hesitating finger and touched a shimmering curl; upon which
Elizabeth ducked and laughed, and dancing over to the old tin pan
of a piano pounded out "Shoo Fly" with one finger. Blair,
watching the lovely color in her cheek, said in honest delight:
"When your face gets red like that, you are awfully good-looking,
Elizabeth."

"Good-looking"; that was a new idea to the four friends. Nannie
gaped; Elizabeth giggled; David "got red" on his own account, and
muttered under his breath, "Tell that to the marines!" But into
Blair's face had come, suddenly, a new expression; his eyes
smiled vaguely; he came sidling over to Elizabeth and stood
beside her, sighing deeply: "Elizabeth, you are an awful nice
girl."

Elizabeth shrieked with laughter. "Listen to Blair--he's spoony!"

Instantly Blair was angry; "spooniness" vanished in a flash; he
did not speak for fully five minutes. Just as they started home,
however, he came out of his glumness to remember Miss White. "I'm
going to take Cherry-pie some ice-cream," he said; and all the
way back he was so absorbed in trying--unsuccessfully--to keep
the pallid pink contents of the mussy paper box from dripping on
his clothes that he was able to forget Elizabeth's rudeness. But
childhood, for all four of them, ended that afternoon.

When vacation was over, and they were back in the harness again,
both boys forgot that first tremulous clutch at the garments of
life; in fact, like all wholesome boys of fifteen or sixteen,
they thought "girls" a bore. It was not until the next long