She was not so much humiliated as full of angry despair, but for the sake of her pride, she had a letter to write immediately. Her eyes were bright with tears as she began:
Dearest Lil:
I was not surprised when I heard that about R. S. I knew he was fickle and never gave him a second thought after school closed in June. As a matter of fact, you know how fickle I am myself, darling, and you can imagine that I haven’t had time to let it worry me. Everybody has a right to do what they want, say I. Live and let live is my motto. I wish you could have been here this summer. More wonderful parties—
She paused, knowing that she should invent more circumstantial evidence of gayety. Pen in air, she gazed out into the deep, still mass of northern trees. Inventing was delicate work, and having dealt always in realities, her imagination was ill-adapted to the task. Nevertheless, after several minutes a vague, synthetic figure began to take shape in her mind. She dipped the pen and wrote: “One of the darlingest—” hesitated and turned again for inspiration to the window.
Suddenly she started and bent forward, the tears drying in her eyes. Striding down the road, not fifty feet from her window, was the handsomest, the most fascinating boy she had ever seen in her life.
III
He was about nineteen and tall, with a blond viking head; the fresh color in his slender, almost gaunt cheeks was baked warm and dry by the sun. She had a glimpse of his eyes—enough to know that they were “sad” and of an extraordinary glistening blue. His model legs were in riding breeches, above which he wore a soft sweater jacket of blue chamois, and as he walked he swung a crop acrimoniously at the overhanging leaves.
For a moment the vision endured; then the path turned into a clump of trees and he was gone, save for the small crunch of his boots on the pine needles.
Josephine did not move. The dark green trees that had seemed so lacking in promise were suddenly like a magic wall that had opened and revealed a short cut to possible delight; the trees gave forth a great trembling rustle. For another instant she waited; then she threw herself at the unfinished letter:
—he usually wears the best-looking riding clothes. He has the most beautiful eyes. On top he usually wears a blue chamois thing that is simply divine.
IV
When her mother came in, half an hour later, she found Josephine getting into her best afternoon dress with an expression that was at once animated and far away.
“I thought—” she said. “I don’t suppose you’d want to come with me and pay a few calls?”
“I’d adore to,” said Josephine unexpectedly.
Her mother hesitated. “I’m afraid it’s been a rather stupid month for you. I didn’t realize that there wouldn’t be anyone your age. But something nice has happened that I can’t tell you about yet, and perhaps I’ll soon have some news for you.”
Josephine did not appear to hear.
“Who shall we call on?” she demanded eagerly. “Let’s just call on everybody, even if it takes until ten o’clock tonight. Let’s start at the nearest house and just keep going until we’ve killed everybody off.”
“I don’t know whether we can do that.”
“Come on.” Josephine was putting on her hat. “Let’s get going, mother.”
Perhaps, Mrs. Perry thought, the summer was really making a difference in her daughter; perhaps it was developing in her a more gently social vein. At each house they visited she positively radiated animation, and displayed sincere disappointment when they found no one home. When her mother called it a day, the light in her eyes went out.
“We can try again tomorrow,” she said impatiently. “We’ll kill the rest of them off. We’ll go back to those houses where there was no one home.”
It was almost seven—a nostalgic hour, for it had been the loveliest of all at Lake Forest a year ago. Bathed and positively shining, one had intruded then for a last minute into the departing day, and, sitting alone on the veranda, turned over the romantic prospects of the night, while lighted windows sprang out on the blurring shapes of houses, and cars flew past with people late home from tea.
But tonight the murmurous Indian twilight of the lake country had a promise of its own, and strolling out into the lane that passed the house, Josephine broke suddenly into a certain walk, rather an externallized state of mind, that had been hitherto reserved for more sophisticated localities. It implied, through a skimming lift of the feet, through an impatience of the moving hips, through an abstracted smile, lastly through a glance that fell twenty feet ahead, that this girl was about to cross some material threshold where she was eagerly awaited; that, in fact, she had already crossed it in her imagination and left her surroundings behind. It was just at that moment she heard a strong clear whistle in front of her and the sound as of a stick swishing through leaves:
“Hello,
Fris-co,
Hello!
