Mrs. McNally’s honest eyes, as blue as Copenhagen china, gazing through the window in perplexity, fell upon the travelling Parnassus and Mr. Mifflin backing Pegasus into the shafts.  I saw her make a valiant effort to comprehend the sign painted on the side of the van—­and give it up.

“You going driving?” she said blankly.

“Yes,” I said, and fled upstairs.

I always keep my bank book in an old Huyler box in the top drawer of my bureau.  I don’t save very quickly, I’m afraid.  I have a little income from some money father left me, but Andrew takes care of that.  Andrew pays all the farm expenses, but the housekeeping accounts fall to me.  I make a fairish amount of pin money on my poultry and some of my preserves that I send to Boston, and on some recipes of mine that I send to a woman’s magazine now and then; but generally my savings don’t amount to much over $10 a month.  In the last five years I had put by something more than $600.  I had been saving up for a Ford.  But just now it looked to me as if that Parnassus would be more fun than a Ford ever could be.  Four hundred dollars was a lot of money, but I thought of what it would mean to have Andrew come home and buy it.  Why, he’d be away until Thanksgiving!  Whereas if I bought it I could take it away, have my adventure, and sell it somewhere so that Andrew never need see it.  I hardened my heart and determined to give the Sage of Redfield some of his own medicine.

My balance at the Redfield National Bank was $615.20.  I sat down at the table in my bedroom where I keep my accounts and wrote out a check to Roger Mifflin for $400.  I put in plenty of curlicues after the figures so that no one could raise the check into $400,000; then I got out my old rattan suit case and put in some clothes.  The whole business didn’t take me ten minutes.  I came downstairs to find Mrs. McNally looking sourly at the Parnassus from the kitchen door.

“You going away in that—­that ‘bus, Mis’ McGill?” she asked.

“Yes, Mrs. McNally,” I said cheerfully.  Her use of the word gave me an inspiration.  “That’s one of the new jitney ’buses we hear about.  He’s going to take me to the station.  Don’t you worry about me.  I’m going for a holiday.  You get Mr. McGill’s dinner ready for him.  After dinner tell him there’s a note for him in the living-room.”

“I tank that bane a queer ’bus,” said Mrs. McNally, puzzled.  I think the excellent woman suspected an elopement.

I carried my suit case out to the Parnassus.  Pegasus stood placidly between the shafts.  From within came sounds of vigorous movement.  In a moment the little man burst out with a bulging portmanteau in his hand.  He had a tweed cap slanted on the back of his head.

“There!” he cried triumphantly.  “I’ve packed all my personal effects clothes and so on—­and everything else goes with the transaction.  When I get on the train with this bag I’m a free man, and hurrah for Brooklyn!  Lord, won’t I be glad to get back to the city!  I lived in Brooklyn once, and I haven’t been back there for ten years,” he added plaintively.