The Gridley girl affected to be “mad” a goodly portion of that setting-out and had to be coddled and entreated and coaxed persistently to tell the cause of her distemper. By the time it had been negotiated, restraint and bashfulness had disappeared. Thereupon the Gridley girl exercised the prerogatives of Eve’s daughters since the flood, called upon the Forge boy to fetch and carry, to suffer her idiosyncrasies and foibles, to become deliriously happy or excruciatingly miserable as she persisted in references to a future in which the Forge boy did or did not have a part. And so in due course they came to a far woodland brook that trickled musically over mossy stones. The pines grew silent and lofty here. The banks were strewn with needles. A trout pool milled with the sluggishness of deep water a few yards beyond an overhanging bowlder. The Gridley girl at once commented upon its excellence as a place in which to lunch. “It’s so awful private” was the way she put it. So they sat down. And the water babbled past them into eternity. What mattered it that the Forge boy’s hair curled long and uncut behind his ears; that he wore a suit his father had shined by prior use to waxen smoothness; that his face still retained at least twelve thousand of the original thirty thousand freckles; that his collar was wrinkled and his shoes were dusty? The Poet lay at the feet of his Inspiration and all the world was fair. What mattered it also that their talk was of silly nothings and what they spoke or did was forgotten almost as soon as said or done? The boy had a girl of topaz eyes off alone in leafy woods and all the clocks of time ran down. II “I’m sorry I tried to kiss you that night in the vestry,” the boy blurted out. He was lying on his chest, pegging his knife in the needles. “I felt awful when your father came down and caught me——” The girl turned her face in amazement. “Kiss me!” she said faintly. “Was that what you were up to?” “Why, yes! Didn’t you know?” “I thought you were fooling—that you jumped out to scare me.” Each colored dully and looked away. The girl’s hat was tossed carelessly at one side. She sat with her chubby arms clasped about her knees. “Well, I was tryin’,” confessed Nathan nervously. “But for the land’s sake, why make such an awful job of it? You almost knocked me over.” “There wasn’t any other way I could do it. My folks never let me go to kissin’ parties or things like that.” Silence ensued. Then the precocious, oversexed little lady, several years older in worldly wisdom, picked apart a near-by star-flower as she observed coyly: “You must have wanted to kiss me awful bad to go to all that trouble to do it.” “I guess I did, Bernie.” “Then why don’t you make a good job of it—now? There’s no one here to stop you, is there?” The world reeled. Nathan grew giddy. “Aw, go on!” he cackled. “You’re only foolin’!”