"'Why, Breck, don't be absurd! I wouldn't _marry_ you for anything in the world'" _Frontispiece_ FACING PAGE "'Men seem to want to make just nice soft pussy-cats out of us, with ribbons round our necks, and hear us purr'" 128 "Straight ahead she gazed; straight ahead she rode; unafraid, eager, hopeful; the flag her only staff" 170 "I was the only one in her whole establishment whom she wasn't obliged to treat as a servant and menial" 202 THE FIFTH WHEEL CHAPTER I RUTH VARS COMES OUT I spend my afternoons walking alone in the country. It is sweet and clean out-of-doors, and I need purifying. My wanderings disturb Lucy. She is always on the lookout for me, in the hall or living-room or on the porch, especially if I do not come back until after dark. She needn't worry. I am simply trying to fit together again the puzzle-picture of my life, dumped out in terrible confusion in Edith's sunken garden, underneath a full September moon one midnight three weeks ago. Lucy looks suspiciously upon the portfolio of theme paper I carry underneath my arm. But in this corner of the world a portfolio of theme paper and a pile of books are as common a part of a girl's paraphernalia as a muff and a shopping-bag on a winter's day on Fifth Avenue. Lucy lives in a university town. The university is devoted principally to the education of men, but there is a girls' college connected with it, so if I am caught scribbling no one except Lucy needs to wonder why. I have discovered a pretty bit of woods a mile west of Lucy's house, and an unexpected rustic seat built among a company of murmurous young pines beside a lake. Opposite the seat is an ecstatic little maple tree, at this season of the year flaunting all the pinks and reds and yellows of a fiery opal. There, sheltered by the pines, undisturbed except by a scurrying chipmunk or two or an inquisitive, gray-tailed squirrel, I sit and write. I heard Lucy tell Will the other day (Will is my intellectual brother-in-law) that she was really anxious about me. She believed I was writing poetry! "And whenever a healthy, normal girl like Ruth begins to write poetry," she added, "after a catastrophe like hers, look out for her. Sanitariums are filled with such." Poetry! I wish it were. Poetry indeed! Good heavens! I am writing a defense.