It was shortly after noon that High Prairie, hearing the unaccustomed chug of a motor, rushed to its windows or porches to behold Selina DeJong in her mashed black felt hat and Dirk waving his battered straw wildly, riding up the Halsted road toward the DeJong farm in a bright red automobile that had shattered the nerves of every farmer’s team it had met on the way. Of the DeJong team and the DeJong dog Pom, and the DeJong vegetable wagon there was absolutely no sign. High Prairie was rendered unfit for work throughout the next twenty-four hours.
The idea had been Julie’s, and Selina had submitted rather than acquiesced, for by now she was too tired to combat anything or any one. If Julie had proposed her entering High Prairie on the back of an elephant with a mahout perched between his ears Selina would have agreed—rather, would have been unable to object.
“It'll get you home in no time,” Julie had said, energetically. “You look like a ghost and the boy’s half asleep. I'll telephone Pa and he'll have one of the men from the barns drive your team out so it'll be there by six. Just you leave it all to me. Haven't you ever ridden in one! Why, there’s nothing to be scared of. I like the horses best, myself. I’m like Pa. He says if you use horses you get there.”
Dirk had accepted the new conveyance with the adaptability of childhood, had even predicted, grandly, “I’m going to have one when I grow up that'll go faster ’n this, even.”
