all it that?" grimly.

"No----"

"Was it your own--poetic--idea?"

"Yes."

"And you called Little Sister a duck," he groaned. "And when my little
duck swims in the wake of his silver ship, and he laughs, do you laugh,
too?"

There was a dead silence. Then she said, "Oh, Randy----"

He made his apology like a gentleman. "That was hateful of me, Becky.
I'm sorry----"

"You know I wouldn't laugh, Randy, and neither would he."

"Who?"

"Mr. Dalton."

"Wouldn't what?"

"Laugh."

He hated her defense of young Apollo--but he couldn't let the subject
alone.

"You never have any time for me."

"Randy, are you going to scold me for the rest of our ride?"

"Am I scolding?"

"Yes."

"Then I'll stop it and say nice things to you or you won't want to come
again."

Yet after that when he saw her in Dalton's car, her words would return
to him, and gradually he began to think of her as sailing in a silver
ship farther and farther away in a future where he could not follow.

Little Sister was a great comfort in those days. She gave him occupation
and she gave him an income. He was never to forget his first sale. He
had not found it easy to cry his wares. The Paines of King's Crest had
never asked favors of the country-folk, or if they had, they had paid
generously for what they had received. To go now among them saying, "I
have something to sell," carried a sting. There had been nothing
practical in Randy's education. He had no equipment with which to meet
the sordid questions of bargain and sale.

He had thought of this as he rode over the hills that morning to the
house of a young farmer who had been suggested by the genial gentleman
as a good prospect. He turned over in his mind the best method of
approach. It was a queer thing, he pondered, to visualize himself as a
salesman. He wondered how many of the other fellows who had come back
looked at it as he did. They had dreamed such dreams of valor, their
eyes had seen visions. To Randy when he had enlisted had come a singing
sense that the days of chivalry were not dead. He had gone through the
war with a laugh on his lips, but with a sense of the sacredness of the
crusade in his heart. He had returned--still dreaming--to sell
snub-nosed cars to the countryside!

Why, just a year ago----! He remembered a black night of storm, when,
hooded like a falcon--he had ridden without a light on his motorcycle,
carrying dispatches from the Argonne, and even as he h