But he turned back again quickly and a smile lit his whole face. For she had said, clearly and distinctly, "No, Pete, You go. I'll stick with Barry. After all he's my date." Of course, it was only loyalty, pure and simple, and Barry knew he ought to argue the point, to insist that she go with Pete. But just this once, his heart said, Let me keep my mouth shut. So he said nothing. And Pete left them, and he and Hank sat silently on the running board wondering what to do.

"It's a no-good deal," Barry said into the frosty January night. "You should have gone with Pete. Or, better still, we should have taken his car."

"It's all right," Hank said quietly, but Barry heard the sadness in her voice and he knew it wasn't all right. Somehow he would have to get her to that dance. Or home. They couldn't just sit this way on a stalled car. But what could he do? He didn't have the price of a taxi even if he'd known where to call one to this remote spot. And Pete had taken the only ride that had gone by in nearly an hour. Barry groaned inwardly, knowing that he should have sent Hank off with Pete.

"Old 'get-a-horse' Pete!" Barry murmured angrily, half to himself. Get a horse, indeed. Why � And then the idea exploded in his brain! Why not get a horse? By golly, Minturn's stables were on this very road and old man Minturn knew Barry well enough to charge it to him, and anyway it wouldn't be half as expensive as these country taxis a three dollars a clip. Why, he could get a horse and buggy for no more than a dollar at the outside, and they would get to the dance after all. He grabbed Hank's hand.

"Come with me." He said and led her toward lights he could see through the trees.

It was just there that Barry's luck began to change, and about time, too. He thought. The occupants of the house he and Hank approached were very polite and sympathetic and didn't object at all to his using the phone. Minturn chuckled on the telephone when Barry explained his plight and added to his, "Why, sure," the unsolicited information that he "always did say them mechanical gadgets ain't no use at all when broke." And Barry was able to leave Hank in the friendly care of the people in the house while he walked the half-mile to Minturn's to fetch the horse and buggy. He remembered, too, to stop by at the stranded dreamboat for a blanket on the way back and for this feat mentally slapped his own back.

It took an hour to drive the five miles remaining to the New Canaan schoolhouse, but Barry couldn't remember that he'd ever spent a happier hour in his life. If anyone had told him the day before that he could possibly be content with the next to slowest mode of transportation known to man for even an hour, he would have thought him wacky. But he discovered what his forbears had known so well - that there is definitely something to be said for a quiet, ambling vehicle on a moonlit night, especially when an exceedingly pretty girl is snuggled beside you on the seat, under the same robe.