I improved, of course, after experiences too numerous to enter
upon, so that there were divers girls to whom I could lift my hat
and who would walk beside me in the early evenings. But girl's
love did not immediately come to me. I was excited, interested,
and I pursued the quest. And the thought of drink never entered
my mind. Some of Louis' and my adventures have since given me
serious pause when casting sociological generalisations. But it
was all good and innocently youthful, and I learned one
generalisation, biological rather than sociological, namely, that
the "Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady are sisters under their
skins."

And before long I learned girl's love, all the dear fond
deliciousness of it, all the glory and the wonder. I shall call
her Haydee. She was between fifteen and sixteen. Her little
skirt reached her shoe-tops. We sat side by side in a Salvation
Army meeting. She was not a convert, nor was her aunt who sat on
the other side of her, and who, visiting from the country where at
that time the Salvation Army was not, had dropped in to the
meeting for half an hour out of curiosity. And Louis sat beside
me and observed--I do believe he did no more than observe, because
Haydee was not his style of girl.

We did not speak, but in that great half-hour we glanced shyly at
each other, and shyly avoided or as shyly returned and met each
other's glances more than several times. She had a slender oval
face. Her brown eyes were beautiful. Her nose was a dream, as
was her sweet-lipped, petulant-hinting mouth. She wore a tam-o'-
shanter, and I thought her brown hair the prettiest shade of brown
I had ever seen. And from that single experience of half an hour