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Bert Wilson at the Wheel
Bert Wilson at the Wheel
CHAPTER I
The “Red Scout”
“What dandy luck.”
“It’s too good to be true.”
“Who’d ever thought we’d have the luck to get it?”
“It can’t be true. I shan’t believe it till it gets here.”
“Anyway, it is true, and won’t we have the niftiest time ever?”
“Well, you might as well sit down, Bob. Running around like a hen with her head cut off won’t make it come any sooner.”
“Aw, how’s a fellow to sit still when a thing like that’s on the way? I wonder how long we’ll have to wait. What can be keeping him?”
A score of voices, talking singly, two together, all together, woke the woodland echoes, silent through the long winter and tardy spring, gone at last. Summer had come and with it the annual encampment of a score or more of manly, healthy youngsters, overflowing with animal spirits and vitality. For several years past, substantially the same group under the supervision of a Mr. Hollis, a gentleman of sterling character and considerable means, had gone into camp together for two or three weeks of the heated season. Brimming over with life, the boys always made the camp a lively place; but this summer a new and enveloping excitement seemed to have taken possession of everyone, and now all were plunged into a discussion of the cause of the hullabaloo, the voices rising higher and higher as each one sought to make himself heard above the rest.
Turning a bend in the road that brought the camp into view, Mr. Hollis, as he witnessed the excited gestures of the boys, and heard the volume of sound caused by every enthusiast trying to talk at once, instinctively quickened his pace, for it almost seemed as though a serious altercation were in progress; but as he came near enough to distinguish words and heard – “Six cylinders,” “Forty-eight horsepower,” “Chrome nickel steel,” “Wheel base one hundred and twelve inches,” “Diamond tires,” “Autometer,” “Safety treads,” “Grip treads” – he realized that nothing more serious was going on than a discussion of the relative merits of automobiles and their fittings. No wonder there was gesturing and loud talking. What boy would not rise to the topmost heights of enthusiasm at the thought of an automobile in which he was to have a personal interest? Such a delight had come to the camp, and since the announcement in the morning that on account of the long trips that the summer’s plans would make necessary, the boys would be allowed an automobile for their own exclusive use, nothing else had been thought or talked about; and each eager boy was impatiently awaiting the return of Mr. Hollis to learn the make and all other details of that most wonderful car.
Now, as he came into camp, the boys crowded around him and the wood rang with cheers as he told them that the car would arrive the following morning. A volley of questions overwhelmed him: “How large is it?” “What speed?” “What color is it?” “How many of us can ride in it at a time?” Question followed question in quick succession, until Mr. Hollis put his hands over his ears, and, refusing to answer any more, proposed dinner as a means of quelling the noise.