lowstone
Park trip? He didn't----"

"Yes, yes. Let's forget the young man. Look! How very curious!"

They were crossing a high bridge over a railroad track along which a
circus train was bending. Mr. Boltwood offered judicious remarks upon
the migratory habits of circuses, and the vision of the Galahad of the
Teal bug was thoroughly befogged by parental observations, till Claire
returned from youthful romance to being a sensible Boltwood, and decided
that after all, Milt was not a lord of the sky-painted mountains.

Before they bent south, at Livingston, Claire had her first mountain
driving, and once she had to ford a stream, putting the car at it,
watching the water curve up in a lovely silver veil. She felt that she
was conquering the hills as she had the prairies.

She pulled up on a plateau to look at her battery. She noted the edge of
a brake-band peeping beyond the drum, in a ragged line of fabric and
copper wire. Then she knew that she didn't know enough to conquer. "Do
you suppose it's dangerous?" she asked her father, who said a lot of
comforting things that didn't mean anything.

She thought of Milt. She stopped a passing car. The driver "guessed"
that the brake-band was all gone, and that it would be dangerous to
continue with it along mountain roads. Claire dustily tramped two miles
to a ranch house, and telephoned to the nearest garage, in a town called
Saddle Back.

Whenever a motorist has delirium he mutters those lamentable words,
"Telephoned to the nearest garage."

She had to wait a tedious hour before she saw a flivver rattling up with
the garage man, who wasn't a man at all, but a fourteen-year-old boy. He
snorted, "Rats, you didn't need to send for me. Could have made it
perfectly safe. Come on."

Never has the greatest boy pianist received such awe as Claire gave to
this contemptuous young god, with grease on his peachy cheeks. She did
come on. But she rather hoped that she was in great danger. It was
humiliating to telephone to a garage for nothing. When she came into the
gas-smelling garage in Saddle Back she said appealingly to the man in
charge, a serious, lip-puffing person of forty-five, "Was it safe to
come in with the brake-band like that?"

"No. Pretty risky. Wa'n't it, Mike?"

The Mike to whom he turned for authority was the same fourteen-year-old
boy. He snapped, "Heh? That? Naw! Put in new band. Get busy. Bring me
the jack. Hustle up, uncle."

While the older man stood ab