“What’s the matter, Cleo?” asked Wheeler, sitting down beside her and lifting her cool fingers one by one, and, by reason of some remote analogy that must have stirred within him, seeing in her a Nile queen.  “What’s the matter Cleo?  Does the spook stuff get your goat?”

She turned on him eyes that were all troubled up, like waters suddenly wind-blown.

“God!” she said, her fingers, nails inward, closing about his arm.  “Wheeler—­can—­can the—­dead—­speak?”

But fleeting as the hours themselves were the moods of them all, and the following morning there they were, the eight of them, light with laughter and caparisoned again as to hampers, veils, coats, dogs, off for a day’s motoring through the springtime countryside.

“Where to?” shouted Wheeler, twisting from where he and Hester sat in the first of the cars to call to the two motor-loads behind.

“I thought Crystal Cave was the spot”—­from May Denison in the last of the cars, winding her head in a scarlet veil.

“Crystal Cave it is, then.”

“Is that through Demopolis?”

Followed a scanning of maps.

“Sure!  Here it is!  See!  Granite City.  Mitchell.  Demopolis.  Crystal Cave.”

“Good Lord!  Hester, you’re not going to spend any time in that dump?”

“It’s my home town,” she replied, coldly.  “The only relation I had is buried there.  It’s nothing out of your way to drop me on the court-house steps and pick me up as you drive back, I’ve been wanting to get there ever since we’re down here.  Wanting to stop by your home town you haven’t seen in five years isn’t unreasonable, is it?”

He admitted it wasn’t, leaning to kiss her.

She turned to him a face soft, with one of the pouts he usually found irresistible.

“Honey,” she said, “what do you think?”

“What?”

“Chris is buying May that chinchilla coat I showed you in Meyerbloom’s window the day before we left.”

“The deuce he is!” he said, letting go of her hand, but hers immediately covering his.

“She’s wiring her sister in the ‘Girlie Revue’ to go in and buy it for her.”

“Outrage—­fifteen thousand dollars to cover a woman’s back!  Look at the beautiful scenery, honey!  You’re always prating about views.  Look at those hills over there!  Great—­isn’t it?”

“I wouldn’t expect it, Wheeler, if it wasn’t war year and you landing one big contract after another.  I’d hate to see May show herself in that chinchilla coat when we could beat her to it by a wire.  I could telegraph Meyerbloom himself.  I bought the sable rug of him.  I’d hate it, Wheeler, to see her and Chris beat us to it.  So would you.  What’s fifteen thousand when one of your contracts alone runs into the hundred thousands?  Honey?”

“Wire,” he said, sourly, but not withdrawing his hand from hers.

* * * * *

They left her at the shady court-house steps in Demopolis, but with pleasantry and gibe.