house--so clean and beautiful. You could eat off the
floor. I never dreamed of anything so sweet and lovely as the inside of
that house."

"It smelt good," Billy supplied.

"That's the very thing. It's what the women's pages call atmosphere.
I didn't know what they meant before. That house has beautiful, sweet
atmosphere--"

"Like all your nice underthings," said Billy.

"And that's the next step after keeping your body sweet and clean and
beautiful. It's to have your house sweet and clean and beautiful."

"But it can't be a rented one, Saxon. You've got to own it. Landlords
don't build houses like that. Just the same, one thing stuck out plain:
that house was not expensive. It wasn't the cost. It was the way. The
wood was ordinary wood you can buy in any lumber yard. Why, our house
on Pine street was made out of the same kind of wood. But the way it was
made was different. I can't explain, but you can see what I'm drivin'
at."

Saxon, revisioning the little bungalow they had just left, repeated
absently: "That's it--the way."

The next morning they were early afoot, seeking through the suburbs of
San Jose the road to San Juan and Monterey. Saxon's limp had increased.
Beginning with a burst blister, her heel was skinning rapidly. Billy
remembered his father's talks about care of the feet, and stopped at a
butcher shop to buy five cents' worth of mutton tallow.

"That's the stuff," he told Saxon. "Clean foot-gear and the feet well
greased. We'll put some on as soon as we're clear of town. An' we might
as well go easy for a couple of days. Now, if I could get a little work
so as you could rest up several days it'd be just the thing. I '11 keep
my eye peeled."

Almost on the outskirts of town he left Saxon on the county road and
went up a long driveway to what appeared a large farm. He came back
beaming.

"It's all hunkydory," he called as he approached. "We'll just go down
to that clump of trees by the creek an' pitch camp. I start work in the
mornin', two dollars a day an' board myself. It'd been a dollar an' a
half if he furnished the board. I told 'm I liked the other way best,
an' that I had my camp with me. The weather's fine, an' we can make out
a few days till your foot's in shape. Come on. We'll pitch a regular,
decent camp."

"How did you get the job," Saxon asked, as they cast about, determining
their camp-site.

"Wait till we get fixed an' I'll tell you all about it. It was a dream,
a cinch."