assumption of gladness
would be a hollow mockery.

"Any man," said the genial gentleman, rubbing a cloth over the enamel of
the little car, "any man who would start selling this machine down here
would make a fortune."

Randy pricked up his ears.

"How could he make a fortune?"

"Selling cars. Why, the babies cry for them----" he chuckled and rubbed
harder.

"How much could he make?" Randy found himself saying.

The genial gentleman named a sum, "Easy."

Randy got up from the wheelbarrow and came over. "Is she really as good
as that?"

"Is she really? Oh, say----" the genial gentleman for the next ten
minutes dealt in superlatives.

Towards the end, Randy was firing questions at him.

"Could I own a car while I was selling them?"

"Sure--they'd let you have it on installments to be paid for out of your
commissions----"

"And I'd have an open field?"

"My dear boy, in a month you could have cars like this running up and
down the hills like ants after sugar. They speak for themselves, and
they are cheap enough for anybody."

"But it is a horse-riding country, especially back in the hills. They
love horse-flesh, you know."

"Oh, they'll get the gasoline bug like the rest of us," said the genial
gentleman and slapped him on the back.

Randy winced. He did not like to be slapped on the back. Not at a
moment--when he was selling his soul to the devil----

For that was the way he looked at it.

"I shall have to perjure myself," he said to Major Prime later, as they
talked it over in the Schoolhouse, "to go through the country telling
mine own people to sell their horses and get cars."

"If you don't do it, somebody else will."

"But a man can't be convincing if he doesn't believe in a thing."

"No, of course. But you've got to look at it this way, the world moves,
and horses haven't had an easy time. Perhaps it is their moment of
emancipation. And just for the sake of a sentiment, a tradition, you
can't afford to hold back."

"I can't afford to lose this chance if there is money in it. But it
isn't what I had planned."

As he sat there on the step and hugged his knees, every drop of blood in
Randy seemed to be urging "Hurry, hurry." He felt as a man might who,
running a race, finds another rider neck and neck and strains towards
the finish.

To sell cars in order to win Becky seemed absurd on the face of it. But
he would at least be doing something towards solving the problem of
self-support,