ndjammers that know more than the Constitution and
Congress and a convention of Philadelphia lawyers put together. You
don't want to work as hard as you do and then have to divide up every
Saturday with some lazy bum of a socialist that's too lazy to support
himself--yes, or to take a bath!--now do you?"

"Well, no," Una admitted, in face of this triumphant exposure of liberal
fallacies.

The book slipped into her lap.

"How wonderful that line of big woolly clouds is, there between the two
mountains!" she said. "I'd just like to fly through them.... I _am_
tired. The clouds rest me so."

"Course you're tired, little sister. You just forget about all those
guys in the abyss. Tell you a person on the job's got enough to do
looking out for himself."

"Well--" said Una.

Suddenly she lay back, her hands behind her head, her fingers
outstretched among the long, cool grasses. A hum of insects surrounded
her. The grasses towering above her eyes were a forest. She turned her
head to watch a lady-bug industriously ascend one side of a blade of
grass, and with equal enterprise immediately descend the other side.
With the office always in her mind as material for metaphors, Una
compared the lady-bug's method to Troy Wilkins's habit of having his
correspondence filed and immediately calling for it again. She turned
her face to the sky. She was uplifted by the bold contrast of cumulus
clouds and the radiant blue sky.

Here she could give herself up to rest; she was so secure now, with the
affable Mr. Schwirtz to guard her against outsiders--more secure and
satisfied, she reflected, than she could ever have been with Walter
Babson.... A hawk soared above her, a perfect thing of sun-brightened
grace, the grasses smelled warm and pleasant, and under her beat the
happy heart of the summer land.

"I'm a poor old rough-neck," said Mr. Schwirtz, "but to-day, up here
with you, I feel so darn good that I almost think I'm a decent citizen.
Honest, little sister, I haven't felt so bully for a blue moon."

"Yes, and I--" she said.

He smoked, while she almost drowsed into slumber to the lullaby of the
afternoon.

When a blackbird chased a crow above her, and she sat up to watch the
aerial privateering, Mr. Schwirtz began to talk.

He spoke of the flight of the Wright brothers in France and Virginia,
which were just then--in the summer of 1908--arousing the world to a
belief in aviation. He had as positive information regarding