Billy laughed. "All this bother about nothing," said she. "Dad, what’s one car, more or less?" "A car is a car, Billy," said Bartlett coldly, refusing to be comforted for the ruin of his plan to keep Batchelor away from the city over Saturday. "Yes," agreed Henrietta sympathetically, "any one hates to lose a car." "But when you have seven," objected Billy. "We haven’t got them here, have we?" asked Bartlett. "No, but we have one, and that’s enough for five," declared Billy, finding the usual difficulty in persuading people to count their blessings. "We didn’t need two, anyway." "Yes, we did," said the Watermelon, thinking of the tonneau with only Billy and him, the general in front completely absorbed with the car. "Why?" asked Billy. "Why," stammered the Watermelon, who no longer cared to flirt with Billy and who had spoken without thinking, "why, so the general and your father could each run a car," he explained weakly. "Oh, yes," chirped Billy. "What will they do now?" The Watermelon turned and glanced out of the wide doors, down the tree-shaded road, and thought pityingly of the unfortunate Alphonse, gone off at the wrong time, with the whole country-side on the watch for a lone youth in a big red touring car. That the car was of a different make from the one they were hunting for would not impress the sheriffs so forcibly as the fact that the youth also carried a time-piece as big as a clock, along with a cigarette case, cuff links and stick pin, all marked plainly and beyond question, with the damning initials, W.H.B. The Watermelon laughed softly, and glancing at Billy, laughed again. With Bartlett going directly back to the city, he would not have to confess to make things right. He could leave them at the telegraph office and drift away on some pretext or another, leaving Billy gaily, head up, as became a successful financier, not slink away like a whipped dog, with only the scorn and loathing in her eyes to remember, to obliterate all the other memories of that one nearly perfect week. *CHAPTER XVIII* *OH, FOR A HORSE* The farmer forgave the general with lofty dignity and turned to Bartlett with suggestions and offers of help. There was a telephone in the village store. They could telephone Boston or Portland, or they could telephone Harrison and Harrison could telegraph the larger cities. With the police notified promptly, Alphonse would not be able to get far. Bartlett meditatively chewed a straw and pondered the suggestion, leaning against the nearest stall and frowning thoughtfully at the general’s car, while the others stood around him in a semicircle.