ur lunch or---- Mr. Daggett! Do you read books? I
mean----"

"Yes I do, when I run across them."

"Mayn't I gi--lend you these two that I happen to have along? I've
finished them, and so has father, I think."

From the folds of the strapped-down top she pulled out Compton
Mackenzie's _Youth's Encounter_, and Vachel Lindsay's _Congo_. With a
curious faint excitement she watched him turn the leaves. His blunt
fingers flapped through them as though he was used to books. As he
looked at _Congo_, he exclaimed, "Poetry! That's fine! Like it, but I
don't hardly ever run across it. I---- Say---- I'm terribly obliged!"

His clear face lifted, sun-brown and young and adoring. She had not
often seen men look at her thus. Certainly Jeff Saxton's painless
worship did not turn him into the likeness of a knight among banners.
Yet the good Geoffrey loved her, while to Milt Daggett she could be
nothing more than a strange young woman in a car with a New York
license. If her tiny gift could so please him, how poor he must be. "He
probably lives on some barren farm," she thought, "or he's a penniless
mechanic hoping for a good job in Seattle. How white his forehead is!"

But aloud she was saying, "I hope you're enjoying your trip."

"Oh yes. I like it fine. You having a good time? Well---- Well, thanks
for the books."

She was off before him. Presently she exclaimed to Mr. Boltwood: "You
know--just occurs to me--it's rather curious that our young friend
should be so coincidental as to come along just when we needed him."

"Oh, he just happened to, I suppose," hemmed her father.

"I'm not so sure," she meditated, while she absently watched another
member of the Poultry Suicide Club rush out of a safe ditch, prepare to
take leave for immortality, change her fowlish mind, flutter up over the
hood of the car, and come down squawking her indignities to the
barnyard. "I'm not so sure about his happening---- No. I wonder if he
could possibly---- Oh no. I hope not. Flattering, but---- You don't
suppose he could be deliberately following us?"

"Nonsense! He's a perfectly decent young chap."

"I know. Of course. He probably works hard in a garage, and is terribly
nice to his mother and sisters at home. I mean---- I wouldn't want the
dear lamb to be a devoted knight, though. Too thankless a job."

She slowed the car down to fifteen an hour. For the first time she began
to watch the road behind her. In a few minutes a moving spot showed