as it goes it is not the biggest love in the world, but I do dare
to assert that it is the sweetest. Oh, as I look back on it!
Never did girl have more innocent boy-lover than I who had been so
wicked-wise and violent beyond my years. I didn't know the first
thing about girls. I, who had been hailed Prince of the Oyster
Pirates, who could go anywhere in the world as a man amongst men;
who could sail boats, lay aloft in black and storm, or go into the
toughest hang-outs in sailor town and play my part in any rough-
house that started or call all hands to the bar--I didn't know the
first thing I might say or do with this slender little chit of a
girl-woman whose scant skirt just reached her shoe-tops and who
was as abysmally ignorant of life as I was, or thought I was,
profoundly wise.

I remember we sat on a bench in the starlight. There was fully a
foot of space between us. We slightly faced each other, our near
elbows on the back of the bench; and once or twice our elbows just
touched. And all the time, deliriously happy, talking in the
gentlest and most delicate terms that might not offend her
sensitive ears, I was cudgelling my brains in an effort to divine
what I was expected to do. What did girls expect of boys, sitting
on a bench and tentatively striving to find out what love was?
What did she expect me to do? Was I expected to kiss her? Did she
expect me to try? And if she did expect me, and I didn't what
would she think of me?

Ah, she was wiser than I--I know it now--the little innocent girl-
woman in her shoe-top skirt. She had known boys all her life.
She encouraged me in the ways a girl may. Her gloves were off and
in one hand, and I remember, lightly and daringly, in mock reproof