Preacher's Boy Read Online Free PDF

wasn't much worried about them. I was thinking mostly about myself those days.
    So when Pa invited me to go to the city with him, I jumped at the chance. Besides, he had hired Nelly, who was my favorite horse in the livery stable. You'd think with a name like Nelly, she'd be as prim and set in her ways as a deacon's widow, but Nelly is about the jauntiest horse you could ever hope to see. When another horse pulls up alongside her, she's been known to break into a full gallop and keep it up most of the ten-mile road to Tyler. I was hoping something like that might occur, but it was a tame trip. Although Pa let me hold the reins most of the way, he wouldn't let me put her in a gallop on purpose. The excitement came after we hit the outskirts of Tyler.
    There was such a hubbub at the town limits that Pa almost took the back road around to the sanatorium. Thank goodness he didn't. At first I didn't even recognize the thing. It just looked as though the crowd was milling about a carriage that had got unhitched. Then it hit me. The thing sitting right there on the main street of Tyler, Vermont, was a horseless carriage. I jumped out of the surrey. "I'll wait here!" I yelled to Pa.
    The motorcar's wheels were big and spoked like buggy wheels. There was a high seat with a kind of lever. Someone said that was what you steered with. The motor was hidden. I think it was under the seat on which the driver sat. He was wearing a scarf and goggles and a huge overcoat even though it was hot enough to melt the tar in the sidewalks. He didn't smile much. I reckon when you own a motorcar, it doesn't do to
look too casual. Every now and again when some grimy-fingered urchin would get too close, he'd raise an eyebrow and growl something like "Don't touch the finish. The Winton's just been polished," which seemed only right for such a grand man to say.
    I kept hoping he would start the engine so I could see how it was done. I really wanted to hear the roar and see the motorcar blazing down the road, sending all the horses into a panic. But he just sat there in the center of that curious and mostly awestruck crowd. Now and again someone would ask a question like, "How fast does it go really?" or taunt him, saying, "Bet you couldn't keep up with my horse." The driver would look superior—as well he might, owning such a beauty—and remark offhand that he wouldn't put it in a race with a horse, hinting by his manner that it would be cruel to get the poor beast in such a lather. Why, the poor critter might drop dead from exhaustion.
    Pa came back far too soon, even though he had been gone fully an hour by the clock on the Unitarian church steeple. I tried to persuade him to wait a bit, hoping maybe the man would start the motorcar and we could actually see it run, but he just laughed. "It doesn't look as if that fellow is going to move until those gawkers head for home, and that may be suppertime. We've got to get the horse and buggy back to Jake's before then."
    From that day on, my ambition was fixed. I was determined. Someday, if the world didn't end before I grew up and got rich, I was going to own a motorcar. And if six months was all I had left, I was at any rate determined to have a ride in one before the world went bust.
    There was a problem, however. No one in Leonardstown owned a motorcar. How could I ride in one if no one I knew had one? To my knowledge, and I knew pretty near everything that went on in our village, no motorcar had ever even come through Leonardstown.
    I consulted Willie the next morning when we went on our delayed fishing trip. He wasn't very happy with me going off to the city without letting him know
and
seeing a motorcar when he wasn't around. I tried to cheer him up, saying that when I owned one, I would give him a ride whenever he wanted.
    "If the world comes to an end this year, there's not much chance you're ever going to own one," he grumped.
    "Exactly what I was thinking, Willie. So my best bet is to get to