on was,
Becky felt, the difference a not unpleasant commonplace and the stuff
that dreams are made of.

"It is rather a duck of a car," she had said, the first time he took
her out in it.

"Yes, it is," Randy had agreed. "I am getting tremendously fond of
her. I have named her 'Little Sister.'"

"Oh, Randy, you haven't."

"Yes, I have. She has such confiding ways. I never believed that cars
had human qualities, Becky."

"They are not horses of course."

"Well, they have individual characteristics. You take the three cars
in our barn. The Packard reminds one of that stallion we owned three
years ago--blooded and off like the wind. The Franklin is a
grayhound--and Little Sister is a--duck----"

"Mr. Dalton's car is a--silver ship----"

"Oh, does he call it that?" grimly.

"So----"

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

"Yes."

"And you called Little Sister a duck," she 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