I It was a rainy Sunday afternoon in March. Nathan lay on his bed and tried to read. But his book was developing into a love story, weak and asinine beside the greater love story he felt he was living. What was she doing; how was _she_ putting in that long, dreary, windy, Sunday afternoon? A febrile restlessness ached in Nathan’s limbs. There was a hot, uncontrollable nervousness in his torso. The girl’s hazel eyes came between the lines of his story. Her face laughed at him witchingly ’twixt simile and metaphor. Verily the heroine of his narrative was but a painted bawd beside the diminutive figure in red and gray, always in the background of Nathan’s mind. “I’ll go calling on her,” he avowed. “I’ll be darned if I won’t go calling on her.” “Where are you headed for?” his father’s stern voice demanded as he crept softly down the front stairs. “Out to take a walk,” the son answered sullenly. “I’ve read so long my head’s muddled.” “I’ll go with you,” announced Johnathan. He arose from the couch and started after his hat and coat. Of course this was manifestly and emphatically what Nathan did not want. Yet how could he explain? Vague rumors had come to Johnathan of late about his son being seen in the outlying sections walking with a girl. Johnathan at once had more “load” added to his burden. For ten years he had successfully “kept his boy away from girls”, or so he supposed. That was all very well while the son was a youngster. Nathan was no longer a youngster. He was eighteen and taller than his father. As his son had grown bigger than himself, as well as shown an alarming propensity for managing his own affairs, the time had come for Johnathan to exercise “discretion, diplomacy and tact”, getting him past the “girl age.” It being Sunday and Nathan’s restlessness having culminated in a desire to walk, it was only too evident that he meant to meet a girl. Therefore Johnathan would frustrate any such assignation by becoming Nathan’s companion and chaperone. This was the father’s idea of exercising discretion, diplomacy and tact. A couple of years before he would have snapped, “You’ll do nothing of the sort. Go back to your room.” But the boy had to be given a little more leash now. He must not be opposed openly. He must be frustrated. So Nathan bit his lip in anger and exasperation, execrating himself for not sneaking down the back stairs. He suffered himself to go to walk with his father and they talked about the business. Or rather Johnathan talked about business. Nathan answered in monosyllables. II Perhaps this tendency of Johnathan’s toward sudden discretion, diplomacy and tact had been partly augmented by the past month’s events at the factory.