For weeks I had been face to face with cruel conditions of life, had seen hardships and denials and injustices, and dreary monotony of days, and I wanted for a while to get away from it all, to breathe deep of that which would renew and reinforce and revitalize; wanted to be a child again, and, with Selwyn as my playmate, wander along the winding road with faces to the sun, and hearts of hope, and faith that God would not forget, and the world would yet be well.  If nobody was going to do anything to us, if we were not needed to play a part, the hours ahead could be ours.  The train on which we were to return did not leave until three-thirty.  I looked at my watch.  It was ten-thirty.

“Get something from somebody.”  My hand made movement toward the men about us and then in the direction of the shacks and sheds and cabins of the negroes, scattered at wide intervals apart from the village, which consisted of a long, rambling street with a white frame church at one end, a gray one at the other, a court-house in the middle, and a school-house at its back.  “Get a buggy and something you can drive and let’s have a holiday—­just by ourselves.  What is that house over there?”

I pointed to a square, old-fashioned red-brick building set well back from the road and surrounded by great oak-trees, and smaller ones of birch and maple and spruce and pine, and shrubs of various kinds.  It was Claxon’s one redemption.  Shading my eyes, I read the tin sign swinging in the wind from a rod nailed at right angles to a sagging post at its gateless yard.  “Swan Tavern.”  The name thrilled.  I was no longer a twentieth-century person, but a lady of other days, and if a coach and four with outriders had appeared I would have stepped in it with delight.  It did not appear, nor was Selwyn suddenly in knee-breeches and buckles and satin coat and brocaded vest.  Not even my imagination could so clothe him.  His practicality recalled me.

“I’ll go over and find out what sort of place it is, and see if we can get anything to ride in.  Perhaps this man can tell me.  Wait here.”  He put out his hand as if to prevent my speaking first to the man.  I didn’t intend to speak to him.

The man could tell him nothing.  He lived seven miles back and had come to the station to meet a friend who had failed to appear.  There were teams in the neighborhood that might be gotten.  Swan Tavern didn’t have any.  Used to, but most people nowaday, specially drummers, wanted automobiles, and old Colonel Tavis, who owned the place, wouldn’t let an automobile come in his yard.  Perhaps Major Bresee might let him have his horse and buggy.  The person who gave the information changed his quid of tobacco from his left to his right cheek and, spitting on the ground below the plank-loose platform on which we were standing, pointed to a one-room office-building down the street, then again surveyed us.  Two or three men across the road came over, and two or three others hanging around the station drew nearer and nodded to us, while both of the boys, hands in their pants pockets, stared up at Selwyn as if something new had indeed come to town.