Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/155

 "Because . . . The Goat Girl!" he answered enigmatically.

"The Goat Girl?" Fay queried, not associating readily, as the psychologists say.

"Yes—you remember, don't you, one day when you and your little white goats ran away from home and an old, brindled tin-can-eater hopped on them, but a boy in a cabbage patch jumped over the fence and—"

"And were you that boy?" Fay almost screamed at him in her joy and amazement, clutching both his hands for an instant.

"Yes," he said, and held her hand playfully, "I'm the boy."

"You were an awfully nice boy, I remember that, but—rather—rather soiled—as I recall."

"No doubt," said George, but he didn't want to be either complimented or teased. He wanted to be seriously and sentimentally reminiscent; and as she was perfectly willing, he told her—or tried to tell her—the story of the place the little red velvet queen had occupied in his life, and that she—not the mere manufacture of horseless wagons—had been his real inspiration.

"And to think that you never told me before?" the girl remembered suddenly to reproach. "George! It almost frightens me. You can keep things so deep in you—and keep after what you want so forever and ever till you get it."