was crossing the room, she sang out with a giggle: "Bridegroom!"

"I'll break your bones," I returned, pausing

She stuck out her tongue at me

I still hated her, but, somehow, she did not seem to be the same as
she had been before. The new lines that were developing in her
growing little figure, and more particularly her own consciousness
of them, were not lost upon me. A new element was stealing into
my rancor for her--a feeling of forbidden curiosity. At night, when
I lay in bed, before falling asleep, I would be alive to the fact that
she was sleeping in the same room, only a few feet from me.
Sometimes I would conjure up the days of our childhood when
Red Esther caused me to "sin" against my will, whereupon I would
try to imagine the same scenes, but with the present
fifteen-year-old Esther in place of the five-year-old one of yore.

The word "girl" had acquired a novel sound for me, one full of
disquieting charm. The same was true of such words as "sister,"
"niece," or "bride," but not of "woman." Somehow sisters and
nieces were all young girls, whereas a woman belonged to the
realm of middle-aged humanity, not to my world

Naphtali went to the same seminary. He was two grades ahead of
me. He "ate days," for his father had died and his mother had
married a man who refused to support him. He was my great
chum at the seminary. The students called him Tidy Naphtali or
simply the Tidy One. He was a slender, trim lad, his curly brown
hair and his near-sighted eyes emphasizing his Talmudic