him to point out the Pleiades and Jupiter and Ursa minor, and Pupkin
showed her exactly where they were. That impressed them both
tremendously, because Pupkin didn't know that Zena remembered the
names out of the astronomy book at her boarding-school, and Zena
didn't know that Pupkin simply took a chance on where the stars were.

And ever so many times they talked so intimately that Pupkin came
mighty near telling her about his home in the Maritime Provinces and
about his father and mother, and then kicked himself that he hadn't
the manliness to speak straight out about it and take the
consequences.

Please don't imagine from any of this that the course of Mr. Pupkin's
love ran smooth. On the contrary, Pupkin himself felt that it was
absolutely hopeless from the start.

There were, it might be admitted, certain things that seemed to
indicate progress.

In the course of the months of June and July and August, he had taken
Zena out in his canoe thirty-one times. Allowing an average of two
miles for each evening, Pupkin had paddled Zena sixty-two miles, or
more than a hundred thousand yards. That surely was something.

He had played tennis with her on sixteen afternoons. Three times he
had left his tennis racket up at the judge's house in Zena's charge,
and once he had, with her full consent, left his bicycle there all
night. This must count for something. No girl could trifle with a man
to the extent of having his bicycle leaning against the verandah post
all night and mean nothing by it.