on the mid-western prairie, where the light of sky and plain
drugs the senses, where the sound of meadow-larks at dawn fulfils my
desire for companionship, and the easy creak of the buggy, as we top
rise after rise, bespells me into an afternoon slumber which the
nervous town shall never know.'

"I cut the thing out because I was thinking that the prairies,
stretching out the way they do, make me want to go on and on, in an
aeroplane or any old thing. Lord, Lord! I guess before long I'll have
to be beating it again--like the guy in Kipling that always got sick
of reading the same page too long."

"Oh, but Carl, you don't mean to say you're going to give up your
business, when you're doing so well? And aviation shows what you can
do if you stick to a thing, Carl, and not just wander around like you
used to do. We do want to see you succeed."

His reply was rather weak: "Well, gee! I guess I'll succeed, all
right, but I don't see much use of succeeding if you have to be stuck
down in a greasy city street all your life."

"That's very true, Carl, but do you appreciate the city? Have you ever
been in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or gone to a single symphony
concert at Carnegie Hall?"

Carl was convinced that Gertie was a highly superior person; that she
was getting far more of the good of New York than he.... He would take
her to a concert, have her explain the significance of the music.

It was never to occur sharply to him that, though Gertie referred
frequently to concerts and pictures, she showed no vast amount of
knowledge about them. She was a fixed fact in his mind; had been for
twenty years. He could have a surface quarrel with her because he knew
the fundamental things in her, and with these, he was sure, no one
could quarrel. His thoughts of Ruth and Olive were delightful
surprises; his impression of Gertie was stable as the Rockies.

* * * * *

Carl wasn't sure whether Upper West Side young ladies could be
persuaded to attend a theater party upon short acquaintance, but he
tried, and arranged a party of Ruth and Olive and himself, Walter
MacMonnies (in town on his way from Africa to San Diego), Charley
Forbes of the _Chronicle_ and, for chaperon, the cosmopolitan woman
whom he had met at Ruth's, and who proved to be a Mrs. Tirrell, a
dismayingly smart dressmaker.

When he called for Ruth he expected such a gay girl as had poured tea.
He was awed to find her a _grande d