open to her. Again was the settlement over
there, to which it would have taken her an hour to walk, only six
minutes away.
She stopped the engine, beamed at him--there in the dust, on the quiet
hilltop. He said as apologetically as though he had been at fault,
"Distributor got dry. Might give it a little oil about once in six
months."
"We are so grateful to you! Twice now you've saved our lives."
"Oh, I guess you'd have gone on living! And if drivers can't help each
other, who can?"
"That's a good start toward world-fellowship, I suppose. I wish we could
do---- Return your lunch or---- Mr. Daggett! Do you read books? I
mean----"
"Yes I do, when I run across them."
"Mayn't I gi--lend you these two that I happen to have along? I've
finished them, and so has father, I think."
From the folds of the strapped-down top she pulled out Compton
Mackenzie's Youth's Encounter, and Vachel Lindsay's Congo. With a
curious faint excitement she watched him turn the leaves. His blunt
fingers flapped through them as though he was used to books. As he
looked at Congo, he exclaimed, "Poetry! That's fine! Like it, but I
don't hardly ever run across it. I---- Say---- I'm terribly obliged!"