It was Jim Wheeler's turn to take up the shuttle. A girl met in
some casual fashion; his own youth and the urge of it, perhaps the
unconscious family indulgence of an only son--and Jim wove his bit and
passed on.
There had been mild contention in the Wheeler family during all the
spring. Looking out from his quiet windows Walter Wheeler saw the young
world going by a-wheel, and going fast. Much that legitimately belonged
to it, and much that did not in the laxness of the new code, he laid to
the automobile. And doggedly he refused to buy one.
"We can always get a taxicab," was his imperturbable answer to Jim. "I
pay pretty good-sized taxi bills without unpleasant discussion. I know
you pretty well too, Jim. Better than you know yourself. And if you had
a car, you'd try your best to break your neck in it."
Now and then Jim got a car, however. Sometimes he rented one, sometimes
he cajoled Nina into lending him hers.
"A fellow looks a fool without one," he would say to her. "Girls expect
to be taken out. It's part of the game."
And Nina, always reached by that argument of how things looked, now and
then reluctantly acquiesced. But a night or two after David and Lucy had
started for the seashore Nina came in like a whirlwind, and routed the
family peace immediately.
"Father," she said, "you just must speak to Jim. He's taken our car
twice at night without asking for it, and last night he broke a spring.
Les is simply crazy."
"Taken your car!" Mrs. Wheeler exclaimed.
"Yes. I hate telling on him, but I spoke to him after the first time,
and he did it anyhow."
Mrs. Wheeler glanced at her husband uneasily. She often felt he was too
severe with Jim.
"Don't worry," he said grimly. "He'll not do it again."
"If we only had a car of our own--" Mrs. Wheeler protested.
"You know what I think about that, mother. I'm not going to have him
joy-riding over the country, breaking his neck and getting into trouble.
I've seen him driving Wallace Sayre's car, and he drives like a fool or
a madman."
It was an old dispute and a bitter one. Mr. Wheeler got up, whistled for
the dog, and went out. His wife turned on Nina.
"I wish you wouldn't bring these things to your father, Nina," she said.
"He's been very nervous lately, and he isn't always fair to Jim."