“From a movie company,” she said a little sheepishly. Mrs. Melsie Ponting shrieked, not with laughter, but with excitement. She hoped that the cowboys would look at her but they did not. “Such is life ... such is life ...” bellowed Banner Hope. Avery Bird said, “Let’s go,” but Edward, as a defensive movement against Melsie, ordered one more gin-old-fashioned each, including a couple for the cowboys. “Mr. Williams is wegging ub,” said Melsie Ponting more kindly. It seemed to them all extraordinary that so bare a room should be so delightfully full of confusion. Everything seemed hot, and especially hot was the finger of one of the cowboys tapping Edward’s knee. “And it’s not the first time either,” the cowboy was saying. “I surely did draw a bum card when I got my old girl....” “What got her goat this time?” asked Rhoda. An anecdote seemed to tangle itself about Edward’s exhausted understanding: “... a peach of a dame ... foreigner I guess ... gave my mare the once over.... ‘Sure, sister,’ I said ... there she was careening down the grade on my mare....” “Gadarening would be a good word for that,” thought Edward. “My God, I said, if the mare isn’t acting like she was going to take the girl home to my old girl ... and sure ’nuff.... This foreign dame I’m telling you of rides back ... kinda queer her way of talking was.... ‘Your wife’s after me and you,’ she says ... and back of her, sure ’nuff, come the old girl.... She was blue’s a lemon when she got here....” He broke off. “Well, presence of ladies ...” he added, smiling fatuously. “Her language ... sour as a lemon she was, yapped like a coyote.... And the foreign dame laughed ... put her head down and kinda sobbed for laughing ... _she_ should worry....” “I believe it was Emily,” said Avery Bird suddenly. “You betcher it was Emily,” agreed the cowboy, realising that his story was improved by this fact. “It would be. Emily for mine every day of the week not forgetting Sundays....” Edward and the cowboy inadvertently walked out hand in hand. The cowboy retained Edward’s hand even while he affectionately shook the hand of every other member of the party. The trees and the houses and the cowboy suddenly slid away to the re-awakened tune of the Ford’s engine. Only the stars and the moon accompanied the party. They drove the car at last through a gate into a broad moonlit hayfield. It was like a stage set and lighted for a great ballet. There were no dancers but the moon and the haycocks. All the haycocks bowed before the moon. Rhoda and Melsie chose a haycock against which to spread their blankets. Avery Bird and Banner Hope burrowed into another haycock. Edward, by himself, chose yet another. He arranged his blankets and then stepped back with his head on one side like an artist. There never was seen such an exquisite place to sleep in. In different parts of the field the others were singing, catching an infection of song one from another.