cene. The mother pig turned tail and with short
ludicrous jumps, followed by her progeny and pursued by the dog, fled
out of the film. A young girl came on, a sunbonnet hanging down her
back, her apron caught up in front and filled with grain which she threw
to the buttering fowls. Pigeons flew down from the top of the film
and joined in the scrambling feast. The dog returned, wading scarcely
noticed among the feathered creatures, to wag his tail and laugh up at
the girl. And, behind, the horse nodded over the rail and switched on. A
young man entered, his errand immediately known to an audience educated
in moving pictures. But Saxon had no eyes for the love-making, the
pleading forcefulness, the shy reluctance, of man and maid. Ever her
gaze wandered back to the chickens, to the mottled shade under the
trees, to the warm wall of the barn, to the sleepy horse with its ever
recurrent whisk of tail.

She drew closer to Billy, and her hand, passed around his arm, sought
his hand.

"Oh, Billy," she sighed. "I'd just die of happiness in a place like
that." And, when the film was ended. "We got lots of time for Bell's.
Let's stay and see that one over again."

They sat through a repetition of the performance, and when the farm yard
scene appeared, the longer Saxon looked at it the more it affected
her. And this time she took in further details. She saw fields beyond,
rolling hills in the background, and a cloud-flecked sky. She identified
some of the chickens, especially an obstreperous old hen who resented
the thrust of the sow's muzzle, particularly pecked at the little pigs,
and laid about her with a vengeance when the grain fell. Saxon looked
back across the fields to the hills and sky, breathing the spaciousness
of it, the freedom, the content. Tears welled into her eyes and she wept
silently, happily.

"I know a trick that'd fix that old horse if he ever clamped his tail
down on me," Billy whispered.

"Now I know where we're going when we leave Oakland," she informed him.

"Where?"

"There."

He looked at her, and followed her gaze to the screen. "Oh," he said,
and cogitated. "An' why shouldn't we?" he added.

"Oh, Billy, will you?"

Her lips trembled in her eagerness, and her whisper broke and was almost
inaudible "Sure," he said. It was his day of royal largess.

"What you want is yourn, an' I'll scratch my fingers off for it. An'
I've always had a hankerin' for the country myself. Say! I've known
horse