"
"It looks very much as though we were going to be millionaires in
our old age, you and I?" went on Buck.
Emma McChesney opened her eyes wide.
"Old!" she mocked, "Old! You! I! Ha!"
IV
THE MAN WITHIN HIM
They used to do it much more picturesquely. They rode in coats of
scarlet, in the crisp, clear morning, to the winding of horns and
the baying of hounds, to the thud-thud of hoofs, and the crackle
of underbrush. Across fresh-plowed fields they went, crashing
through forest paths, leaping ditches, taking fences, scrambling
up the inclines, pelting down the hillside, helter-skelter, until,
panting, wide-eyed, eager, blood-hungry, the hunt closed in at the
death.
The scarlet coat has sobered down to the somber gray and the
snuffy brown of that unromantic garment known as the business
suit. The winding horn is become a goblet, and its notes are the
tinkle of ice against glass. The baying of hounds has harshened to
the squawk of the motor siren. The fresh-plowed field is a blue
print, the forest maze a roll of plans and specifications. Each
fence is a business barrier. Every ditch is of a competitor's
making, dug craftily so that the clumsy-footed may come a cropper.
All the romance is out of it, all the color, all the joy.
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