I have a failing,--one, at least,--of wanting to live up to what is expected of me. If a stranger with an expensive gold brick shows any real determination to bestow it on me for a consideration, he always finds me eager to cooperate, not because I do not know I am being gulled, but that I hate to cross him when his heart is set on it. Even in dour Boston it is congenitally hard for me to say “No,” but in Texas where people smile painlessly and the skies are molten turquoise, it is next to impossible. Of course, we might take him as far as Tucson. We would have to give up driving, which we both loved. And pay his expenses. One of us would have to sit in the back seat, and be pulverized by jolting baggage. Still, it didn’t seem right to leave our new friend at El Paso, which of all places bored him most. Would Toby be fair, and sit among the baggage half the time? Toby, I saw, was wondering the same of me. That decided it. Toby loves her comfort. I started to say, “I suppose we might,” when she countered, “But we don’t want any chauffeur.” He looked hopefully at me, recognizing the weaker will. “No,” I said, glad to agree with Toby, “that is perfectly true. In fact the whole point of our trip is to see if we can get along without a chauffeur.” It was the point; his wistful smile had been so persuasive that I had almost forgotten it. Fortunately this reason convinced him without further arguing. He gave us directions about our route, and we left him, hat off, smiling and waving us bon voyage. Crossing a state line is an adventure in itself. Even with no apparent difference of landscape there seems inevitably a change, if only the slight psychological variance reflected by any country whose people are marked off from their neighbors by differences however slight. The universe reflects many distinctions, I firmly believe, so subtle as to be undefined by our five senses, which we note with that sixth sense finer than any. Their intangible flavor piques the analyst to the nice game of description. Hardly had we crossed the political line dividing sand and sage brush from sage brush and sand before we sensed New Mexico;--a new wildness, a hint of lawlessness, a decade nearer the frontier, Old Spain enameled on the wilderness. Or perhaps it was only Mrs. Flanagan, with her Mexican face and Irish brogue, when we stopped to buy gas, whose longing to have us for guests at her hotel made her paint the dangers of New Mexico with Hibernian fluency and Iberian guile. She thickened the coming twilight with sand storms, bandit shapes and murders. “Do ye know what a sandstor’rm is in these parts? Ye do not! I thought not! Last month a car left here to cross the desert to Deming, as ye’re doing. Late afternoon it was,--just this hour, the wind in the same place. I war’rned thim to stay, but they w’d be gettin’ along,--like yourselves.” “And what became of them?”