"Let's buy them from Willie. He would sell them for a song."
"That's a fine idea," Forbes answered, with a gulp. He knew how much horses like these were worth—and saddles, bridles, and stables.
"We shouldn't want to ride in a car all the time, should we?" she asked.
"No, indeed," he answered. She was at her fairy plans again, and his heart sickened.
"We mustn't let ourselves get fat. Of all things we must avoid that," she said. "We might have just a little car like Winifred's—to hold only two. I could drive down and get you and bring you home. It would save wear on our limousine—or perhaps we won't get a limousine just yet. If we didn't have a big car it would be a good excuse for not having a lot of people tagging round with us everywhere, wouldn't it? I feel an awful longing for a lot of solitude with just you and me. I suppose we'll have to put up with the United States army. But I want to shake the gang I've been running with—at least for a year or so, till you and I can get acquainted. Will you buy me a little car like Winifred's—a good one? There's no use wasting money on the cheap kind. The good little ones cost as much as the good big ones; but once they're paid for, they don't run up repair bills, and they take you where you're going instead of dying under you half-way there. Will you buy me a little car for just us? You can get a darling for about twenty-five hundred; I was asking Winifred."
He made no answer. She turned and looked at him and saw on his face the look she had seen on her father's that day—the look a man wears when he cannot buy his beloved what she pleads for. Now, as then, Persis felt ashamed rather than resentful, and she hastened to add:
"If you can't afford it, old boy, say so. You mustn't mind me. My father says I'm a terrible asker. Just say No, and I won't mind. Promise me that, dear. I want to be a good economical housewife to you; and I was only thinking that if we had a little car it would save taking the big car out, and that saves tires and gasolene and general upkeep."
He heard Enslee's words, "It's the upkeep that costs," and they mocked him again. He realized that in persuading this girl to choose him instead of Enslee, who had already chosen her, he was not only robbing her of a yacht, a palace, two or three palaces, half a dozen automobiles, servants, and servants of servants, foreign travel and foreign clothes and jewels—he was not only robbing her of such things, but he was asking her to learn a new way of life, a habit of infinite denial, eternal economy, and meager amusement.
Experience and common sense—for he had them in large measure in his ordinary life—seemed to bend down and say: "Let your sea-gull go. She'll die in your cage, or she'll break it apart."
But she was in his arms. She was leaning against him, flicking his boots with her riding-crop, and loving him, contented utterly. Romance elbowed Reason aside and said: "See how happy she is. It isn't money that makes happiness. You're sitting on the edge of a silly little brook in somebody's backwoods, and you're happy as a king and queen on a throne of gold."