Peter bet if he could only have a new White Steamer she would notice him again as she had that night at the church supper. She might even let him take her for a ride way down the river road where they could have a weenie roast and sing songs together. She might go to Janesville with him for a movie and a midnight supper. Except that Maxine wasn't the kind of a girl who would eat a midnight supper with any boy. One of the fellows had told Peter that she was that kind of a girl and Peter had blackened both his eyes and made him eat dirt and yell "enough." It made him fighting mad when any other boy even mentioned her name casually. He always felt like saying, "You leave her name out of this," the way men did in stories. But he was afraid it might sound silly. The way she walked! Just wheeling along as though all her joints had ball-bearings. She was one girl who didn't need to practice with a book on her head to get a perfect carriage. And her golden hair, done up a new way every day. And such lovely white hands and pretty nails. No, Early Ann just wasn't in Maxine's class. "Your turn," Gus shouted at Peter. "Better stop dreaming about your girl and try to learn croquet. I've got you down for the count this time around." "Listen, hayseed," Peter said, "you better crawl into your cellar because this trip I'm going to blow down your shanty." He took careful aim allowing for a little rise he knew in the lawn, curved gracefully and improbably through the distant hoop, roqueted on the astounded hired man's ball, drove him into a tangle of raspberry bushes, and made two more hoops before missing. "Nothing but a greenhorn's luck," Gus complained. He fished his ball out of the thorns, brought it to within a mallet's-length of the court, and promised himself sweet vengeance with plays of prodigious technical brilliance when next it came his turn. The summer dusk came down about them sweet and still. Far away over the hills they could hear the church bell calling the faithful to Thursday night prayer meeting in Brailsford Junction. The chimney swifts and martins filled the evening sky with their graceful, airy geometry, and the nighthawks swooped so low above them that one might see the pale oval underneath each wing. Far down the lake in some deep tangle of woods the whip-poor-will began. Sarah hurried off to the ice house to fetch the half freezer of homemade ice cream left from supper, and with it a bowl of sugared strawberries. The game over, Early Ann went in for soup bowls and table-spoons. And together on the lawn, under stars so large, soft, and near they seemed almost to be caught in the upper branches of the oak tree, they ate such a dish for the gods as one may never find in these later years in distant cities. The frogs began in the marshes along the lake. The crickets shrilled. Silence was all about them like a song.