diff --git a/R/test.R b/R/test.R
index b185163..2b1fc08 100644
--- a/R/test.R
+++ b/R/test.R
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 ## Internal, not exported, function used by unit tests
 test <- function(src = "cat(2 + 2)") {
-    system2(r(), c("-e", shQuote(src)), stdout = TRUE, stderr = TRUE)
+    system2(r(), paste("-e", shQuote(src)), stdout = TRUE)
 }
 
 
diff --git a/tests/simpleTests.R b/tests/simpleTests.R
index 7d9e04d..1f351ca 100644
--- a/tests/simpleTests.R
+++ b/tests/simpleTests.R
@@ -8,7 +8,8 @@
 if (unname(Sys.info()["sysname"]) == "Linux" &&
     Sys.getenv("TRAVIS", "false") != "true"  &&
     Sys.getenv("CI", "false") != "true") {
-    library(littler)
+    stopifnot(file.exists(littler:::r()))
+    stopifnot(length(system2(littler:::r(), "--version", stdout=TRUE)) > 10) # 14 lines
     stopifnot(identical(littler:::test(), "4"))   # default test is cat(2+2)
-    stopifnot(as.numeric(littler:::test('cat(R.version$year)')) >= 2015)  
+    stopifnot(as.numeric(littler:::test('cat(R.version$year)')) >= 2015)
 }