the Lord ever intended us to ride
without horses, or what did He give us horses for? And the things
always get stuck in the mud and you have to walk home--mother was
reading that in a newspaper, just the other day."

"Son, let me tell you, I'll own a horseless carriage some day, and I
bet I go an average of twenty miles an hour with it, maybe forty."

"Oh, rats! But I was saying, if you'd read some library books you'd
know about love. Why, what 'd God put love in the world for----"

"Say, will you quit explaining to me about what God did things for?"

"Ouch! Quit! Awwww, quit, Carl.... Say, listen; here's what I wanted
to tell you: How if you and me and Adelaide Benner and some of us went
down to the depot to meet Gertie, to-morrow? She comes in on the
twelve-forty-seven."

"Well, all right. Say, Bennie, you don't want to be worried when I kid
you about being in love with Gertie. I don't think I'll ever get
married. But it's all right for you."

* * * * *

Saturday morning was so cool, so radiant, that Carl awakened early to
a conviction that, no matter how important meeting Gertie might be in
the cosmic scheme, he was going hunting. He was down-stairs by five.
He fried two eggs, called Dollar Ingersoll, his dog--son of Robert
Ingersoll Stillman, gentleman dog--then, in canvas hunting-coat and
slouch-hat, tramped out of town southward, where the woods ended in
prairie. Gertie's arrival was forgotten.

It was a gipsy day. The sun rolled splendidly through the dry air,
over miles of wheat stubble, whose gray-yellow prickles were
transmuted by distance into tawny velvet, seeming only the more
spacious because of the straight, thin lines of barbed-wire fences
lined with goldenrod, and solitary houses in willow groves. The dips
and curves of the rolling plain drew him on; the distances satisfied
his eyes. A pleasant hum of insects filled the land's wide serenity
with hidden life.

Carl left a trail of happy, monotonous whistling behind him all day,
as his dog followed the winding trail of prairie-chickens, as a covey
of chickens rose with booming wings and he swung his shotgun for a
bead. He stopped by prairie-sloughs or bright-green bogs to watch for
a duck. He hailed as equals the occasional groups of hunters in
two-seated buggies, quartering the fields after circling dogs. He
lunched contentedly on sandwiches of cold lamb, and lay with his arms
under his head, gazing at a steeple