Under the Law

by Edwina Stanton Babcock

As they slipped together down the back stairs, Sard chuckled. "The funny part of it is Aunt Reely is reconciled to knickers; so is that queer Mrs. Spoyd. You see, they know that the English countesses and princesses wear them, and they sit studying all the different women's knickers in the fashion sheets and secretly wonder if they couldn't wear them themselves. I heard Mrs. Spoyd say, dreamingly, 'Well, my dearrrrr, I suppose we shall soon have stylish Stouts in the—er—camping trousers also,' and Aunt Reely sighed, 'We must try to adapt ourselves.' They are getting to be very popular!"

The girls went giggling down the steps and out the kitchen way, Sard glancing at the kitchen clock. "We ought to be able to get up-stream before Dunce and his party; they're starting way down-stream back of Spencerville. I'm going to embark above the West Morris station; here's supper and the tea basket, and I've told Maggie and Dora to have something hot in case we come in late."

It was like college days, like bacon bats and beach parties and Saturday hikes, and the girls' spirits rose. They bowed brightly to Colter, appearing with the depot car. In some way the man, clean and shaven, long limbed, clad neatly in faded old shirt and khaki trousers with dark tie carefully tied, was not a disagreeable figure as he gathered up the luncheon things and thermos bottles and waited for Sard's signal. The girl herself took the wheel, and Minga perched beside her. The novelty of the thing worked on the restless mind of the girl under the scarlet tam-o'-shanter. "Wait till Cinny sees this," Minga murmured nervously, "and—and Gertrude! How'll they take the Colter addition to a party—he really looks all right, doesn't he? Those queer clothes set right, and his hair is brushed back like other people's, and his hands look good and kind, somehow. How old do you suppose he is?" she whispered. "About twice as old as Dunce?"

"Hush!" Sard turned a sharp corner carefully. "About thirty-seven, maybe forty." The eyes of both the girls widened at this antique possibility, but Sard remembered that there had been a professor at college who had seemed like a boy, almost as young as Dunce, and he was thirty-five.

There was a curious lift in Sard's head, in her eyes a flying look of adventure; her figure, light, alert, sat at the steering gear with a look of power and repose; her wistful profile had lines that were resolute and composed, as if waiting for some stuff of life on which to try their power; all about her in the windy press of their speed was the buoyant look of physical action, green trees, brown vital roads like veins full of the blood of Wanderlust and adventure; like them, the girl was ardent, fresh, a thing pure and intense as fire, yet sober and clean as water. In her belted coat and rough hat and the flying strands of hair, she drove in confident direction, over the damp woodland roads, over the swamps and bridges of the Morris turnpike, a very figure of Advance, so thought a man, who stood to let them pass, then let his arm fly up in hasty flourish. "Winged Victory!" he breathed.

"Hello!" Watts' hand flew to his hat and he waved it; then as the girls, with friendly greeting, slowed down, he turned back to parley. "Hold up your hands," he ordered gruffly. "Give me your wristwatches; no quarter."

It was all part of their feeling of quest and adventure, and they liked the tall lawyer for the little highway gesture as he stood there, his face lined with dust and sunburn, his costume showing rents and wrinkles of cross-country walking. The two wideawake faces smiled at him as he glanced tentatively at the gray-clad figure at the back of the car, but there was no introduction, though the lawyer paused for it. The man sitting there did not turn, but had a quiet position of relaxation. Sard reddened slightly.

"We're off on a lark," they explained. "Have you seen Dunce and his gang? We hope we've stolen a march on them; we're further up the river, we think."

"Going for some of those little pink pearls," explained Minga, "and we want to get ahead of 'em."