“It’s an autopsy,” said Sharon.  He fled again, in the buggy drawn by the roan.  “A fool and his money!” he called from the sagging seat.

The second day passed with the parts still spread about the floor.  Elihu Titus told Sharon the boy was only playing with them.  Sharon said he was glad they could furnish amusement, and mentally composed the beginning of what would be a letter of withering denunciation to the car’s maker.

But the third day the parts were unaccountably reassembled.  Elihu Titus admitted that every one of them was put back, though he hinted they were probably by no means where they had been.  But Sharon, coming again to the dissecting room at the day’s end, was stricken with awe for the astounding genius that had put back all those parts.  He felt a gleam of hope.

“She’d ought to go now,” said the proud mechanic.

“You ought to know,” said Sharon.  “You been plumb into her gizzard.”

“Only other thing I can think of,” continued the mechanic, “mebbe she needs more of that gasoline stuff.”  He raised the cushion of the front seat and unscrewed a cap.  “We might try that,” he suggested, brightly.  “This tank looks like she’s empty.”

“Try it,” said Sharon, and the incredulous Elihu Titus was dispatched to the village for a five-gallon tin of the gasoline stuff.  Elihu was incredulous, because in Newbern gasoline was until now something that women cleaned white gloves with.  But when the tank was replenished the car came again to life, throbbing buoyantly.

“I’ll be switched!” said Sharon.

A day later he was telling that his new car had broke down on him, but Buck Cowan had taken her all apart and found out the trouble in no time, and put her gizzard and lights and liver back as good as new.  And Buck Cowan himself came to feel quite unjustifiably a creator’s pride in the car.  It was only his due that Sharon should let him operate it; perhaps natural that Sharon should prefer him to.  Sharon himself was never to become an accomplished chauffeur.  He couldn’t learn to relax at the wheel.

So it was that the boy was tossed to public eminence on a day when Starling Tucker, accomplished horseman, descended into the vale of ignominy by means of the Mansion House’s new motor bus.  Starling had permitted the selling agents to instruct him briefly in the operation of the new bus, though with lordly condescension, for it was his conviction that a man who could tame wild horses and drive anything that wore hair could by no means fail to guide a bit of machinery that wouldn’t r’ar and run even if a newspaper blew across its face.  He mounted the seat, on his first essay alone, with the jauntiness becoming a master of vehicular propulsion.  There may have been in his secret heart a bit of trepidation, now that the instructor was not there.  In fact, one of the assembled villagers who closely observed his demeanour related afterward that Star’s