nce. That looks like a
special-made American body, though. Trouble with you fellows is, you're
always scared of anything that's new. Too--heavy! Huh! Always wanted to
see a Gomez--never have, except in pictures. And I believe that's a New
York license. Let me at it!"

He forgot noon-hunger, and clumped through the rain to the garage. He
saw a girl step from the car. He stopped, in the doorway of the Old
Home, in uneasy shyness. He told himself he didn't "know just what it is
about her--she isn't so darn unusually pretty and yet--gee---- Certainly
isn't a girl to get fresh with. Let Ben take care of her. Like to talk
to her, and yet I'd be afraid if I opened my mouth, I'd put my foot in
it."

He was for the first time seeing a smart woman. This dark, slender,
fine-nerved girl, in her plain, rough, closely-belted, gray suit, her
small black Glengarry cocked on one side of her smooth hair, her little
kid gloves, her veil, was as delicately adjusted as an aeroplane engine.

Milt wanted to trumpet her exquisiteness to the world, so he growled to
a man standing beside him, "Swell car. Nice-lookin' girl, kind of."

"Kind of skinny, though. I like 'em with some meat on 'em," yawned the
man.

No, Milt did not strike him to earth. He insisted feebly, "Nice clothes
she's got, though."

"Oh, not so muchamuch. I seen a woman come through here yesterday that
was swell, though--had on a purple dress and white shoes and a hat big
's a bushel."

"Well, I don't know, I kind of like those simple things," apologized
Milt.

He crept toward the garage. The girl was inside. He inspected the
slope-topped, patent-leather motoring trunk on the rack at the rear of
the Gomez-Dep. He noticed a middle-aged man waiting in the car. "Must be
her father. Probably--maybe she isn't married then." He could not get
himself to shout at the man, as he usually did. He entered the garage
office; from the inner door he peeped at the girl, who was talking to
his assistant about changing an inner tube.

That Ben Sittka whom an hour ago he had cajoled as a promising child he
now admired for the sniffing calmness with which he was demanding,
"Want a red or gray tube?"

"Really, I don't know. Which is the better?" The girl's voice was
curiously clear.

Milt passed Claire Boltwood as though he did not see her; stood at the
rear of the garage kicking at the tires of a car, his back to her. Over
and over he was grumbling, "If I just knew one girl like tha