“She knows her business,” said the Grapevine man.  “Three nods mean three big strokes of luck.”

“Good king!” exclaimed Nick.  “I hope that doesn’t mean I’m not going to have any more than three?”

“Anything you want in particular?”

“Well, yes, there is something I’m sort of set on.”

“Ask her if you get your wish.”

Nick fixed his eyes upon the owl.

“Do I get my wish?”

She sat motionless on her perch for a moment, consulting her oracle.  Then she suddenly lifted her wings and flapped violently.

“Is that the best answer you can give?” Nick reproached her.

The owl repeated the gesture.

“I guess you want something she doesn’t approve of,” said the Grapevine man.

“She might give me a civil ‘yes’ or ‘no.’  See here, you Witch of Endor—­do I get my wish?”

The owl closed her eyes, then opened them with a sudden flash of gold, but would neither nod nor shake her head.

“She knows, but she won’t tell,” said her master.  “Maybe she doesn’t want to upset your feelings.”

“She can’t scare me with her mysteries,” Nick laughed.  “I’m going right ahead on the same lines.”  Then he said good-bye to his friend and went out to his motor.  But there was enough of the boy in him to be disappointed because the white witch had refused an answer.

The car had a proud way of dismissing the landscape impatiently, if given her head; but as her new owner was not out to show what he could do, she was compelled to crawl when she would have flown, like Pegasus harnessed to the plough.

To-day, the task of subduing herself was not so painful as usual, for the blue car went on mile after mile, through the far-stretching orange groves, without a stop; and Nick enjoyed driving.

“Wish I could remember,” he thought, “how I felt when I was a kid, and walked alone across a room the first time without tumbling on my nose.  I wonder if it was as good as this?”

“This” was very good indeed, and would have been good anywhere—­for Nick was, according to his own way of putting it, a “crank” about doing well whatever he undertook, and he knew now that he had conquered the machine—­but on such a road, and in the light and shade of orange groves, it was superlative.

The vast plain, walled with mountains, was an endless city of domed green temples, richly decorated with the gold of the late orange crop.  Beyond its boundary were vines, cut close in Spanish fashion, which perhaps the Fathers had taught in Mission days; and there were tall, pink-trunked eucalyptus trees from whose wood beautiful furniture could be made; then cities of green and golden temples again, in a desert-frame of tawny yellow.  Everything that was not green was golden.  The sun poured gold; oranges blazed in golden splendour; and California poppies, golden with orange hearts, swept in a yellow flame over the landscape.