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"Ready to go?" she asked, smiling.

Abner acquiesced and went out with her to the yellow roadster. They got into it and eased away into the square without a word. Owing to the crowd, the girl had to sound her horn constantly. Half-dozing countrymen would come awake at her blasts, look around, and then with a movement that was slow, and yet somehow appeared to be startled, would get awkwardly from in front of the big machine.

Once Adelaide smiled and said, "He needs dancing lessons, but I suppose he would think it a sin to take 'em."

Abner was faintly amused at the idea; then for some reason he thought of Nessie Sutton and his amusement vanished. They said no more until they were out of Lanesburg, rushing silently down a hill. Beneath them lay a small creek valley glowing with the red and yellow of autumn. Adelaide glanced at the scene from time to time in the midst of her driving.

"Isn't it gorgeous?" she admired.

"Yes, it is—yonder's a lot of mighty good white oaks." Abner pointed out a great length of russet foliage.

Adelaide laughed. "I declare, have you got so you see so many white oaks and chestnuts, so many cross ties and so many saw logs every time you look at the woods?"

"Well—they're there, ain't they?"

"Not unless you have a kind of sawmill in your eye, so that every tree you look at falls into logs, lumber, and cross ties. You never see the trees at all . . . that's the kind of person my husband will be, I suppose, no matter whom I marry." Adelaide pressed her accelerator and increased the gale about their ears.

Abner hardly knew what to say. He looked at Adelaide's half-ironic, half-wistful smile with a feeling of how essentially alien she was to him. The thought of marrying her seemed vague and impossible. He tried to think of himself possessing the Jones mansion with Adelaide in it; this pretty, cynical, poised girl for a wife. The more he thought of it the more impossible it appeared.