watch, "how about it?"

Lycurgus replied as he put it back in his pocket, "Just seven minutes
and a half. She's covered a lot of track in those seven minutes!"

And John Barclay looked back over the years, and saw a boy riding like
the wind through the night, changing horses every half-hour, and
trying to tell time from his watch by a rising moon, but the moon was
blown with clouds like a woman's hair, and he could not see the hands
on the watch face. So as he looked at the old man sitting crooked over
in the great leather chair, John Barclay only grunted, "Yes--she's
covered a long stretch of country in those seven minutes." And he
picked the Biography off the table and read to himself: "I sometimes
think that only that part of the soul that loves is saved. The rest is
dross and perishes in the fire. Whether the love be the love of woman
or the love of kind, or the love of God that embraces all, it matters
not. That sanctifies; that purifies--that marks the way of the only
salvation the soul can know, and he who does not love with the fervour
of a passionate heart some of God's creatures, cannot love God, and
not loving Him, is lost in spite of all his prayers, in spite of all
his aspirations. Therefore, if you would live you must love, for when
love dies the soul shrivels. And if God takes what you love--love on;
for only love will make you immortal, only love will cheat death of
its victory."

And looking at Lycurgus Mason fidgeting in his chair, John Barclay
wondered when he would die the kind of a death that had come to the
little old man before him, and then he felt the car move under him,
and knew they were going back to Sycamore Ridge.