Belles on their Toes

for $20, and it had aged perceptibly under its new ownership.
    The car had neither top nor fenders. The body was painted airplane silver. A six-inch red stripe, none too expertly applied, ran waterline fashion around the hull at a point equidistant from the running boards at the top of the doors.
    Starting the motor was a two-man proposition, with one person turning the crank and jiggling a wire-loop choke which protruded from the front of the radiator, and the other sitting in the driver's seat to retard the spark as soon as the engine coughed. But the three owners had done a good deal of work on the motor; it was reliable and purred like a kitten, only louder.
    There was no doubt in anyone's mind that the car would make the trip to the Capital. As a matter of insurance, though, a pump, tire patches, spare spark coils, and miscellaneous tools were stowed under the seats. And the boys decided to start the journey before dawn.
    The day before departure, Frank held a dress rehearsal to make sure that the delegation had the proper clothes. All of the boys, with the exception of Frank, owned blue serge suits. Frank had handed down his blue serge to Bill that autumn, and had replaced it with a collegiate number purchased at the Campus Toggery Shop, in Ann Arbor.
    The suit had padded shoulders, wasp waist, 23-inch cuffs on the trousers, and a double-brested vest with lapels. The color was something between tan and yellow, without many of the best features of either, The material was as heavy and hairy as an army blanket. It had cost $28, and Frank was immensely pleased with it.
    From the consistency of the cloth, it was apparent that the suit would wear forever. It was this aspect that appealed least to the other boys, when Frank appeared at dress rehearsal.
    "Good Lord, what's that,” Bill whinnied when Frank walked into the parlor. "I hope you didn't throw away the sales slip. Take it off quick, before you muss it up."
    "What's the matter with it?" Frank asked with hurt feelings.
    "If it's going to be a party like Hallowe'en," said Bob, who was nine, "can I wear my cowboy suit?"
    Bill felt the material. "It's your own business what you buy when you get something thin that you can wear out yourself," he complained. "But when you pick out a heavy suit like that, you're supposed to have me with you."
    "For something as heavy as that, he's supposed to take all of us with him," Fred added. "That one will go all the way down the line to Bob."
    "What's the matter with you kids' taste?" Frank marveled. "How far behind the times is this town, anyway? This color is the latest thing at Michigan."
    "It looks," said Bob, "like what happens to the mustard jar when you forget to screw the top back on.
    "It does not," Frank told him, "and you keep out of this. It just happens I've had a lot of compliments on it at Michigan."
    "You mean you've worn it before?" asked Bill, deflated. "Then you can't take it back?"
    "I wore it all fall."
    "How come I didn't see it in your closet after you unpacked?"
    "Because I know you," Frank said. "That’s why. Every time I get a new suit, the first thing I know you're borrowing it and spilling things on it."
    "If he spilled mustard," Bob insisted, "you wouldn't have to worry, once it dried."
    "It sheds, too," Bill said accusingly, picking nap off the sleeve of his blue serge, where it had brushed against Frank. "You're going to leave yellow hairs all over Mr. Hoover."
    "I don't intend to be brushing up against anybody," Frank replied. "It sheds a little, I'll admit. That's because it's still comparatively new."
    "Don't think I'm going to walk through the reception line with you,' Bill warned. "I'm not going to watch cabinet officers and the diplomatic corps tiptoeing through great piles of nap that you've deposited all the way from the South Portico to the Blue Room."
    "Do you think all the nap will be gone by the time it's handed down to me?" Bob asked.
    "I doubt it," Bill replied. "I promise you one thing. I'll never help get rid of any of it."

    There were two flat tires between Montclair and Philadelphia, but the boys patched them and the car ran well. Frank tried to make up some of the time they had lost in fixing the tires. Shortly before they reached Baltimore, a motorcycle patrolman came up behind them and waved them down for speeding.
    "I congratulate you for bringing that heap all the way from New Jersey," he said, copying the license number into his ticket book. "If I didn't see it with my