fully ten miles away.

By six of the afternoon he had seven prairie-chickens tucked inside
the long pocket that lined the tail of his coat, and he headed for
home, superior to miles, his quiet eyes missing none of the purple
asters and goldenrod.

As he began to think he felt a bit guilty. The flowers suggested
Gertie. He gathered a large bunch, poking stalks of aster among the
goldenrod, examining the result at arm's-length. Yet when he stopped
at the Rusks' in town, to bid Bennie take the rustic bouquet to
Gertie, he replied to reproaches:

"What you making all the fuss about my not being there to meet her
for? She got here all right, didn't she? What j' expect me to do? Kiss
her? You ought to known it was too good a day for hunting to miss....
How's Gert? Have a good time in New York?"

Carl himself took the flowers to her, however, and was so shyly
attentive to her account of New York that he scarcely stopped to speak
to the Cowleses' "hired girl," who was his second cousin.... Mrs.
Cowles overheard him shout, "Hello, Lena! How's it going?" to the
hired girl with cousinly ease. Mrs. Cowles seemed chilly. Carl
wondered why.

* * * * *

From month to month of his junior year in high school Carl grew more
discontented. He let the lines of his Cicero fade into a gray blur
that confounded Cicero's blatant virtue and Cataline's treachery,
while he pictured himself tramping with snow-shoes and a mackinaw coat
into the snowy solemnities of the northern Minnesota tamarack swamps.
Much of his discontent was caused by his learned preceptors. The
teachers for this year were almost perfectly calculated to make any
lad of the slightest independence hate culture for the rest of his
life. With the earnestness and industry usually ascribed to the devil,
"Prof" Sybrant E. Larsen (B. A. Platonis), Miss McDonald, and Miss
Muzzy kept up ninety-five per cent. discipline, and seven per cent.
instruction in anything in the least worth while.

Miss Muzzy was sarcastic, and proud of it. She was sarcastic to Carl
when he gruffly asked why he couldn't study French instead of "all
this Latin stuff." If there be any virtue in the study of Latin (and
we have all forgotten all our Latin except the fact that "suburb"
means "under the city"--_i. e._, a subway), Carl was blinded to it for
ever. Miss Muzzy wore eye-glasses and had no bosom. Carl's father used
to say approvingly, "Dat Miss Muzzy don't stand for