a self-respecting, intellectual girl. We both say that if you
_must_ be so ridiculous at your age as to persist in seeing more of one
girl than another, why, oh why, don't you go and see some really nice
girl like Dora Yocum?"

Ramsey was already dangerously distended, as an effect of the earlier
part of her discourse, and the word "fastidious" almost exploded him;
but upon the climax, "Dora Yocum," he blew up with a shattering report
and, leaving fragments of incoherence ricocheting behind him, fled
shuddering from the house.

For the rest of the school term he walked home with Milla every
afternoon and on sundays appeared to have become a resolute Baptist. It
was supposed (by the interested members of the high-school class) that
Ramsey and Milla were "engaged." Ramsey sometimes rather supposed they
were himself, and the dim idea gave him a sensation partly pleasant, but
mostly apprehensive: he was afraid.

He was afraid that the day was coming when he ought to kiss her.

Chapter VIII

Vacation, in spite of increased leisure, may bring inconvenience to
people in Ramsey's strange but not uncommon condition. At home his
constant air was that of a badgered captive plaintively silent under
injustice; and he found it difficult to reply calmly when asked where
he was going--an inquiry addressed to him, he asserted, every time he
touched his cap, even to hang it up!

The amount of evening walking he did must also have been a trial to his
nerves, on account of fatigue, though the ground covered was not vast.
Milla's mother and father were friendly people but saw no reason
to "move out of house and home," as Mr. Rust said, when Milla had
"callers"; and on account of the intimate plan of their small dwelling
a visitor's only alternative to spending the evening with Mr. and Mrs.
Rust as well as with Milla, was to invite her to "go out walking."

Evening after evening they walked and walked and walked, usually in
company--at perhaps the distance of half a block--with Albert Paxton and
Sadie Clews, though Ramsey now and then felt disgraced by having fallen
into this class; for sometimes it was apparent that Albert casually had
his arm about Sadie's waist. This allured Ramsey somewhat, but terrified
him more. He didn't know how such matters were managed.

Usually the quartet had no destination; they just went "out walking"
until ten o'clock, when both girls had to be home--and the boys did,
too, but never admitted i