‘Darling, I thought I heard you sneak downstairs last night and have a little nip.’

‘It’s worse than liquor, woman. It’s the wine of life. It’s . . .’

‘Please stop trying to be cute, Fred, and tell me what you’re up to.’

‘Oh, we’re merely taking the Golden Road to Samarkand!’

‘Well, it may look so to you, but it looks to me like Route 29; and it may be gold, but right along here, there seem to be patches of cement.’

‘Don’t notice it. Some poor cusses on the WPA came along last night and pinched this stretch of gold. You’ll see it again in couple blocks.’

‘Fred, dearest, I don’t mind, but are you cuckoo?’

‘Completely! See that man there?’

‘What man, where?’

‘Sitting up on the bonnet of the car — the little fellow with the pointed hat and the green whiskers?’

‘Oh — yes — well — I can’t say I see him very clearly.’

‘You will, if you stick around with me long enough. That clears it all up, don’t it?’

Not a word more would he say till he had turned at right angles off Fenimore Cooper Boulevard, which led straight to Saratoga. Now, the car was headed south-east.

‘Where are we going?’ wondered Hazel. But she said it without alarm, for whatever she might think of Fred’s capacity as a romantic lover, he was to her the Beethoven of motoring.

‘What’s trouble?’ he droned.

‘Why, the car seems headed in the wrong direction.’

‘It does? Doggone! We’ll just have to go along with it, I guess. Too fast for us to jump.’

‘Frederick, will you please stop all this coyness . . .’

‘I know. But I feel so cheerful and free — and unusual — and therefore silly!’

‘Well, quit it a moment, won’t you? I’m sorry, but this is not the road to Saratoga!’

‘Whoever said it was?’

‘Aren’t we going to Saratoga?’

‘Whatever made you think we were?’

‘I heard you telephoning to Howard . . .’

‘Has it ever been your opinion that our darling son is a safe man to trust the truth with?’

‘Then where are we going?’

‘I think — unless we change my mind — we’re going to an inn at Stonefield, Mass., east of Lenox. But does it matter where we land up, as long as nobody can catch us, and we can quit being responsible parents for a few days and see if we’re still human beings also? How about it?’

‘I— I don’t think it’s such a bad idea. I do like going with you.’

‘Remember one evening I was kind of talking about retiring? I haven’t forgotten it. Maybe I’m not so satisfied with what Fred Cornplow has done with life. I want to try and see — just experiment and try and see if there aren’t some new things I’m not too old to learn, just for the fun of learning ’em. And then . . . About Sara and Howard. One reason for this running off is, I figure that if I can be plumb away from ’em for a while, where they can’t find us and interfere, I’ll get over my irritation and quit being so mean to ’em.’