"I should say that you were quite
competent to pass on Rosie's flavor. You took at least two tastes."

"I don't care if you did see," said Dickie. "Suppose you can keep a
secret? We're en----"

"You young scamp!" I exclaimed. Visions of an ambitious and angry
mother came to me with abrupt vividness. "You don't mean to tell me
that you two----"

"Yep, we are. But no one is to know of it until I've graduated."

Interesting news for me, wasn't it? Well, by means of discreet
deception and the use of such diplomacy as would have settled a
dispute between nations, I dragged Dickie far away that very night.
Moreover, although it was the most difficult and thankless task I had
ever undertaken, I kept him away until I had seen him safely bestowed
in a college dormitory. There I left him constructing, in defiance of
all the good advice I had given him, an elaborate missive to a person
whom he addressed as "My Darling Rosie." Then I knew that I might as
well give up. Sorrowfully I recalled the words of a forgotten
sentimentalist: "It is on the deep pages of the heart that Youth
writes indelibly its salutary to Cupid."

When I met Dickie's mother at the pier in October, I expected to hear
that he had written all about my wicked interference in the Rosie
affair. He hadn't, though, and I shamelessly accepted her thanks,
wondering all the while what she would say when the shocking truth
came out. Her Dickie engaged! And to a nameless nobody! It would not
be pleasant to face Dickie's mother after she had acquired this
knowledge.

So at the end of the term I was on hand to help Dickie pack his trunk,
meaning to save him, by hook or crook, from his precocious
entanglement. I should try reason first, then ridicule, and, lastly, I
would plead with him, as humbly as I might, to forget.

This program I did not carry out. On the mantel in Dickie's room,
propped against a tobacco jar, was a photograph of a girl with fluffy
hair and pouting lips. Observing that Dickie wrapped the picture
carefully in a sweater before tucking it away in his trunk, I asked:
"Who is that, Dickie?"

"Met her at the Junior hop," said Dickie. "She's a queen, all right."

"Indeed!" Then I added, anxiously: "And what of Rosie?"

"Rosie?" Could this blankness on Dickie's face be genuine? "What
Rosie?"

"Why, the one who gave you the cherries."

"Oh, _that_ one!" Dickie laughed lightly. "Why, that's all off long
ago, you know."

Right there I abandoned