Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/29

 The experienced ear of Major Stephen Douglas Prouty told him that he was getting a hot axle. The hard dry squeak from the rear wheel of the ‘‘ democrat ” had but one meaning —he had forgotten to grease it. This would seem an inexcusable oversight in a man who expected to make forty miles before sunset, but in this instance there was an extenuating circumstance. Immediately after breakfast there had been a certain look in his hostess’s eye which had warned him that if he lingered he would be asked to assist with the churning. Upon observing it he had started for the barn to harness with a celerity that approached a trot.

Long years of riding the grub-line had developed in the Major a gift for recognizing the exact psychological moment when he had worn out his welcome as company and was about to be treated as one of the family and sicced on the woodpile, that was like a sixth sense. It sel- dom failed him, but in the rare instances when it had, he had bought his freedom with a couple of boxes of White Badger Salve — unfailing for cuts, burns, scalds and all Itritations of the skin — good also, as it proved, for dry axles, since he had neglected to replenish his box of axle grease from that of his host at the last stopping place.

He leaned from under the edge of the large cotton umbrella which shaded him amply, and squinted at the sun. He judged that it was noon exactly. His intention