“Do you care if they think I’m flighty, Will?”

“Me?  Why, I wouldn’t care if the whole world thought you were this or that or anything else.  You’re my—­well, you’re my soul!”

He was an undefined mass, as solid-seeming as rock.  She found his sleeve, pinched it, cried, “I’m glad!  It’s sweet to be wanted!  You must tolerate my frivolousness.  You’re all I have!”

He lifted her, carried her into the house, and with her arms about his neck she forgot Main Street.

CHAPTER V

I

“We’ll steal the whole day, and go hunting.  I want you to see the country round here,” Kennicott announced at breakfast.  “I’d take the car—­want you to see how swell she runs since I put in a new piston.  But we’ll take a team, so we can get right out into the fields.  Not many prairie chickens left now, but we might just happen to run onto a small covey.”

He fussed over his hunting-kit.  He pulled his hip boots out to full length and examined them for holes.  He feverishly counted his shotgun shells, lecturing her on the qualities of smokeless powder.  He drew the new hammerless shotgun out of its heavy tan leather case and made her peep through the barrels to see how dazzlingly free they were from rust.

The world of hunting and camping-outfits and fishing-tackle was unfamiliar to her, and in Kennicott’s interest she found something creative and joyous.  She examined the smooth stock, the carved hard rubber butt of the gun.  The shells, with their brass caps and sleek green bodies and hieroglyphics on the wads, were cool and comfortably heavy in her hands.

Kennicott wore a brown canvas hunting-coat with vast pockets lining the inside, corduroy trousers which bulged at the wrinkles, peeled and scarred shoes, a scarecrow felt hat.  In this uniform he felt virile.  They clumped out to the livery buggy, they packed the kit and the box of lunch into the back, crying to each other that it was a magnificent day.

Kennicott had borrowed Jackson Elder’s red and white English setter, a complacent dog with a waving tail of silver hair which flickered in the sunshine.  As they started, the dog yelped, and leaped at the horses’ heads, till Kennicott took him into the buggy, where he nuzzled Carol’s knees and leaned out to sneer at farm mongrels.

The grays clattered out on the hard dirt road with a pleasant song of hoofs:  “Ta ta ta rat!  Ta ta ta rat!” It was early and fresh, the air whistling, frost bright on the golden rod.  As the sun warmed the world of stubble into a welter of yellow they turned from the highroad, through the bars of a farmer’s gate, into a field, slowly bumping over the uneven earth.  In a hollow of the rolling prairie they lost sight even of the country road.  It was warm and placid.  Locusts trilled among the dry wheat-stalks, and brilliant little flies hurtled across the buggy.  A buzz of content filled the air.  Crows loitered and gossiped in the sky.