With much panting and sputtering and popping the car started slowly forward and they were off. Neither spoke. They came to an intersecting street and Zeke slowed down the car.
"Which way, Mist' Joe?" he asked.
Joe was suddenly irritated. "To Fillmore. You know where I mean. Wherever you've been going for the stuff."
Zeke made a sudden turn to the left, narrowly escaping the projecting roots of a tree. Joe clung to the top brace for support. Down a darkening street they rolled, with the trees arching, sombre overhead, and on either side, back in the shadows, the darker shapes of houses with here and there the passing glow of a lighted lamp. Night descended upon them as they left the town and a few splashes of rain appeared on the dirty glass of the wind-shield. Joe settled stoically down to wait. There was so much time to be passed until he could be of further use and until then there was no need of making any effort. The thought of the morning came back to him. It did not seem possible that the same day was passing. Singularly, the idea of Bromley's was the thing that obsessed him rather than the business in hand. It was as though he had been released on furlough. "Grind, grind, grind," said the car. "You will be back at it all to-morrow. This is not real. This is a dream you're having." He shook himself. He was getting sleepy, felt utterly fagged.
And then Mary Louise flashed across his mind. "Come on," she seemed to say. "You're slipping. You're getting behind. They're all getting ahead of you. You're not keeping up. Let's get in a little more—little more—little more." He lurched against the top brace, blinked, and straightened up. Beside him was the shadow bent a little over the wheel. He could see the outline of the peak of the old golf cap and the dim tracing of Zeke's face, about it a faint gleam, and then the flash of an eye. He pondered. Here was Zeke doing his work—playing his part in the scheme of things. He was not bothered by any notions of obligation. He was not concerned with working out his destiny. He played his cards as he got them. "Sometime they roll seven—and sometime they roll two," he remembered the words of a philosopher of the rolling rubes a year ago—or was it a lifetime? Bromley's! The Golden Rule! Mary Louise! All alike. "Shape yourself to this pattern. Fill this niche. You've got to," said one. "Be like me. Do as I do. Or get out," said another. "It costs so much to live this way. And you have to. Or it's not worth living," said the third. How about his way of looking at it?
He turned suddenly to the inscrutable face beside him.
"You don't let anybody cramp your style, do you, Zeke?" he said.
Zeke started. The sudden voice for a moment terrified him. "Nossuh, I doesn'," he stammered, anxious to agree.
Joe's voice was kindly encouraging. "Well, don't you let them, ever."
"Nossuh, I won'." And singularly he spoke the truth.