.
Winter might come with its frost. Here was no worry over failing
crops. One year's work had done for two. And the grasshoppers and the
midges and the gnats and the flies were likewise quite content.

He brushed the dust from a trouser leg. He looked at the trouser leg.
The suit had cost him ninety dollars. And he was a creature of
Bromley's rigged out like a butterfly and lying in the dust of a
rotten old cornfield. Barely two months had passed and great changes
had laid their hands upon him. Seemingly great changes. Three hundred
dollars a month! Princely wages; but in what respect was he lifted? He
had on a ninety-dollar suit, with dust from a cornfield fouling it. He
had a few more bills in the haberdasher shops, an enamelled tub to
bathe in, and more time to think about himself, to chase elusive
lights and shadows. Otherwise, he was the same old Joe, the same tired
old Joe. He realized how tired he was. In spite of the heat his face
felt dry and parched, his lips were cracking, his bones ached, and his
eyes burned. Well, he had caught up with himself; he would have to
snap out of it. No use to lie around and gather dust on one's self and
not lay anything by, like the farmer who owned this field, and like
the gnats that buzzed around in the dust. He had no idea what he would
do, but he would be careful--from now on.

He climbed back across the fence and into the car. The lane was so
narrow that he had to back clear to its juncture with the pike. It was
slow, tedious, grinding work. "Glad I didn't go down a couple of
miles," he thought. And as he backed slowly away, the dry, hot wind
came in rattling gusts and swept the dust in yellow eddies after him,
bearing the voice of the grasshoppers, the monotone of futility.

When at six o'clock he passed through the cool, smelly garage entrance
that was wet and shiny with grease and blue with the breathings of
many cars, he was met by the "boss." The latter looked critically at
the dust-bespattered panels and then at Joe.

"Seems to me you're spending a lot of time in the country. Don't need
to take 'em all over the earth to show 'em what the car will do. You
must be doing a lot of educating."

"I have been," said Joe. "Guess I'll have to slow up on it a bit. Have
to brush up my salesmanship."

The "boss" grunted.

CHAPTER XV

Mary Louise was seeing quite a lot of Claybrook. First there had been
the business of going over the books, although that had not t