HOUSE AND GARDEN 
288 
November, 
I9H 
electric runabout, with Dorry laughingly directing it, and Larry 
capering before, uttering Indian-like whoops of delight. 
“I guess you can drive this machine,” said Mr. Spence, strug¬ 
gling hard to repress any signs of delight. “It’s only got two 
levers, and it steers, starts and stops at a touch!” 
This was the surprise he had been planning for months—that 
Mrs. Spence should have an automobile of her own, which would 
not only relieve Good Fairy of too much hack work, and this 
leave him more free for the usages which were always cropping up 
about the place, but which would make her independent of a 
driver and enable her to go shopping, calling, or to the station 
at her own sweet will and pleasure and without regard for 
time, season, or the other purpose for which an automobile 
was required. 
If Mrs. Spence’s eyes were full of tears as she stepped into 
the runabout, and if, after she guided it out on the main road and 
out of sight of the house, she stopped and threw her arms about 
her husband’s neck to the imminent danger of the car running 
into a telegraph pole, 
there was no one to 
see but Mr. Spence, and 
he never told. To her 
great surprise, Mrs. 
Spence found that she 
could manage the ma¬ 
chine with ease. 
“Why, there isn’t 
anything to driving 
this,” she said, wonder- 
ingly. “You just can't 
help but guide it right!” 
“Yes, and stopping 
is instinctive —push on 
the handle and push 
with the foot—and she 
stops. Release the 
foot, pull on the handle, 
and she starts.” 
“But—but, John,” demanded 
Mrs. Spence. “Aren’t they fear¬ 
fully expensive to keep? I’ve 
heard people in town talk about 
electric bills all the way up to 
seventy-five dollars a month.” 
“Perhaps that’s the case when 
you buy current, but we make 
our own! Costs but little more to run this way than Good Fairy. 
And the extra time he will have to haul produce and run errands 
will more than make up for the difference!” 
“But the savings, dear—it must have taken them all for the 
electric plant and this—this splendiferous surprise!” 
“It didn’t—not all—and there is more to be made. Seems to 
me a little woman who was born and brought up in a city but 
who comes happily to the country and helps make a home in 
the wilderness and stifles her regrets, ought to have some tangible 
reward beside the happiness of others. And this was the only 
thing I could think of we needed and didn’t have!” 
The new “investments” prospered amazingly. Mrs. Spence, 
whose strength had never been all that her husband wished, found 
a new pleasure and a new happiness in a car of her very own. 
From its newness and strangeness she was enticed into the daily 
drive she had often had to deny herself because Good Fairy was 
otherwise engaged. She found her social duties easier, and her 
shopping tours more quickly made that she did not have to 
depend on a time schedule for the gas car, but could order her 
own for any moment and keep it as long as she wanted it. Trips to 
school to fetch the children, to the station to get Mr. Spence, 
were suddenly a pleasure to look forward to, and as the car 
was charged at their own plant every day if it needed it, the 
expense never entered very heavily into her calculations. 
“Nor must we figure our income as a stationary proposition,” 
protested Mr. Spence to his wife, when she again chided him 
on the unexpected expenditure. “I’m going to make more 
money. It’s not only the new acquaintances I’ve made out here. 
It’s the broader outlook and more especially the saner life. 
Look for a minute at the difference between our manner of liv¬ 
ing here and what it was in the city or in Willisport. In the city 
there was no mad rush to get off in the morning to catch the 
early train that there was in Willisport, but there zuas the mad 
rush home, the crowded cars, the strain of city life in the evening 
as well as the day. If it wasn't a theatre, it was a party of 
some sort-—if it wasn't that, it was a dinner or a supper at a 
restaurant. We spent more money, and had less fun than we do 
here, and we certainly spent more vital force! 
“Here we never go to bed much later than ten unless for our 
weekly call or trip to 
town, and we live such 
a sane, out-of-door, 
fresh air, unworried, 
unharried life that I 
feel ten years younger. 
The result is that I 
work harder, do my 
work more easily, and 
I can see right now 
where I won’t make 
much less than nine 
and perhaps more 
thousands this year 
right in the business. 
Of course, any 
business ought 
to grow, and 
I’d expect to 
increase my in¬ 
come even if I 
lived in town. 
But as it grew, 
I’d grow older 
and more wor¬ 
ried and thin¬ 
ner and go 
more to the 
doctor. I see it all around me. I don’t mind my work as I did 
once—I don’t forget, as I used to, and I don’t have the hard 
time thinking up new schemes that I once had. And it’s nothing 
in the world but the country, the garden, Good Fairy and the 
health, strength and peace at home which accounts for it.” 
The home prospered as the business prospered. The second 
year of gardening, though it brought new problems, brought also 
a greatly increased yield. Dorry was older and made fewer mis¬ 
takes, and had more strength to give tp the garden. Jack had 
much more time to devote to it, now that he no longer had to 
drive the children to school if they missed the ’bus, or to go and 
call for Mr. Spence. Mrs. Spence did this with the electric— 
not to save Jack’s time, it must be confessed, but for the pure 
love of being out in the open in a car of which she was not 
afraid and which she could operate with safety and pleasure for 
herself and her friends. 
The whole electric investment meant much to her, and the 
bloom on the cheeks which had been too pale and the sparkle in 
the eyes which had grown lifeless in the city, were rewards 
enough for Mr. Spence, for the expenditure, not counting any 
(Continued on page 339) 
The surprise he had been planning for months was an electric runabout which 
Mrs. Spence could operate herself, which would make her independent of a 
driver and relieve "The Good Fairy” 
