ed highway that is so pliant to tire
that of summer nights, with tops thrown back and stars sown like lavish
grain over a close sky and to a rushing breeze that presses the ears like
an eager whisper, motor-cars, wild to catch up with the horizon, tear out
that road--a lightning-streak of them--fearing neither penal law nor Dead
Man's Curve.

Slacking only to be slacked, cars dart off the road and up a gravel
driveway that encircles Claxton Inn like a lariat swung, then park
themselves among the trees, lights dimmed. Placid as a manse without, what
was once a private and now a public house maintains through lowered
lids its discreet white-frame exterior, shades drawn, and only slightly
revealing the parting of lace curtains. It is rearward where what was
formerly a dining-room that a huge, screened-in veranda, very whitely
lighted, juts suddenly out, and a showy hallway, bordered in potted palms,
leads off that. Here Discretion dares lift her lids to rove the gravel
drive for who comes there.

In a car shaped like a motor-boat and as low to the ground Mr. Charley Cox
turned in and with a great throttling and choking of engine drew up among
the dim-eyed monsters of the grove and directly alongside an eight-cylinder
roadster with a snout like a greyhound.

"Aw, Charley, I thought you promised you wasn't going to stop!"

"Honey, sweetness, I just never was so dry."

Miss Hassiebrock laid out a hand along his arm, sitting there in the quiet
car, the trees closing over them.

"There's Yiddles Farm a little farther out, Charley; let's stop there for
some spring water."

He was peeling out of his gauntlets, and cramming them into spacious side
pockets.

"Water, honey, can wash me, but it can't quench me."

"No high jinks to-night, though, Charley?"

"Sure--no."

They high-stepped through the gloom, and finally, with firmer step, up the
gravel walk and into the white-lighted, screened-in porch.

Three waiters ran toward their entrance. A woman with a bare V of back
facing them, and three plumes that dipped to her shoulders, turned square
in her chair.

"Hi, Charley. Hi, Loo!"

"H'lo, Jess!"

They walked, thus guided by two waiters, through a light _confetti_ of
tossed greetings, sat finally at a table half concealed by an artificial
palm.

"You don't feel like sitting with Jess and the crowd, Loo?"

"Charley, hasn't that gang got you into enough mix-ups?"

"All right, honey; anything your little heart de