“It’s safe. If I don’t take September off I wait a year for my—honeymoon. And I won’t. See?”

They both looked cautiously at Ruhannah, who sat motionless, absorbed in the turmoil of vehicles and people.

Brandes’ face slowly reddened; he dropped one hand on Stull’s shoulder and said, between thin lips that scarcely moved:

“She’s all I’m interested in. You don’t think much of her, Ben. She isn’t painted. She isn’t dolled up the way you like ’em. But there isn’t anything else that matters very much to me. All I want in the world is 85 sitting in that runabout, looking out of her kid eyes at a thousand or two people who ain’t worth the pair of run-down shoes she’s wearing.”

85

But Stull’s expression remained sardonic and unconvinced.

So Brandes got into his car and took the wheel; and Stull watched them threading a tortuous path through the traffic tangle of Broadway.

They sped past the great hotels, along crowded sidewalks, along the park, and out into an endless stretch of highway where hundreds of other cars were travelling in the same direction.

“Did you have a good time?” he inquired, shifting his cigar and keeping his narrow eyes on the road.

“Yes; it was beautiful—exciting.”

“Some horse, Nick Stoner! Some race, eh?”

“I was so excited—with everybody standing up and shouting. And such beautiful horses—and such pretty women in their wonderful dresses! I—I never knew there were such things.”

He swung the car, sent it rushing past a lumbering limousine, slowed a little, gripped his cigar between his teeth, and watched the road, both hands on the wheel.

Yes, things were coming his way—coming faster and faster all the while. He had waited many years for this—for material fortune—for that chance which every gambler waits to seize when the psychological second ticks out. But he never had expected that the chance was to include a very young girl in a country-made dress and hat.

As they sped westward the freshening wind from distant pine woods whipped their cheeks; north, blue hills and bluer mountains beyond took fairy shape against the sky; and over all spread the tremendous heavens 86 where fleets of white clouds sailed the uncharted wastes, 

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