“Quiet as a swan’s feather.” They felt him breathe softly in their faces. “Listen.” They listened. “The storage batteries are fully charged and ready now! Listen! Not a tremor, not a sound. Electric, ladies. You recharge it every night in your garage.”

“It couldn’t—that is—” The younger sister gulped some iced tea. “It couldn’t electrocute us accidently?”

“Perish the thought!”

He vaulted to the machine again, his teeth like those you saw in dental windows, alone, grimacing at you, as you passed by late at night.

“Tea parties!” He waltzed the runabout in a circle. “Bridge clubs. Soirees. Galas. Luncheons. Birthday gatherings! D. A. R. breakfasts.” He purred away as if running off forever. He returned in a rubber-tired hush. “Gold Star Mother suppers.” He sat primly, corseted by his supple characterization of a woman. “Easy steering. Silent, elegant arrivals and departures. No license needed. On hot days—take the breeze. Ah . . .He glided by the porch, head back, eyes closed deliciously, hair tousling in the wind thus cleanly sliced through.

He trudged reverently up the porch stairs, hat in hand, turning to gaze at the trial model as at the altar of a familiar church. “Ladies,” he said softly, “twenty-five dollars down. Ten dollars a month, for two years.”

Fern was first down the steps onto the double seat. She sat apprehensively. Her hand itched. She raised it. She dared tweak the rubber bulb horn.

A seal barked.

Roberta, on the porch, screamed hilariously and leaned over the railing.

The salesman joined their hilarity. He escorted the older sister down the steps, roaring, at the same time taking out his pen and searching in his straw hat for some piece of paper or other.

And so we bought it!” remembered Miss Roberta, in the attic, horrified at their nerve. “We should’ve been warned! Always did think it looked like a little car off the carnival roller coaster!”

“Well,” said Fern defensively, “my hip’s bothered me for years, and you always get tired walking. It seemed so refined, so regal. Like in the old days when women wore hoop skirts. They sailed! The Green Machine sailed so quietly.”

Like an excursion boat, wonderfully easy to steer, a baton handle you twitched with your hand, so.

Oh, that glorious and enchanted first week—the magical afternoons of golden light, humming through the shady town on a dreaming, timeless river, seated stiffly, smiling at passing acquaintances, sedately purring out their wrinkled claws at every turn, squeezing a hoarse cry from the black rubber horn at intersections, sometimes letting Douglas or Tom Spaulding or any of the other boys who trotted, chatting, alongside, hitch a little ride. Fifteen slow and pleasurable miles an hour top speed. They came and went through the summer sunlight and shadow, their faces freckled and stained by passing trees, going and coming like an ancient, wheeled vision.

“And then,” whispered Fern, “this afternoon! Oh, this afternoon!”

“It was an accident.”

“But we ran away, and that’s criminal!”

This noon. The smell of the leather cushions under their bodies, the gray perfume smell of their own sachets trailing back as they moved in their silent Green Machine through the small, languorous town.

It happened quickly. Rolling soft onto the sidewalk at noon, because the streets were blistering and fiery, and the only shade was under the lawn trees, they had glided to a blind comer, bulbing their throaty horn. Suddenly, like a jack-in-the-box, Mister Quartermain had tottered from nowhere!

“Look out!” screamed Miss Fern.

“Look out!” screamed Miss Roberta.

“Look out!” cried Mister Quartermain.

The two women grabbed each other instead of the steering stick.

There was a terrible thud. The Green Machine sailed on in the hot daylight, under the shady chestnut trees, past the ripening apple trees. Looking back only once, the two old ladies’ eyes filled with faded horror.

The old man lay on the sidewalk, silent.

“And here we are,” mourned Miss Fern in the darkening attic. “Oh, why didn’t we stop! Why did we run away?”

“Shh!” They both listened.

The rapping downstairs came again.

When it stopped they saw a boy cross the lawn in the dim light. “Just Douglas Spaulding come for a ride again.” They both sighed.

The hours passed; the sun was going down.

“We’ve been up here all afternoon,” said Roberta tiredly. “We can’t stay in the attic three weeks hiding till everybody forgets.”

“We’d starve.”

“What’ll we do, then? Do you think anyone saw and followed us?” They looked at each other. “No. Nobody saw.”

The town was silent, all the tiny houses putting on lights. There was a smell of watered grass and cooking suppers from below.

“Time to put on the meat,” said Miss Fern. “Frank’ll be coming home in ten minutes.”

“Do we dare go down?”

“Frank’d call the police if he found the house empty. That’d make things worse.”

The sun went swiftly. Now they were only two moving things in the musty blackness. “Do you,” wondered Miss Fern, “think he’s dead?”

“Mister Quartermain?”

A pause. “Yes.”

Roberta hesitated. “We’ll check the evening paper.”

They opened the attic door and looked carefully at the steps leading down. “Oh, if Frank hears about this, he’ll take our Green Machine away from us, and it’s so lovely and nice riding and getting the cool wind and seeing the town.”

“We won’t tell him.”

“Won’t we?”

They helped each other down the creaking stairs to the second floor, stopping to listen . . . In the kitchen they peered at the pantry, peeked out windows with frightened eyes, and finally set to work frying hamburger on the stove. After five minutes of working silence Fern looked sadly over at Roberta and said, “I’ve been thinking. We’re old and feeble and don’t like to admit it. We’re dangerous. We owe a debt to society for running off—”

“And—?” A kind of silence fell on the frying in the kitchen as the two sisters faced each other, nothing in their hands.

“I think that”—Fern stared at the wall for a long time-“we shouldn’t drive the Green Machine ever again.” Roberta picked up a plate and held it in her thin hand. “Not-ever?” she said.

“No.”

“But,” said Roberta, “we don’t have to—to get rid of it, do we? We can keep it, can’t we?”

Fern considered this.

“Yes, I guess we can keep it.”

“At least that’ll be something. I’ll go out now and disconnect the batteries.”

Roberta was leaving just as Frank, their younger brother, only fifty-six years, entered.

“Hi, sisters!” he cried.

Roberta brushed past him without a word and walked out into the summer dusk. Frank was carrying a newspaper which Fern immediately snatched from him. Trembling, she looked it through and through, and sighing, gave it back to him.

“Saw Doug Spaulding outside just now. Said he had a message for you. Said for you not to worry—he saw everything and everything’s all right. What did he mean by that?”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know.” Fem turned her back and searched for her handkerchief.

“Oh well, these kids.” Frank looked at his sister’s back for a long moment, then shrugged.

“Supper almost ready?” he asked pleasantly.

“Yes.” Fern set the kitchen table.

There was a bulbing cry from outside. Once, twice, three times—far away.

“What’s that?” Frank peered through the kitchen window into the dusk. “What’s Roberta up to? Look at her out there, sitting in the Green Machine, poking the rubber horn!”

Once, twice more, in the dusk, softly, like some kind of mournful animal, the bulbing sound was pinched out.

“What’s got into her?” demanded Frank.

“You just leave her alone!” screamed Fern. Frank looked surprised.

A moment later Roberta entered quietly, without looking at anyone, and they all sat down to supper.