Joe the Hotel Boy Part 13

"Oh, yes, I love driving!" cried one of the girls.

"And so do I!" answered the other.

"I will find out what can be done about a conveyance," answered Felix.

Being a good deal of a dude, and dressing very fastidiously, he did not much relish visiting the livery stable attached to the hotel. But, early on the following morning, he walked down to the place, and ordered a horse and carriage, to be ready at ten o'clock.

Now it must be known that Felix did not intend to drive the carriage. He thought the young ladies would drive for themselves, since both had said that they loved driving. Unfortunate man! he knew not the snare he had laid for himself!

Punctual to the minute the carriage drove up to the door.

Felix was on hand, standing on the steps, with politeness in his air, though with trembling in his heart because so near the horses. He a.s.sisted the ladies in. Then he handed the reins to Miss Belle.

"Do you wish me to hold the horses while you get in?" she asked sweetly.

"Till I get in!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Felix, taken aback.

"Certainly! You don't think we are going to drive ourselves, do you? Of course you are going with us."

Poor Felix! He was "in for it" now, decidedly. It required a good deal of moral courage, a quality in which he was deficient, to resist a lady's demand. His knees trembled with fear as he scrambled in. Joe, who was standing not far away, looked on with a quiet smile on his face. He realized what was pa.s.sing in the dude's mind.

"He'd give ten dollars to get out of it," our hero told himself.

The boy who had brought the turnout around looked at Felix Gussing earnestly.

"Take care of that horse, mister," said he, warningly. "He's young and a little bit wild."

"Wild?" gasped the dude. "I--I don't want to drive a wild horse."

"Oh, he'll be all right if you keep an eye on him," went on the stable boy.

"Young and a little bit wild!" thought Felix to himself. "Oh, dear, what in the world shall I do? I never drove a horse before. If I get back with less than a broken neck I'll be lucky! I'd give a thousand to be out of this pickle."

"Hadn't we better start, Mr. Gussing?" asked one of the young ladies, after a pause.

"Oh, yes--certainly!" he stammered. "But--er--you can drive if you wish."

"Thank you, but I would prefer that you drive."

"Won't you drive?" he asked of the other young lady.

"Oh, no, not to-day. But I'll use the whip if you say so," she answered.

"Not for the world!" cried the unhappy Felix. "He is a bit wild already and there is no telling what he'd do if he felt the whip."

At last the carriage drove off. Joe gazed after it thoughtfully.

"Unless I miss my guess, there is going to be trouble before that drive is over," he thought. And there was trouble, as we shall soon learn.

CHAPTER IX.

AN UNFORTUNATE OUTING.

Fortunately for the unhappy Felix the horse walked away from the hotel in an orderly fashion, and soon they gained the highway leading to the resort the party wished to visit.

Had the dude left the horse alone all might have gone well. But he deemed it necessary to pull on first one line and then the other, which kept the carriage in a meandering course.

"I don't think, Mr. Gussing, that you can be much used to driving," said one of the young ladies, presently.

"That's a fact," answered the dude.

"Why don't you keep to the right of the road?"

"Well,--er--the fact is, this horse is a very difficult one to drive. I don't believe I ever drove one which was more so."

As this was the first horse Mr. Gussing had ever driven, this a.s.sertion was true in every particular.

"Oh, I can't travel so slow!" cried one of the young ladies, and seized the whip, and before Felix could stop her, used it on the steed.

The effect was magical. The horse started up like a racer, and tore through the street as if trying to win a race for a thousand dollars.

The dude clung to the reins in the wildest terror. To his frenzied imagination it seemed that his final hour was approaching.

"Whoa!" he screamed, jerking on the lines. "Stop, you crazy beast! Stop, before we all get killed!"

But the horse only went the faster. And now, to increase his alarm, he saw a buggy approaching from the opposite direction. It contained one of the town lawyers, Silas Simms by name.

"We shall run into that buggy!" screamed the fair Belle. "Oh, Mr.

Gussing, be careful!"

A moment later the two turnouts came together with a crash, and one wheel was torn from the buggy and the town lawyer pitched out headlong to the ground. Then on went the carriage with the dude and the two young ladies, at a faster pace than ever.

"Let me jump out!" screamed one of the ladies.

"No, not yet! You'll be killed, Grace," answered Belle.

"Then stop the carriage!"

Alas, the poor Felix was already doing his best to stop the horse. But his jerkings on the reins only added to the horse's wildness.

Not far along the road was a good sized brook, spanned by a neat wooden bridge. As the carriage neared the bridge, Felix pulled on the wrong rein once again. The horse turned from the road proper, and descended full speed into the stream itself.

"Oh, now we'll be drowned!" shrieked Grace.