Excuse Me!

The young woman in the taxicab scuttling frantically down the dark street, clung to the arm of the young man alongside, as if she were terrified at the lawbreaking, neck-risking speed. But evidently some greater fear goaded her, for she gasped:

"Can't he go a little faster?"

"Can't you go a little faster?" The young man alongside howled as he thrust his head and shoulders through the window in the door.

But the self-created taxi-gale swept his voice aft, and the taut chauffeur perked his ear in vain to catch the vanishing syllables.

"What's that?" he roared.

"Can't you go a little faster?"

The indignant charioteer simply had to shoot one barbed glare of reproach into that passenger. He turned his head and growled:

"Say, do youse want to lose me me license?"

For just one instant he turned his head. One instant was just enough. The unguarded taxicab seized the opportunity, bolted from the track, and flung, as it were, its arms drunkenly around a perfectly respectable lamppost attending strictly to its business on the curb. There ensued a condensed Fourth of July. Sparks flew, tires exploded, metals ripped, two wheels spun in air and one wheel, neatly severed at the axle, went reeling down the sidewalk half a block before it leaned against a tree and rested.

A dozen or more miracles coincided to save the passengers from injury. The young man found himself standing on the pavement with the unhinged door still around his neck. The young woman's arms were round his neck. Her head was on his shoulder. It had reposed there often enough, but never before in the street under a lamppost. The chauffeur found himself in the road, walking about on all fours, like a bewildered quadruped.

Evidently some overpowering need for speed possessed the young woman, for even now she did not scream, she did not faint, she did not murmur, "Where am I?" She simply said:

"What time is it, honey?"

And the young man, not realizing how befuddled he really was, or how his hand trembled, fetched out his watch and held it under the glow of the lamppost, which was now bent over in a convenient but disreputable attitude.

"A quarter to ten, sweetheart. Plenty of time for the train."

"But the minister, honey! What about the minister? How are we going to get to the minister?"

The consideration of this riddle was interrupted by a muffled hubbub of yelps, whimpers, and canine hysterics. Immediately the young woman forgot ministers, collisions, train-schedules--everything. She showed her first sign of panic.

"Snoozleums! Get Snoozleums!"

They groped about in the topsy-turvy taxicab, rummaged among a jumble of suitcases, handbags, umbrellas and minor impedimenta, and fished out a small dog-basket with an inverted dog inside. Snoozleums was ridiculous in any position, but as he slid tail foremost from the wicker basket, he resembled nothing so much as a heap of tangled yarn tumbling out of a work-basket. He was an indignant skein, and had much to say before he consented to snuggle under his mistress' chin.

About this time the chauffeur came prowling into view. He was too deeply shocked to emit any language of the garage. He was too deeply shocked to achieve any comment more brilliant than:

"That mess don't look much like it ever was a taxicab, does it?"

The young man shrugged his shoulders, and stared up and down the long street for another. The young woman looked sorrowfully at the wreck, and queried:

"Do you think you can make it go?"