“Yes’m, I’ve had that notion myself.  But as you get older, your skin kind of peels off easy and gradual—­you don’t get them shocks when you sort of come out all new and shiny and admirin’ of yourself.”

Sheila blushed faintly and looked at him.  His face was serene and empty of intention.  But she felt that she had been guilty of egotism, as indeed she had.  She asked rather meekly for her hat, and having put it on like a shadow above her fairness, she climbed up to Thatcher’s side on the driver’s seat.  The hat was her felt Stetson, and, for the rest, she was clad in her riding-clothes, the boy’s shirt, the short corduroy skirt, the high-laced boots.  Her youthfulness, rather than her strange beauty, was accentuated by this dress.  She had the look of a super-delicate boy, a sort of rose-leaf fairy prince.

“Are we on the road?” asked Sheila presently.

Thatcher gave way to mirth.  “Don’t it seem like a road to you?”

She lurched against him, then saved herself from falling out at the other side by a frantic clutch.

“Is it a road?” She looked down a dizzy slope of which the horse’s foothold seemed to her the most precarious part.

“Yes’m—­all the road there is.  We call it that.  We’re kind of po-lite to these little efforts of the Government—­kind of want to encourage ’em.  Congressmen kind of needs coaxin’ and flat’ry.  They’re right ornery critters.  I heard an argyment atween a feller with a hoss and a feller with a mule onct.  The mule feller was kind of uppish about hosses; said he didn’t see the advantage of the critter.  A mule now was steady and easy fed and strong.  Well, ma’am, the hoss feller got kind of hot after some of this, so he says, ‘Well, sir,’ he says, ’there’s this about it.  When you got a hoss, you got a hoss.  You know what you got.  He’s goin’ to act like a hoss.  But when you got a mule, why, you can’t never tell.  All of a sudden one of these days, he’s like as not to turn into a Congressman.’  Well, ma’am, that’s the way we feel about Congressmen.—­Ho, there, Monkey!  Keep up!  I’ll just get out an’ hang on the wheel while we make this corner.  That’ll keep us from turnin’ over, I reckon.”

Sheila sat and held on with both hands.  Her eyes were wide and very bright.  She held her breath till Thatcher got in again, the corner safely made.  For the next creeping, lurching mile, Sheila found that every muscle in her body had its use in keeping her on that seat.  Then they reached the snow and matters grew definitely worse.  Here, half the road was four feet of dirty, icy drift and half of abysmal mud.  They slipped from drift to mire with awful perils and rackings of the wagon and painful struggles of the team.  Sometimes the snow softened and let the horses in up to their necks when Thatcher plied whip and tongue with necessary cruelty.  At last there came disaster.  They were making one of those heart-stopping turns.  Sheila had got out and was adding her mosquito weight to Thatcher’s on the upper side, half-walking, half-hanging to the wagon.  The outer wheels were deep in mud, the inner wheels hung clear.  The horses strained—­and slipped.