They owned automobiles, and Henry was aware of a cursing sentiment when one whirred past him, trudging along, and covered him with dust.
Sometimes it seemed to Henry as if an automobile was the last straw for the poor man's back: those enormous cars, representing fortunes, tyrannizing over the whole highway, frightening the poor old country horses, and endangering the lives of all before them.

Henry read with delight every account of an automobile accident.

"Served them right; served them just right," he would say, with fairly a smack of his lips.
Sylvia, who had caught a little of his rebellion, but was gentler, would regard him with horror.

"Why, Henry Whitman, that is a dreadful wicked spirit!" she would say, and he would retort stubbornly that he didn't care; that he had to pay a road tax for these people who would just as soon run him down as not, if it wouldn't tip their old machines over; for these maniacs who had gone speed-mad, and were appropriating even the highways of the common people.
Henry had missed the high-school principal, who was away on his spring vacation.

He liked to talk with him, because he always had a feeling that he had the best of the argument.