"For shame! Miss Hanson," she cried, "to beat a little boy at such a rate! It won't mend your umbrella, nor straighten your calash! And the perspiration is washing the paint all out of your cheeks!"
My enemy left me to fly at my defender, whose name was Florence Hay. But Florence was a little too agile for the old lady, whom she speedily distanced, while I made good my escape into the sheltering foliage of an apple-tree, where, securely perched on a strong limb, I remained until school was out, and the girls had all gone home.
After a time, at my urgent entreaties, my parents removed me from the village-school, and placed me at an institute for boys. I had thought, previously to the change, that I should be perfectly happy when it was effected; but I had, somehow, miscalculated. I missed the bewitching faces of the girls I had fled from, and, for the first time in my life, I realized that the world would be a terrible humdrum sort of a place if there were nothing but men here.
To confess the plain truth, I had discovered that, in spite of my bashfulness, I loved every single girl I had ever seen—not even excepting good black Bess in my mother's kitchen, who concocted such admirable turnovers and seedcakes. But at that time, sooner than have acknowledged such a weakness, I would have been broiled alive.
As I grew toward manhood, my bashfulness got no better. It was confirmed; it had become a chronic disease, as irremediable as the rheumatism, and a thousand times more distressing.
I was frequently invited to quiltings, apple parings, huskings, etc.; but I never dared to go, lest I should be expected to have something to say to some of the feminine portion of the company.
If my mother sent me on any errand to a house where there were girls, I used to stand a half hour on the door step, waiting for courage to rap; and if one of the aforesaid girls happened to answer the summons, it was with the greatest difficulty that I could restrain myself from taking refuge in flight. And after I had got in, and made known my business, I knew no more what was told me in return than we know why the comet of last summer had a curved train.
At church, I habitually sat with averted face, and cut my finger nails; in fact I had performed that operation for those digital ornaments so often that there was very little left of them to practice upon. I most devoutly wished that it had been so that folks could have been created with knitting-work, or something of the kind, in their hands—it would have been so nice when one didn't know what to do with his upper extremities.
As for my feet, though not remarkably large, they were constantly in the way. I have often seen the time when I would have given all the world, had it been mine to give, if I could have taken them off, and consigned them to the obscurity of my pocket.
One eventful day, my mother took it into her head to have a quilting. Early in the afternoon I retired to the garret, as the most isolated spot I could think of, and ensconced myself in bed. All the girls in the neighborhood were invited, and I would sooner have faced a flaming line of armed batteries.