s a sort of strategic advantage in having
your own note-books under your own arm--a fact which no one appreciated
better than the half-back himself.

He looked a little hurt. "Sore about something?" he asked.

She smiled widely and said, "Not a bit."

"I didn't mean at me necessarily," he explained, and referred to the
fact that the professor had detained her after he had dismissed the
class. "What'd he try to do--call you down?"

There was indignation in the young man's voice--a hint of the protector
aroused--of possible retribution.

She grinned again. "Oh, you needn't go back and kill him," she said.

He blushed to the ears. "I'm sorry," he observed stiltedly, "if I appear
ridiculous." But she went on smiling.

"Don't you care," she said. "Everybody's ridiculous in March. You're
ridiculous, I'm ridiculous, he"--she nodded along the corridor--"he's
plumb ridiculous."

He wasn't wholly appeased. It was rather with an air of resignation that
he held the door for her to go out by. They strolled along in silence
until they rounded the corner of the building. Here, ceremoniously, he
fell back, walked around behind her and came up on the outside. She
glanced up and asked him, incomprehensibly, to walk on the other side,
the way they had been. He wanted to know why. This was where he
belonged.

"You don't belong there," she told him, "if I want you the other way.
And I do."

He heaved a sigh, and said "Women!" under his breath. _Mutabile semper_!
No matter how much you knew about them, they remained incomprehensible.
Their whims passed explanation. He was getting downright sulky.

As a matter of fact, he did her an injustice. There was a valid reason
for her wanting him to walk on the other side. What gave the appearance
of pure caprice to her request was just her womanly dislike of hurting
his feelings. There was a small boil on the left side of his neck and
when he walked at her left hand, it didn't show.

"Oh, don't be fussy," she said. "It's such a dandy day."

But the half-back refused to be comforted. And he was right about that.
A woman never tells you to cheer up in that brisk unfeeling way if she
really cares a cotton hat about your troubles. And a candid deliberate
self-examination would have convinced Rose that she didn't, in spite of
the sentimentally warm March wind that was blowing her hair about. She
was less moved by the half-back's sorrows this morning than at any time
during the last six mon