"Well, that's easy. Come round with us and have a cool-off. We're all going to look in at the Crans', close by here. This is their car: jump in, sonny."

Suddenly a motor stood there: Vance remembered piling into it with Upton, Bunty Hayes, and some other fellows; they sat on each other's laps and on the hood. A girl who laughed very much and had blown-back hair, dyed red, was at the wheel. Where were they going? Who was she? Vance didn't care. As the motor began to move the wind stirred in his own hair, driving it back like the girl's, and life flowed through him again. He began to laugh, and tried to light a cigarette, but couldn't, because there wasn't enough elbow-room for a sardine. The others laughed at his ineffectual attempt, and another girl, perched somewhere behind him, lit a cigarette and leaned forward to push it between his lips. They were going to the Crans', and he found out, he didn't know how, that these two were the Cran girls—Cuty with the dyed hair at the wheel, and the younger, 'Smeralda they called her, sitting behind him on the hood between two fellows, so that his head rested against her knees, and he felt, through his hair, the warm flesh where her scant skirt had slipped up. Once or twice, after they had left the state highway, the overloaded motor nearly stuck in the deep ruts of the country road, and everybody laughed and cheered and gave college yells till Cuty somehow got them going again.

Ah, how good the cool drinks were when they got to the Crans'! It was at the back of the house, he remembered, under an arbour of scarlet runners that looked out on a long narrow yard where clothes were drying. Some of the clothes were funny little garments with lace edgings and holes for ribbon, and there was a good deal of joking about that, and he remembered Cuty Cran crying out: "No, it ain't! No, I don't! Mine are crepp-de-sheen… . Well, you come upstairs and see, then… ." But Cuty was not the one he fancied; and anyhow, since Floss he'd never … and he had young Upton to look after… .