nd beaches.

"But they're a pretty uppish sort, most of 'em," he said to Saxon,
referring to the persons he drove. "Always MISTER Roberts this, an'
MISTER Roberts that--all kinds of ceremony so as to make me not forget
they consider themselves better 'n me. You see, I ain't exactly a
servant, an' yet I ain't good enough for them. I'm the driver--something
half way between a hired man and a chauffeur. Huh! When they eat they
give me my lunch off to one side, or afterward. No family party like
with Hall an' HIS kind. An' that crowd to-day, why, they just naturally
didn't have no lunch for me at all. After this, always, you make me
up my own lunch. I won't be be holdin' to 'em for nothin', the damned
geezers. An' you'd a-died to seen one of 'em try to give me a tip. I
didn't say nothin'. I just looked at 'm like I didn't see 'm, an' turned
away casual-like after a moment, leavin' him as embarrassed as hell."

Nevertheless, Billy enjoyed the driving, never more so than when he held
the reins, not of four plodding workhorses, but of four fast driving
animals, his foot on the powerful brake, and swung around curves and
along dizzy cliff-rims to a frightened chorus of women passengers. And
when it came to horse judgment and treatment of sick and injured horses
even the owner of the stable yielded place to Billy.

"I could get a regular job there any time," he boasted quietly to Saxon.
"Why, the country's just sproutin' with jobs for any so-so sort of a
fellow. I bet anything, right now, if I said to the boss that I'd
take sixty dollars an' work regular, he'd jump for me. He's hinted as
much.--And, say! Are you onta the fact that yours truly has learnt a new
trade. Well he has. He could take a job stage-drivin' anywheres. They
drive six on some of the stages up in Lake County. If we ever get there,
I'll get thick with some driver, just to get the reins of six in my
hands. An' I'll have you on the box beside me. Some goin' that! Some
goin'!"

Billy took little interest in the many discussions waged in Hall's big
living room. "Wind-chewin'," was his term for it. To him it was so much
good time wasted that might be employed at a game of Pedro, or going
swimming, or wrestling in the sand. Saxon, on the contrary, delighted
in the logomachy, though little enough she understood of it, following
mainly by feeling, and once in a while catching a high light.

But what she could never comprehend was the pessimism that so often
croppe