_had_ to make yourself so conspicuous why couldn't you be a little _bit_
more fastidious? Your father wouldn't have minded nearly so much if it
had been a self-respecting, intellectual girl. We both say that if you
_must_ be so ridiculous at your age as to persist in seeing more of one
girl than another, why, oh why, don't you go and see some really nice
girl like Dora Yocum?"

Ramsey was already dangerously distended, as an effect of the earlier
part of her discourse, and the word "fastidious" almost exploded him;
but upon the climax, "Dora Yocum," he blew up with a shattering report
and, leaving fragments of incoherence ricocheting behind him, fled
shuddering from the house.

For the rest of the school term he walked home with Milla every
afternoon and on sundays appeared to have become a resolute Baptist. It
was supposed (by the interested members of the high-school class) that
Ramsey and Milla were "engaged." Ramsey sometimes rather supposed they
were himself, and the dim idea gave him a sensation partly pleasant, but
mostly apprehensive: he was afraid.

He was afraid that the day was coming when he ought to kiss her.





Chapter VIII

Vacation, in spite of increased leisure, may bring inconvenience to
people in Ramsey's strange but not uncommon condition. At home his