I sprang out, for I saw the old mare begin to squat, her old, scared, brown eyes blazing in her white face like holes in a big lard can. I heard her snort like a scared bear and saw her feet pattering jigs all over the pike. Then she whirled, running into a fence, where, between the overturned buckboard, the shafts and the rail fence, she stood wedged upon her hind legs, pawing the air. But the girls surprised me. Without a change in their fat, immutable, expressionless faces, they simply rolled out on the pike in a bunch, the baby on top, like snow folks tilted over by a boy. They got up, dusting their frocks. They had taken it for granted. It was all right. There was not a squawk—not even from the baby, as one of them picked it up and I grabbed the bits and straightened out the old mare. “I hope you ladies aren’t hurt,” said my friend from the roadside, in his machine. “Sally, is you hurt?” asked the fattest one. “Naw,” she grunted. “Mamie, is you?” Mamie merely wiggled. “Is Tootsy hurt?” Tootsy was eating an apple, with unblinking eyes fixed on the wonderful machine. Nothing was hurt but the harness. That was hurt before they started, but I had to spend the next twenty minutes patching it up. Finally we got them all in, Tootsy on top. No word had they spoken, but I could see they were eying me with that country suspicion that makes every maid of them rate every man she meets in the road as Lothario, Jr., or a prince in disguise. “Now, ladies, you are all right,” I said, trying to keep cheerful; “and I am so glad none of you were hurt.” Then one of them drawled, but looking over toward the distant horizon: “Ain’t you named Mister Trotwood?” I turned red and pleaded guilty. “After all you’ve writ, I don’t think you had oughter done this,” and they all drove sedately off, still looking toward the horizon. “Now, that’s the worst thing about automobiles,” said Horatius, after we started again—“these fool country horses. Why, I waited till this time of day, thinking they’d all be in town by now, for they get up with the chickens. Anyway, we are not likely to meet any more of them.” “I hope not,” I sighed, pulling out a cigar and a match. I struck the match, as I’d always done in the buggy. It was blown out before the sulphur burned. “You can’t do that in an automobile,” he yelled; “we’re going too fast. Like to stop for you, but we’re fairly humming—be there in half an hour, old man.” _Honk! honk!_ We had turned a bend in the road. “Great Caesar!” I shouted. “Nobody going to town! Look!” His jaws dropped. There they were. We could see for half a mile, and so help me heaven, but this was the procession that passed as we pulled out of the narrow pike on the roadside, consumed with impatience to get to the field, the machine throbbing beneath us like a loft over a bran dance. First, an old sorrel mare, a worn-out buggy of the vintage of 1874, and two old ladies.