"Why not?" the girl wanted to know. "There isn't any law against it." She had a low, husky voice and a thrilling little laugh which made the goose-flesh stand up on Peter's arms and electric chills run up and down his spine. "Why don't you take me for a ride on the handlebars of your new motorcycle sometime?" "Aw, you'd get hurt," Peter said with a tinge of his boyhood contempt for mere girls springing up from some remote corner of his still adolescent mind. "You'd get your skirts caught in the spokes and we'd both go in the ditch." "Oh, I would!" said the girl, raising her eyebrows. "Oh, I would, would I! Well, I didn't the night Bud Spillman took me for a spin on his motorcycle." "I can go faster than Bud Spillman," Peter said irrelevantly. "I ran him ragged the day we raced home from Janesville. I can go a mile a minute on my machine." "Give me a ride sometime and let's see you do it." "But gee whiz, Maxine...." "Gee whiz, nothing!" the girl said. "Either you give me a ride on your motorcycle or I won't let you take me down to the ice-cream parlor." "I'll give you a ride," Peter promised, glowering at the bit of pie-crust he was pushing about with his fork, "I'll give you a ride that'll blow all the hair pins out of your hair." The girl tittered quietly. "You _are_ a dear," she murmured. "But here comes mother. I'll see you at eight down by the post office." Peter got up hurriedly as Mrs. Larabee, a buxom blonde of forty with exaggerated Gibson Girl figure nosed her way like a lake freighter through the lesser craft between her and her pampered daughter. "Won't you have my chair?" said the boy with a mixture of guilt and gallantry. "No, Mrs. Larabee, I'm absolutely all through with supper." He disappeared like an eel into the milling crowd. Outside it had started to rain lightly. He walked without hat or coat through the misty spring dusk, his brain a tumult of conflicting emotions. Oh, she was a beautiful girl. Such big, clear blue eyes, such shining blond hair ... like, like a regular gold crown on her head. Her skin was as soft as ... as the petal of a flower, and she had the littlest feet. He wasn't worthy of her. He wasn't even worthy to touch the hem of her garments. He, a big awkward farm boy without any manners. He wished he could give himself a good poke in the jaw for not saying right away, "Why, of course, Maxine. I would be delighted to give you a ride on my motorcycle." He thought he must be going crazy to have argued with her like that when she had just decided to notice him for the first time in their lives. "You big country boob," he said abusively, "I'll bet a town fellow would have known what to say."