s up enough by talking to you! The idea of repeating
our private affairs! He hadn't ought to know them! And I'm not sure,"
she said ominously, "that you didn't tell him! If you did, Sam Yoder--"

Sam didn't argue that point, for there was no argument to make. He was
practically meek until he discovered after supper that the schedule for
the evening was a game of cribbage played in the living room where
Rosie's mother and father were.

He mentioned unhappily to Rosie that they were acting like old married
people without the fun of getting that way, but he said that only once.
Rosie glared at him. And when bedtime came, she shooed him into her
brother's room and her father padlocked him in.

He did not sleep well.

* * * * *

Next morning, there was Rosie in her blue jeans with a monkey wrench in
her pocket, ready to go riding with him. She did. And the next day. And
the next. Nothing happened. The state banking association put up five
thousand dollars reward for the bank robbers and the insurance company
put up some more, but there wasn't a trace of the criminals.

There wasn't a trace of criminality about Sam, either. Rosie rode with
him, but they exchanged not one single hand-squeeze, nor one melting
glance, nor did they even play footsie while they were eating lunch in
the truck outside a filling station. Their conduct was exemplary and it
wore on Sam. Possibly it wore on Rosie, too.

One day Sam said morosely, as he chewed on a ham sandwich at lunch,
"Rosie, I'm crazy about you, but this feels like I been divorced without
ever even getting married first."

And Rosie snapped, "If I told you how I feel, that other you in the week
after next would laugh his fool head off. So shut up!"

Things were bad, and they got no better. For nearly a week, Rosie rode
everywhere with Sam in his truck. They acted in a manner which Rosie's
parents would in theory have approved, but didn't even begin to believe
in. They did nothing the world could not have watched without their
being embarrassed, and they said very little that all the world would
not have been bored to hear.

It must have been the eleventh of July when they almost snapped at each
other and Rosie said bitterly, "Let me drive a while. I need to put my
mind on something that it don't make me mad to think about!"

"Go ahead," Sam invited gloomily. He stopped the truck and got out the
door. "I don't look for any happiness in this w