ool things I did,
and all I thought about that girl. Why, she-- Well, I've got old enough
to see now she was just about as ordinary a girl as there ever was, and
if I saw her now I wouldn't even think she was pretty; I'd prob'ly think
she was sort of loud-lookin'. Well, what's passed is past, and it isn't
either here nor there. What I started to say was this: that the way it
begins to look to me, it looks as if nobody can tell in this life a darn
thing about what's goin' to happen, and the things that do happen are
the very ones you'd swear were the last that could. I mean--you look
back to that day of the picnic--my! but I was a rube then--well, I mean
you look back to that day, and what do you suppose I'd have thought then
if somebody'd told me the time would ever come when I'd be 'way off here
at college sittin' on a bench with Dora Yocum--with _Dora Yocum_, in
the first place--and her crying, and both of us talking about the United
States goin' to war with Germany! Don't it seem pretty funny to you,
Fred, too?"

"But as near as I can make out," Fred said, "that isn't what happened."

"Why isn't it?"

"You say 'and both us talking' and so on. As near as I can make out,
_you_ didn't say anything at all."

"Well, I didn't--much," Ramsey admitted, and returned to his point with
almost pathetic persistence. "But doesn't it seem kind o' funny to you,
Fred?"

"Well, I don't know."

"It does to me," Ramsey insisted. "It certainly does to me."

"Yes," said Fred cruelly. "I've noticed you said so, but it don't look
any funnier than you do when you say it."

Suddenly he sent forth a startling shout. "_Wow!_ You're as red as a
blushing beet."

"I am not!"

"Y'are!" shouted Fred. "Wow! The ole woman-hater's got the flushes! Oh,
look at the pretty posy!"

And, jumping down from the window seat, he began to dance round his much
perturbed comrade, bellowing. Ramsey bore with him for a moment, then
sprang upon him; they wrestled vigorously, broke a chair, and went to
the floor with a crash that gave the chandelier in Mrs. Meig's parlour,
below, an attack of jingles.

"You let me up!" Fred gasped.

"You take your solemn oath to shut up? You goin' to swear it?"

"All right. I give my solemn oath," said Fred; and they rose, arranging
their tousled attire.

"Well," said Fred, "when you goin' to call on her?"

"You look here!" Ramsey approached him dangerously. "You just gave me
your sol--"

"I beg!" Fred cried, r