“I’m not taking any risks,” I answered, and it was with greatest mildness that we sauntered up Paradise Ridge and started down the other side.  And as I drove along carefully my mind began to work out into the byways of the situation.  I don’t see how my athletic and executive generation is going to do its appointed work in its day if we are going to go on using the same set of social conventions that tied up our mothers.  As we neared the cross-road that turned off to Sam’s brier-patch I began to wonder how long it would take me to rush back into Hayesboro, bundle mother into Redwheels, and get back to the cows.  It was just a quarter after nine o’clock, but I knew she would be sleepy and would have to be forced to come with me very gently and slowly.  Still, I didn’t see how I could go on out into the woods with only Sam and the Butterball which was wheezing out cow conversation to Sam that I was intensely interested in and ought to have been listening to rather than wasting force on foolish proprieties.  I was about to turn and take Sam’s advice on the matter when he suddenly laid his fingers on my arm and said: 

“Stop a minute, Betty.  What’s that roosting on that stone wall?” And as he spoke he peered out toward a strange, huge bird sitting by the side of the road.

I stopped just about opposite the object and Sam sprang out.

“You, Byrd Crittenden, where did you come from?” I heard Sam demand of the huddled bundle as he lifted it off the wall.  It was attired in scanty night-drawers and a short coat, and shivered as it stood, first on one foot and then on the other.

“I ain’t a-going to stay in no country with a hoot-owl, Sam.  I’m going to somewhere that a lady lives at, too.”  And the manful little voice broke as the bunch shivered up against Sam’s legs.

“Honest, Byrd, I thought you were asleep and wouldn’t wake up till morning.  You never did before; but when I go—­go gallivanting, have I got to take you or not go?” And Sam’s voice was bravely jocular.

“Bring him here to me, Sam,” I cried out, quickly.  “Come in here with Betty, Byrd.”  And I cuddled his long, thin, little legs down under my lap-blanket beyond the steering-gear.  “You didn’t forget Betty while she was away, did you?” I asked, as we snuggled to each other and I started the motor, while Dr. Chubb chuckled and Sam still stood in the middle of the moonlit road as if uncertain what to do next.

“Yes, I forgot you,” answered Byrd, candidly, though I had adored him since his birth; “but I like to go see Mother Hayes and eat jelly-cake.  Can I go home with you?”

“No.  I’m going as fast as I can with you to your home to keep you from freezing to death,” I answered, quickly adopting this recovered old friend in the double capacity of an excuse and a chaperon.  “Just sit here in the seat by me and watch me get us all back to your house in a hurry.  You sit with the doctor, Sam.”

“Oh no, Betty,” answered Sam, quickly.  “It is only a little over a mile now, and the doctor and Byrd and I can walk it all right.  You come out in the morning and—­”