one was looking at him or not, and it reached a crucial stage whenever
he perceived persons of his own age, but of opposite sex, approaching.

A person of this description was encountered upon the sidewalk within a
hundred yards of his own home, and William Sylvanus Baxter saw her while
yet she was afar off. The quiet and shady thoroughfare was empty of all
human life, at the time, save for those two; and she was upon the same
side of the street that he was; thus it became inevitable that they
should meet, face to face, for the first time in their lives. He
had perceived, even in the distance, that she was unknown to him, a
stranger, because he knew all the girls in this part of the town who
dressed as famously in the mode as that! And then, as the distance
between them lessened, he saw that she was ravishingly pretty; far, far
prettier, indeed, than any girl he knew. At least it seemed so, for it
is, unfortunately, much easier for strangers to be beautiful. Aside
from this advantage of mystery, the approaching vision was piquant and
graceful enough to have reminded a much older boy of a spotless white
kitten, for, in spite of a charmingly managed demureness, there was
precisely that kind of playfulness somewhere expressed about her. Just
now it was most definite in the look she bent upon the light and fluffy
burden which she carried nestled in the inner curve of her right arm:
a tiny dog with hair like cotton and a pink ribbon round his neck--an
animal sated with indulgence and idiotically unaware of his privilege.
He was half asleep!

William did not see the dog, or it is the plain, anatomical truth
that when he saw how pretty the girl was, his heart--his physical
heart--began to do things the like of which, experienced by an elderly
person, would have brought the doctor in haste. In addition, his
complexion altered--he broke out in fiery patches. He suffered from