How do you do, my dear?
I only wish that you were here.”
Her heart beat a familiar tattoo; she realized that they would pass each other just where a last rift of sunset came down through the pines.
“Hello,
Fris-co,
Hel-lo!”
There he was, a fine shape against the foreground. His gallant face, drawn in a single dashing line, his chamois vest, so blue—she was near enough that she could have touched it. Then she realized with a shock that he had passed without noticing her proximity by a single flicker of his unhappy eyes.
“The conceited pill!” she thought indignantly. “Of all the conceited—”
She was silent during dinner; at the end she said to her aunt, with small preliminary:
“I passed the most conceited-looking young man today. I wonder who he could have been.”
“Maybe it was the nephew of old Dorrance,” offered Dick, “or the fellow staying at old Dorrance’s. Somebody said it was his nephew or some sort of relation.”
His mother said pointedly to Josephine: “We don’t see the Dorrances. Mr. Charles Dorrance considered that my husband was unjust to him about our boundary some years ago. Old Mr. Dorrance was a very stubborn man indeed.”
Josephine wondered if that was why he had failed to respond this afternoon. It was a silly reason.
But next day, at the same place, at the same hour, he literally jumped at her soft “Good evening”; he stared at her with unmistakable signs of dismay. Then his hand went up as if to remove a hat, found none, and he bowed instead and went on by.
But Josephine turned swiftly and walked at his side, smiling.
“You might be more sociable. You really shouldn’t be so exclusive, since we’re the only two people in this place. I do think it’s silly to let older people influence young people.”
He was walking so fast that she could scarcely keep up with him.
“Honestly, I’m a nice girl,” she persisted, still smiling. “Quite a few people rush me at dances and I once had a blind man in love with me.”
They were almost at her aunt’s gate, still walking furiously.
“Here’s where I live,” she said.
“Then I’ll say good-by.”
“What is the matter?” she demanded. “How can you be so rude?”
His lips formed the words, “I’m sorry.”
“I suppose you’ve got to hurry home so you can stare at yourself at the mirror.”
She knew this was untrue. He wore his good looks in almost an apologetic way. But it reached him, for he came to a precipitate halt, immediately moving off a little.
“Excuse my rudeness,” he exploded. “But I’m not used to girls.”
She was too winded to answer. But as her shaken composure gradually returned, she became aware of an odd weariness in his face.
“At least you might talk to me for a minute, if I don’t come any nearer.”
After a moment’s hesitation he hoisted himself tentatively onto a fence rail.
“If you’re so frightened of females, isn’t it time something was done about it?” she inquired.
“It’s too late.”
“Never,” she said positively. “Why, you’re missing half of life. Don’t you want to marry and have children and make some woman a fine wife—I mean, a fine husband?”
In answer he only shivered.
“I used to be terribly timid myself,” she lied kindly. “But I saw that I was missing half of life.”
“It isn’t a question of will power. It’s just that I’m a little crazy on the subject. A minute ago I had an instinct to throw a stone at you. I know it’s terrible, so if you’ll excuse me—”
He jumped down off the fence, but she cried quickly: “Wait! Let’s talk it all over.”
He lingered reluctantly.
“Why, in Chicago,” she said, “any man as good-looking as you could have any girl he wanted. Everyone would simply pursue him.”
The idea seemed to distress him still further; his face grew so sad that impulsively she moved nearer, but he swung one leg over the fence.
“All right. We’ll talk about something else,” she conceded. “Isn’t this the most dismal place you ever saw? I was supposed to be a speed in Lake Forest, so the family sentenced me to this, and I’ve had the most killing month, just sitting and twirling my thumbs. Then yesterday I looked out the window and saw you.”
“What do you mean you were a speed?” he inquired.
“Just sort of speedy—you know, sort of pash.”
He got up—this time with an air of finality.
“You really must excuse me. I know I’m an idiot on this woman question, but there’s nothing to do about it.”
“Will you meet me here tomorrow?”
“Heavens,
