"Cut it out!" Jack retorted, flinging the words over his shoulder.
"Don't talk to me. Road's flopping around like a snake with its head
cut off--" He laughed apologetically, his eyes staring straight ahead
over the lowered windshield.

"Aw, step on her, Jack! Show some class, boy--show some class! Good
old boat! If you're too stewed to drive 'er, _e_ knows the way home.
Say, Jackie, if this old car could talk, wouldn't momma get an
ear-full on Monday, hey? What if she--"

"Cut it _out_--or I'll throw you out!" came back over Jack's
shirt-clad shoulder. He at least had the wit to use what little sense
he had in driving the car, and he had plenty of reason to believe that
he could carry out his threat, even if the boulevard did heave itself
up at him like the writhings of a great snake. If his head was not fit
for the job, his trained muscles would still drive with automatic
precision. Only his vision was clouded; not the mechanical skill
necessary to pilot his mother's big car safely into the garage.

Whim held the five in the rear seats absorbed in their own maudlin
comicalities. The fellow beside Jack did not seem to take any interest
in his surroundings, and the five gave the front seat no further
attention. Jack drove circumspectly, leaning a little forward, his
bare arms laid up across the wheel and grasping the top of it. Brown
as bronze, those arms, as were his face and neck and chest down to
where the open V of his sport shirt was held closed with the loose
knot of a crimson tie that whipped his shoulder as he drove. A fine
looking fellow he was, sitting there like the incarnation of strength
and youth and fullblooded optimism. It was a pity that he was
drunk--he would have been a perfect specimen of young manhood, else.