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theirs. He wasn’t going to ask anyone to change their ways on his account.
    He figured, maybe, that Courtland was all right, but he could get along without him if he had to.
    He stirred, uncomfortably, on the spring seat and flexed the lines.
    “Well, I guess we’ll have to be going, Alf,” Mrs. Dillon said, quickly. “Will you send Bobbie home? He’s been over at your house all day.”
    “Now there’s no necessity for that,” said Courtland. “He can stay for din—supper, too. Stay all night, for that matter.”
    “Well…” Mrs. Dillon hesitated.
    “Why don’t you come along? Myrtle was just talking today about how she wished you’d come over.”
    “Oh…I don’t think I should, Alf,” said Mrs. Dillon. She wanted to go; she dreaded going back to the unfriendly house of her mother. She was by no means sure, however, that her sister would like her coming in unexpected.
    “I think you’d better come,” Courtland insisted. “I’d like to talk to you about those school warrants.”
    “Oh,” said Edie. “Well, maybe I had better, then. Sherm, will you phone Ma from your place and tell her where I am?”
    “All right. Yes, hell,” said Sherman impatiently. And he began cutting the wheels of the buggy almost before his sister was off the step. He did not offer to drive the two to Courtland’s house. It was only a short distance, and it lay in a direction opposite from the one he was going. Nonetheless, before leaving town, he drove once around the square to see if he could give a lift to any acquaintance of his neighborhood who might be on foot.
    He saw no one, either around the courthouse or in the four business blocks which offset it. So, turning the bay down the dirt street which led out of town to the north, he headed homeward. He drove holding the reins in one hand, one foot propped against the dash. Now and then he dusted a fly from the horse’s rump with a flick of the lines. The bay was so sleek and clean that his hide almost glowed, for Sherman was a good hand with animals. He had never forgot the time, back in Ohio, when he had chased the family cow into a barbwire fence, ripping her udder. He was just beginning to walk, and by the time the old man had got through with him he hadn’t been able to do that.
    Well, it had taught him a lesson. A lot of these kids nowadays would be better off if they had their backsides blistered more often.
    The road down which he drove was lined with houses which bore somewhat the same resemblance to each other as children with the same mother but different sires. There were New England houses, rich with gables and shutters; middle-Eastern houses with shingled turrets; porticoed Southern houses. There were even one or two houses which showed chinked-in logs in their façades, which were, purely, except for their ambiguous additions, Western.
    They were all different, and all alike. Whatever the home state or homeland that had inspired them, necessity and conservatism had forced them into a definite if elastic pattern. Roofs were strong, anchored and angled to defeat the wind. Paint had been applied generously and generously maintained; and colors ran mostly to blue and yellow and brown. Porches were either closed in or adaptable to closing. Foundations were thick and deep, and frequently extended a few fractions of an inch outward from the house proper. Like a burial mound, at the rear of each residence was the grassy, cemented, or bricked hump of a cyclone hole. Nothing was flamboyant. To build markedly better than your neighbor was bad taste; it would create talk, arouse envy, and mark you with the mortal sin of extravagance. To build shoddily was as bad. In these close-knit communities, little of the inside and none of the outside of a man’s home was his castle. Erring in judgment, one might remodel or rebuild, but to do so was to repent before a public that would never forget.
    To the outsider, the street might appear unchanging, but not to Sherman