dually settling until it
rests on the clear bottom, forever to be undisturbed, but forever in
sight.

It suddenly occurred to him that Bob had really called, and he took a
step in that direction, but turned once more to look at her. No one
could have met that look unmoved, much less this girl who had been the
necessary cause of it. It was so haunted, so pleading for another
chance, and he seemed so pitifully helpless in his awkwardness and
homespun clothes, that in spite of herself two tears welled into her
eyes, balanced, and fell. She dashed them quickly away and turned her
back to him. Again the tightness seized his throat while wave after wave
of something particularly cruel swept through him.

His sister had never cried--or, at least, not in his presence; nor had
the few bare-footed girls he knew. They might have bawled their eyes out
and he would have calmly walked away. But this one was different, very
different, and he could not move; this was the teacher, his teacher, the
thing he had set up on a pedestal by the throne of God Himself--yes,
higher; or, at any rate, more continuously in his thoughts.

"Have you forgotten Bob wants you?" she finally asked.

"No'm," he answered. "I war jest 'bout ter go."

A woodpecker tapping on the dead top of a tree now stopped amidst a
breathless stillness. Bees were droning in the air, and softly over the
land came the song of a happy field hand. It was all very peaceful and
very quiet; too peaceful, too cloyingly quiet for Jane just then, and,
as he continued to stand, she fairly screamed at him:

"Are you petrified?"

"What's petrified?" he asked simply.

Slowly she turned and faced him; her eyes showing no tears, only
tolerant surprise and amusement.

"Really, Dale, you are the most extraordinary person! Petrified means
having become stone, or stony; sometimes stunned, or dazed. Now run
along to Bob!"

While she watched him striding over the lawn, a low, merry laugh made
her turn to behold Nancy, a picture of mischief--although with traces of
a recent storm in her own eyes. Yet, like so many of the physically
mature but mentally undeveloped, sorrows did not rest heavily upon her
for any length of time.

"I didn't mean to laugh," she apologized, "but it did sound so funny
sending that big feller away like that! That's all I heard," she added
quickly.

"He's really no more than a boy," Jane smiled. "You'll probably see him
in school Monday. What's the matter?"