ght. He got so far as to sigh, "O
Gertie!" but grew frightened, as though he were binding himself for
life. He wished that Gertie were not wearing so many combs stuck all
over her pompadoured hair. He noted that his rocker creaked at the
joints, and thought out a method of strengthening it by braces. She
bubbled that he was going to be the Big Man in his class. He said,
"Aw, rats!" and felt that his collar was too tight.... He went home.
His father remarked that Carl was late for supper, that he had been
extravagant in Plato, and that he was unlikely to make money out of
"all this runnin' races." But his mother stroked his hair and called
him her big boy.... He tramped out to Bone Stillman's shack, impatient
for the hand-clasp of the pioneer, and grew eloquent, for the first
time since his home-coming, as he described Professor Frazer and the
delights of poesy. A busy week Carl had in Joralemon. Adelaide Benner
gave a porch-supper for him. They sat under the trees, laughing, while
in the dimly lighted street bicycles whirred, and box-elders he had
always known whispered that this guest of honor was Carl Ericson, come
home a hero.

The cycling craze still existed in Joralemon. Carl rented a wheel for
a week from the Blue Front Hardware Store. Once he rode with a party
of boys and girls to Tamarack Lake. Once he rode to Wakamin with Ben
Rusk, home from Oberlin College. The ride was not entirely enjoyable,
because Oberlin had nearly two thousand students and Ben was amusedly
superior about Plato. They did, however, enjoy the stylishness of
buying bottles of strawberry pop at Wakamin.

Twice Carl rode to Tamarack Lake with Gertie. They sat on the shore,
and while he shied flat skipping-stones across the water and flapped
his old cap at the hovering horse-flies he babbled of the Turk's
"stunts," and the banker's car, and the misty hinterlands of Professor
Frazer's lectures. Gertie appeared interested, and smiled at regular
intervals, but so soon as Carl fumbled at one of Frazer's abstract
theories she interrupted him with highly concrete Joralemon gossip....
He suspected that she had not kept up with the times. True, she
referred to New York, but as the reference was one she had been using
these two years he still identified her with Joralemon.... He did not
even hold her hand, though he wondered if it might not be possible;
her hand lay so listlessly by her skirt, on the sand.... They rode
back in twilight of early June.