protesting, bare soles before the frost was half out of the ground; had
yelled himself hoarse and run himself lame in the redoubtable base-ball
nine which was to make that town some day famous--the nine where they
often played with seven "men" because the other two had to "bug"
potatoes or do some other menial task and where the umpire frequently
engaged in throwing lumps of dried mud at refractory players,--there
had lived a Girl.

She might have lived there a century and Weary been none the worse, had
he not acquired the unfortunate habit of growing up. Even then he
might have escaped injury had he not persisted in growing up and up, a
straight six-feet-two of lovable good looks, with the sunniest of
tempers and blue eyes that reflected the warm sweetness of that nature,
and a smile to tell what the eyes left unsaid.

Such being the tempting length of him, the Girl saw that he was worth
an effort; she took to smoking the chimney of her bedroom lamp, heating
curling irons, wearing her best hat and best ribbons on a weekday, and
insisting upon crowding number four-and-a-half feet into number
three-and-a-half shoes and managing to look as if she were perfectly
comfortable. When a girl does all those things, and when she has a
good complexion and hair vividly red and long, heavy-lidded blue eyes
that have a fashion of looking side-long at a man, it were well for
that man to travel--if he would keep the lightness of his heart and the
sunny look in his eyes and his smile.

Weary traveled, but the trouble was that he did not go soon enough.
When he did go, his eyes were somber instead of sunny, and he smiled
not at all. And in his heart he carried a deep-rooted impulse to shy
always at women--and so came to resemble a horse.