"Walter can run a machine--I'm perfectly willing to grant you that,
Jack. But this is my machine, and I intend to run it."

The girl stepped over to a window and looked out. There, on the
driveway, stood a new automobile. Four-cylindered, sliding-gear
transmission, three speeds forward and reverse, long-wheel base, new
ignition system, and all sorts of other things mentioned in the
catalogue. Besides, it was a beautiful maroon color, and the leather
cushions matched. Cora looked at it with admiration in her eyes.

An hour, before, Jack Kimball and his chum Walter Pennington, had
brought the car from the garage to the house, following Mrs.
Kimball's implicit instructions that the new machine should not be
driven an unnecessary block between the sales-rooms and the Kimball
home.

"The car must come to Cora on the eve of her birthday," Jack's
mother had stipulated to him, "and I want it to come to her brand
new, with the tires nice and white. Hers must be the first ride in
it."

So it was, after "digesting her surprise," as she expressed it, and
spending the intervening hour in admiring the beautiful machine,
climbing in and out of it, testing the levers, turning the steering
wheel, and seeing Jack start the engine, that Cora was able to leave
it and enter the house.

"It's--it's just perfect;" she said, with a longing look back at the
car.