And at this foolish and melodramatic remark, Roger Bradley, descendant of all the Puritans (Whistler used to say that he was by Plymouth Rock out of Mayflower--alas, dear Jimmie!), a respected bachelor, of exemplary habits and no entanglements, deliberately, and with a happy, heartfelt oath, kissed Margarita, at length and somewhat brutally, I fear, in a hired four-wheeler at the junction of Thirty-fourth Street and Fifth Avenue. And of his sensations at this point I cannot speak, because I never had them. I never kissed Margarita but once and then very quickly, because I was convinced that upon my subsequent speed depended my ever seeing her alive again. And she did not struggle at all, because, as a matter of fact, it was perfectly immaterial to her whether I kissed her or not. But that was not the case with Roger's kiss. CHAPTER III AS THE TWIGS WERE BENT The day that Roger and I first met is as clear in my mind as if, in the current phrase, it were but yesterday. I was a slender little lad of ten and he a great, strapping fifteen-year-old. I was trundling my hoop about the part of the schoolyard usually given over to the little fellows, as blue as indigo, homesick for my mammy-O, and secretly ashamed of the French school-boy cape I had worn at Vevay, which all my mates derided, but she in her woman's thrift had thought too good to throw aside. No doubt she was right, but oh, what you make us suffer, you gentle widow mothers! You would give us the hearts out of your fervent bodies for footballs, you will nurse at our sick beds without rest and deny yourself the comforts of existence, if need be, to start us fairly in the world with a gentle training and schools of the best, but you cannot comprehend that we would far rather go without a meal in private than be the mock of our schoolmates in public. I would have lived on bread and water for a week could I have buried that French cloak at the end of it. The very sport in which I was engaged was not in use among the other boys of my age, but inconsistently enough, though I was eager to conform as far as the cloak was concerned, wild horses could not have dragged me from my wooden hoop, and I trundled it sulkily up and down the flagged paths.