And at once Ida, excited and flushing to the roots of her hair, turning to look for a color card—as much to conceal her flushing face as anything else. And yet intrigued as much as she was affrighted. The daring of him! Suppose her father should return—or her stepmother enter? Still, wasn’t he as much of a customer as any one else—although she well knew by his manner that it was not paint that had brought him. For over the way, as she herself could and did see, were three of his admiring companions ranged in a row to watch him, the while he leaned genially and familiarly against the counter and continued: “Gee, I’ve seen you often enough, going back and forth between your school and this store and your home. I’ve been around here nearly a year now, but I’ve never seen you around much with the rest of the girls. Too bad! Otherwise we mighta met. I’ve met all the rest of ’em so far,” and at the same time by troubling to touch his tie he managed to bring into action one hand on which was an opal ring, his wrist smartly framed in a striped pink cuff. “I heard your father wouldn’t even let you go to Warren High. Pretty strict, eh?” And he beamed into the blue-gray eyes of the budding girl before him, noted the rounded pink cheeks, the full mouth, the silky hair, the while she trembled and thrilled. “Yes, he is pretty strict.” “Still, you can’t just go nowhere all the time, can you?” And by now the color card, taken into his own hand, was lying flat on the counter. “You gotta have a little fun once in a while, eh? If I’da thought you’da stood for it, I’da introduced myself before this. My father has the big coal-dock down here on the river. He knows your father, I’m sure. I gotta car, or at least my dad has, and that’s as good as mine. Do you think your father’d letcha take a run out in the country some Saturday or Sunday—down to Little Shark River, say, or Peck’s Beach? Lots of the fellows and girls from around here go down there.”