Airship Andy; Or, The Luck of a Brave Boy — A Reader’s Guide

ertained to iron and steel. When roller skating became a fad, he had sold out his business, built a big rink, and in a year was stranded high and dry. The bicycle fever caught him next, but he went into it just as everybody else was getting out of it. The result was another failure.

Now he had been in the automobile business for about six months. He had bought an old ramshackly paint-shop on the main street of the town, and had fixed it up so that it was quite presentable as a garage.

There were not many resident owners of automobiles in Princeville. Just at its outskirts, however, along the shore of a pretty lake, were the homes of some retired city folks. During the vacation months a good many people having machines summered at the town. Some of them stored their automobiles at the garage. Talbot claimed to do expert repairing, and as a good road ran through Princeville he managed to do some business with transient customers who came along.

Before he had been in the garage twenty-four hours, Andy was amazed and disgusted at the clumsy clap-trap repairing work that Talbot did. He half-mended breaks and leaks that would not last till a car reached its destination. He put in inferior parts, and on one occasion Andy saw his employer substitute an old tire for one almost new.

Andy tried to remedy all this. He was at home with tools, and inside of a week he was thoroughly familiar with every part of an automobile. He induced Talbot to send to the city for many important little adjuncts to ready repairing, and his employer soon realized that he had a treasure in his new assistant.

He did not, however, manifest it by any exhibition of liberality. In fact, as the days wore on Andy’s tasks were piled up mountain high, and Talbot became a merciless tyrant in his bearing. Once when Andy earned a double fee by getting out of bed at midnight and hauling into town a car stuck in a mud-hole, he promised Andy a raise in salary and a new suit the next week. This promise, however, Talbot at once proceeded to forget.

It was Andy who was responsible for nearly doubling the income of his hard task-master. He heard of a big second-hand tourist car in the city, holding some thirty people, and told Talbot about it. The latter bought it for a song, and every Saturday, and sometimes several days in the week, the car earned big money taking visitors sight-seeing around the lake or conveying villagers to the woods on picnic parties.

Later Andy struck a great bargain in two old cars that were offered for sale by a resident who was going to Europe. He influenced Talbot to advertise these for rent by the day or hour, and the garage began to thrive as a real money-making business.

This especial morning Andy had arisen as usual at five o’clock. He cooked his own meals on a little oil-stove in the lumber room behind the garage, and after a cup of coffee and some broiled ham and bread and butter, went to work cleaning up three machines that rented space.

It was a few minutes before six o’clock, and just after the morning train from the city had steamed into town and out of it again, when a well-dressed man, carrying a light overcoat over one arm and a satchel, rushed through the open door of the garage.

“Hey!” he hailed. “They told me at the depot I could hire an automobile here.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Andy promptly.

“I want to cut across the country and catch the Macon train on the Central. There’s just forty-five minutes to do it in.”

“I can do it in twenty,” announced Andy with confidence. “Jump in, sir.”

In less than two minutes they were off, and the young chauffeur proved his agility and handiness with the machine in so rapid and clever a way, that his fare nodded and smiled his approval as they skimmed the smooth country road on a test run.

Andy made good his promise. It was barely half-past six when, with a honk-honk! to warn a clumsy teamster ahead of him, he ran the machine along the side of the depot platform at Macon.

“How much?” inquired his passenger, leaping out and reaching into his vest pocket.

“Our regular rate is two dollars an hour,” explained Andy.

“There’s five—never mind the change,” interrupted the gentleman. “And here’s a trifle for yourself for being wide-awake while most people are asleep.”