"Where's the general?" asked the Watermelon.
Billy nodded backward. "In the office, trying to convert the landlord. The landlord's a democrat, you know."
"Come and walk down the road with me a bit?" asked the Watermelon. He rose and held out his hand to help her up.
Billy rose with a trembling laugh that failed miserably in its manifest attempt to be brave.
It was late afternoon, sweet and cool as they left the village behind. The deep quiet of the last of the day was over fields and woods and road, the heat and strenuous business of the morning done. Cows were slowly meandering across the pastures to the familiar bars, empty teams rattled by on the way home, the driver humped contentedly over the reins, thinking of the day's bargains and of the supper waiting for him. The shadows were lengthening, long and graceful across the village green.
Neither Billy nor the Watermelon spoke until they had left the village some little way behind and had come to four cross-roads with the usual small dingy school-house, door locked, dirty windows closed for the summer and shabby, faded blinds drawn.
Billy knew from the Watermelon's face that the interview with her father had been far from satisfactory. She feared that the Watermelon had not "stood up" for himself, that her speaking to her father that morning had not helped matters as she had hoped it would. She tried to think of something to say that would influence the boy, something she could do to show him how she cared, so he would not think of leaving her. The Watermelon was silent, for, now that the hour of parting had come, he did not know what to say, could not bring himself to leave her, gay, foolish, light-hearted Billy.
He, however, was the first to speak. The school-house recalled miserable days of long dull confinement, and he nodded toward it, pausing in the grass by the wayside. "A standing monument," said he, "to buried freedom."
"I never went to school," said Billy. "It must be awful."
"Awful," the Watermelon shrugged. "It's taken ten years from my life. Schools should be abolished."