Randy nodded. "He didn't quite mean it, of course. But he saw the modern trend. A poet? A poor thing! But hats off to the pillmaker with his multi-millions!" "Stop that," said the Major. "Stop what?" "Blaming the world for its sordidness. There is beauty enough if we look for it." "None of us has time to look for it. We are too busy trying to sell cars to people who love horses." II In the end Randy got his car. And after that he, too, might have been seen running shuttle-like back and forth over the red roads. Nellie Custis was usually beside him on the front seat. She took her new honors seriously. For generations back her forbears had loped with flapping ears in the lead of a hunting pack. To be sitting thus on a leather seat and whirled through the air with no need of legs from morning until night required some readjustment on the part of Nellie Custis. But she had always followed where Randy led. And in time she grew to like it, and watched the road ahead with eager eyes, and with her ears perpetually cocked. Now and then Becky sat beside Randy, with Nellie at her feet. The difference between a ride with Randy and one with George Dalton was, Becky felt, the difference a not unpleasant commonplace and the stuff that dreams are made of. "It is rather a duck of a car," she had said, the first time he took her out in it. "Yes, it is," Randy had agreed. "I am getting tremendously fond of her. I have named her 'Little Sister.'" "Oh, Randy, you haven't." "Yes, I have. She has such confiding ways. I never believed that cars had human qualities, Becky." "They are not horses of course." "Well, they have individual characteristics. You take the three cars in our barn. The Packard reminds one of that stallion we owned three years ago--blooded and off like the wind. The Franklin is a grayhound--and Little Sister is a--duck----" "Mr. Dalton's car is a--silver ship----" "Oh, does he call it that?" grimly. "So----" "Was it your own--poetic--idea?" "Yes." "And you called Little Sister a duck," she groaned. "And when my little duck swims in the wake of his silver ship, and he laughs, do you laugh, too?" There was a dead silence. Then she said, "Oh, Randy----" He made his apology like a gentleman. "That was hateful of me, Becky. I'm sorry----" "You know I wouldn't laugh, Randy, and neither would he." "Who?" "Mr. Dalton." "Wouldn't what?" "Laugh." He hated her defense of young Apollo--but he couldn't let the subject alone. "You never have any time for me." "Randy, are you going to scold me for the rest of our ride?" "Am I scolding?" "Yes." "Then I'll stop it and say nice things to you or you won't want to come again." Yet after that when he saw her in Dalton's car, her words would return to him, and gradually he began to think of her as sailing in a silver ship farther and farther away in a future where he could not follow.