Page:Temple Bailey--The Gay cockade.djvu/231

 Henry's eyes went to the pride of his heart.

"Well, I should think you'd want a car."

"I'd give," said O-liver, "my kingdom for a horse, but not for a car."

O-liver's little mare stood quite happily in the shade; she was slim as to leg, shining as to coat, and with the eyes of a loving woman.

"I should think you'd want to get ahead," said Atwood Jones, who sold shoes up and down the coast. He was a junior member of the firm, but still liked to go on the road. He liked to lounge like this in front of the post-office and smoke in the golden air with a lot of men sitting round. Atwood had been raised on a ranch. He had listened to the call of the city, but he was still a small-town man.

"Ahead of what?" asked O-liver.

Atwood was vague. He felt himself a rising citizen. Some day he expected to marry and set his wife up in a mansion in San Francisco, with seasons of rest and recreation at Del Monte and Coronado and the East. If the shoe business kept to the present rate of prosperity he would probably have millions to squander in his old age.

He tried to say something of this to O-liver.

"Well, will you be any happier?" asked the young man with the bare head. "I'll wager my horse against your car that when you're drunk with 225