In all their meetings these two young things--the prim girl with the dash of daring in her and the boy who wrote verses to her and read them with telling effect, quite as though they had not sprung from the mire of Hardscrabble--had never once kissed or even shyly embraced. Their hands had met and clung. Touching subterfuges. "That's a funny ring you wear. Let's see it. My, how little! It won't go on any of my--no, sir! Not even this one." Their eyes had spoken. His fingers sometimes softly touched the plume that drooped from her stiff little hat. When he helped her mount the Indian pony perhaps he pressed closer in farewell than that fiery little steed's hoof quite warranted. But that was all. He was over-conscious of his social inferiority. Years of narrow nagging bound her with bands of steel riveted with turn-your-toes-out, hold-your-shoulders-back, you-mustn't-play-with-them, ladylike, ladylike. A week after Sumter, "I've enlisted," he told her. "Of course," Charlotte had replied, dazedly. Then, in sudden realization, "When? When?" He knew what she meant. "Right away I reckon. They said--right away." She looked at him mutely. "Charlotte, I wish you'd--I wish your father and mother--I'd like to speak to them--I mean about us--me." There was little of Hardscrabble about him as he said it. "Oh, I couldn't. I'm afraid! I'm afraid!" He was silent for a long time, poking about with a dried stick in the leaves and loam and grass at their feet as they sat on a fallen tree-trunk, just as for years and years despairing lovers have poked in absent-minded frenzy; digging a fork's prong into the white defenceless surface of a tablecloth; prodding the sand with a cane; rooting into the ground with an umbrella ferrule; making meaningless marks on gravel paths. At last: "I don't suppose it makes any real difference; but the Dicks came from Holland. I mean a long time ago. With Hendrik Hudson. And my great-great-grandmother was a Pomroy. You wouldn't believe, would you? that a shiftless lot like us could come from stock like that. I guess it's run thin. Of course my mother----" he stopped. She put a timid hand on his arm then, and he made as though to cover it with his own, but did not. He went on picking at the ground with his bit of stick. "Sometimes when my father's--if he's been drinking too much--imagines he's one of his own ancestors. Sometimes it's a Dutch ancestor and sometimes it's an English one, but he's always very magnificent about it, and when he's like that even my mother can't--can't scream him down. You should hear then what he thinks of all you people who live in fine brick houses on Wabash and on Michigan, and over on the North Side. My brother Pom says----" "Pom?" "Pomroy. Pomroy Dick, you see. Both the.... I've been thinking that perhaps if your father and mother knew about--I mean we're not--that is my father----"