‘I didn’t think you were so mean.’

‘Well, if you didn’t, then I missed the target pretty bad, because I certainly set out to be mean. Maybe what I’ll get out of this trip will be ability to be a whole lot meaner. Anyway, something interesting is bound to happen to anybody nowadays who has the nerve to buck this Reign of Youth. Rights for the Uptrodden!’

They sat for half an hour on a hilltop of rough upland pasture, loud with insects; they sat on the running board, contentedly saying nothing at all, and his cigarette tasted good.

They had lunch at a farmhouse, under the maples, and he crowed, ‘You simply can’t get real fried chicken and home-made ice cream like this in the city!’ She did not explain that the chicken had undoubtedly come from a can, the ice cream from a renowned creamery in Troy.

They had, in mid-afternoon, an old-fashioned milk shake in a village drug-store and, while Hazel cooed at them to make them feel neighbourly, Fred and the druggist told each other that they had elegant motors, handsome and co-operative children, constructive ideas about the future of the Republican party, and that life was a good idea. Grey-haired, grey-browed, in grey alpaca jacket, his grey hands thin and long, the druggist leaned his elbows on the counter and meditated, ‘Nice thing about my business is, grand people like you come in and pass the time of day.’

Fred went out to the car in a one-man parade. He liked to be grand people, reflected Hazel. ‘Set that man down in Warsaw or Tokyo’, she thought proudly, ‘and inside an hour he’d know the names of all the children of the nearest cigar-store man and all the taxi-drivers and the policeman on the block . . . In that, he’s like Howard. Maybe some day I’ll get my two men together!’

It was not over a hundred and fifty miles from Sachem to Stonefield, and for Fred, normally, that was one-third of a day’s driving, but they so happily dawdled, enchanted by deep meadows and thick trees, that at five they were still fifty miles from Stonefield, and filling up with petrol at the Daisy Dell Cabins and Café, All Home Comforts, Flats Fixed.

The Daisy Dell establishment seemed to have been constructed by the carpentry class of a kindergarten. The only reason, Hazel surmised, why no resolute burglar had picked up a couple of the cabins and carried them away was that they would have been of use for nothing but kindling.

With distress she heard Fred cackling, ‘Say, I got an idea! What say we spend the night at this dump?’

‘But we could be in Stonefield in time for dinner, easy, and I think these cabins look awfully sloppy.’

‘Sure. Prob’ly are. But be kinda fun — be a change, camping out.’

‘And terrible mattresses. Lumpy.’

‘Be good for our souls to not be so dunked in luxury for one night.’