“Oh, just because I liked it. And even so, you didn’t care enough to come with me into the water and save me from getting all wet. And—and—I hate you and I’m going to Rutland to spend the summer next week and then I’m going to private school down to Mt. Hadley in the fall. My mother said so. She heard about what happened at the picnic. She said I wasn’t going to stay around Paris and get mixed up with the son of any village cobbler. I’m too high-class. Now you get out of my way or I’ll yell for help!” “You’re goin’ away and I’m never goin’ to see you any more?” “I am. And I’m tickled to death to forget you!” When Nathan could see through his misery, the girl had vanished. V The following Sunday, tramping out on the Wickford road, Nathan beheld a two-seated Concord buggy drawn by a well-lathered horse climbing the hill toward him. The Dresden Doll, never so dainty, or frilled or furbelowed, sat in the front seat beside a fellow whom Nathan had never seen. The Carver girl with another young stranger occupied the back seat. Stopping aghast, Nathan looked directly into the Gridley girl’s eye. She did not see him. She looked through and beyond him. There was no recognition. But after the rig had passed, leaving a leg-weary, dusty-shoed boy standing in his heart-hunger by the fragrant brambles, one of the quartette passed a remark, which he knew in his hot shame referred to himself. A sneering little laugh drifted back to him. The rig reached the hilltop and passed over out of sight. VI That night Nathan took a bundle of big square envelopes tied with a red ribbon, Bernie’s letters, and put them where the sight could no longer hurt him. He hid them on a beam close to the eaves out in the three-foot attic over the Forge ell. Then he crawled back over the studding and buttoned the low door that led to that windowless garret from his bedroom. That button also fastened a door on a chamber in his little heart. He had completed his first thumb-nail cycle with The Sex. His cynical observations about “girls,” delivered in the family circle, gladdened the heart of his father and made the latter feel that his precepts were at last bearing fruit, that he had a son who might not be quite so incorrigible as he had begun to fear. That Christmas he gave Nathan five dollars and reminded the boy of his paternal generosity all through the balance of the year. But the five dollars meant nothing to Nathan. He was compelled to deposit it in the Paris Savings Bank. Johnathan “borrowed” it three years later to help pay a grocery bill. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER XI POET IN HOMESPUN I Great was the exasperation among the local school teachers when it became known that Nathan was not going on into high school in September.