I know I shall excite the scorn of all the ingenuous youth of my time when
I say that there was nothing that our superior civilization would call
love making in those long walks through the winter nights. The heart of
Allen Golyer swelled under his satin waistcoat with love and joy and
devotion as he walked over the crunching roads with his pretty enslaver.
But he talked of apples and pigs and the heathen and the teacher's wig,
and sometimes ventured an illusion to other people's flirtations in a
jocose and distant way; but as to the state of his own heart, his lips
were sealed. It would move a blasé smile on the downy lips of juvenile
Lovelaces, who count their conquests by their cotillons, and think nothing
of making a declaration in an avant-deux, to be told of young people
spending several evenings of each week in the year together, and speaking
no word of love until they were ready to name their wedding-day. Yet such
was the sober habit of the place and time.

So there was no troth plighted between Allen and Susie, though the youth
loved the maiden with all the energy of his fresh, unused nature, and she
knew it very well. He never dreamed of marrying any other woman than Susie
Barringer, and she sometimes tried a new pen by writing and carefully
erasing the initials S.M.G., which, as she was christened Susan Minerva,
may be taken as showing the direction of her thoughts.

If Allen Golyer had been less bashful or more enterprising, this history
would never have been written; for Susie would probably have said Yes for
want of anything better to say, and when she went to visit her aunt
Abigail in Jacksonville she would have gone _engaged_, her finger bound
with gold and her maiden meditations fettered by promises. But she went,
as it was, fancy free, and there is no tinder so inflammable as the
imagination of a pretty country girl of sixteen.