ry for the benefit of those
horrid unshaven men, or merely for her private edification."

"By me, dolly. So is this pie. Let's get some medium to levitate us up
to bed. Uh--uh---- I think perhaps we'd better not try to drive clear to
Seattle. If we just went through to Montana?--or even just to Bismarck?"

"Drive through with the hotels like this? My dear man, if we have one
more such day, we stop right there. I hope we get by the man at the
desk. I have a feeling he's lurking there, trying to think up something
insulting to say to us. Oh, my dear, I hope you aren't as beastly tired
as I am. My bones are hot pokers."

The man at the desk got in only one cynical question, "Driving far?"
before Claire seized her father's arm and started him upstairs.

For the first time since she had been ten--and in a state of naughtiness
immediately following a pronounced state of grace induced by the pulpit
oratory of the new rector of St. Chrysostom's--she permitted herself the
luxury of not stopping to brush her teeth before she went to bed. Her
sleep was drugged--it was not sleep, but an aching exhaustion of the
body which did not prevent her mind from revisualizing the road, going
stupidly over the muddy stretches and sharp corners, then becoming
conscious of that bed, the lump under her shoulder blades, the slope to
westward, and the creak that rose every time she tossed. For at least
fifteen minutes she lay awake for hours.

Thus Claire Boltwood's first voyage into democracy.

It was not so much that the sun was shining, in the morning, as that a
ripple of fresh breeze came through the window. She discovered that she
again longed to go on--keep going on--see new places, conquer new roads.
She didn't want all good road. She wanted something to struggle against.
She'd try it for one more day. She was stiff as she crawled out of bed,
but a rub with cold water left her feeling that she was stronger than
she ever had been; that she was a woman, not a dependent girl. Already,
in the beating prairie sun-glare, the wide main street of Gopher Prairie
was drying; the mud ruts flattening out. Beyond the town hovered the
note of a meadow lark--sunlight in sound.

"Oh, it's a sweet morning! Sweet! We will go on! I'm terribly excited!"
she laughed.

She found her father dressed. He did not know whether or not he wanted
to go on. "I seem to have lost my grip on things. I used to be rather
decisive. But we'll try it one more day, if you