III
A little girl makes love to a boy in school by the simple expedient of allowing him to discover her eyes upon him steadily when he raises his head from his studies and looks in her direction. Nathan dragged himself to school next day. But the topaz eyes of Bernice-Theresa were not upon him,—once! Thereupon did life become a delusion and a snare and sorrow sit heavily upon him.
The Dresden Doll came out of the Academy at four o’clock and started homeward. By some mysterious levitation, she had not progressed three blocks before the street held a party of the opposite sex employed in touching every other picket in the fence, withal moving in her own direction.
“Say!” this person demanded plaintively, having somehow crossed the thoroughfare by the time she reached the Baptist Church. “Are you mad at me, Bernie?”
“Of course I’m mad! Why shouldn’t I be mad? You tried to spoil my party.”
“I didn’t mean to spoil your party.”
“Perhaps you didn’t. But you’re such a fool at times!”
“A fool!”
“Why do you do such perfectly silly things?”
“I—I—only tried to give you somethin’ different, Bernie. I—only—tried—to make you like me.”
“Then you don’t know much about girls! For instance—your clothes! Why, you came to my party looking like a—a—tramp!”
“They were my best clothes, Bernie—the best I got.”
“Then why on earth doesn’t your father buy you some new?”
“He says it’s puttin’ on style—and foolish.”
“But you look so! Can’t he see it?”
“I guess, Bernie, he don’t much care—or understand.”
“Then I’d work—and buy my own.”
“I do work. But he makes me give him all I earn.”
“Then I’d run away—or shoot him!”
She tossed her long mass of straw-colored curls haughtily and walked from sight.
John Forge had not been able to hold his job in the newspaper office. He “didn’t get along with people.” He had opened a small shop on Main Street and gone back to cobbling shoes. Next day Ben Williams, the clothier, looked in at the Forge door and with half a laugh demanded:
“Can’t you dress that young one of yours so he won’t go around makin’ a nuisance of himself, John Forge? He was in my place this noon with a crazy plea for me to save all my bundles for Saturdays so he could deliver ’em and earn himself a suit to look respectable.”
John Forge went home with his weak jaw set grimly.
“I’ll break that boy’s foolish pride—or I’ll break his back!” he promised himself dourly.