This constant reminder of the danger to women, from men, drove the boy's mind to consider this problem. Pelham had matured slowly; his mother had been his chief sweetheart, as long as he could remember. But the association with girls at the new Highlands High School made the matter more personal to him. With eager avidity he took to whatever reading he could find upon the subject. There were pages in his presentation Bible, and in an old "Lives of the Popes," that were creased and yellowed from his frequent reading.
Occasional newspaper stories moved him strangely. He lay awake almost all of one night, on the canvas cot in a tent near the crest, going over the details of one of these accounts that he had torn out of a paper and kept folded up in his purse. It was from some upstate village,—and the house servants of the mistress had aided in the attack upon her. What would he have done if he had been near? Usually he portrayed himself as the rescuer, nobly driving off the wicked assailants. But infrequent gusts of emotion colored his fancies differently: he saw himself successively in the rôle of each of the participants. He particularly dwelt upon the woman's part. If he were only a girl now,—His body warmed at vague visions of surrender.
He was a clean boy, in the main, bodily and mentally. His mother had impressed purity upon him, as a thing to be always striven for; and he had implicitly followed her, as far as he was able. This conversation with Mary was connected, although he did not know it, with an incident that had happened at Jackson on one of his earlier visits there, when Aunt Lotta, Jimmy's mother, had found him under the porch hammock with Lil—two babies beginning to scorch their untaught fingers at the bigger fires of life.
There had been no punishment for this. Aunt Lotta had merely told the children that only common boys and girls were naughty. This had been enough.
Several years afterwards, when the cousins had visited the mountain,—Pelham was hardly ten at the time,—his mind had been somewhat disturbed by the loose talk of the bragging East Highlands boys. He had discussed it with Lil on the comfortable pampas grass above the chert quarry not far from the cottage.
"You know, Lil, all the boys and girls we know do these things.... Think how bad I would feel, if I were with a girl, and didn't know how! If we could find out ... together...."
"I suppose it would be all right, Pell."
That, however, was all that had come of it.
Now he had reached his last year at the high school. His marks had been good, particularly in mathematics and English Literature. It had long been assumed that he was to go to college, and fit himself to assist his father's business in civil or mining engineering. He wanted to go to the state university, but Paul's larger plans included a northern education; after much balancing of catalogue advantages, Sheffield Scientific School, at Yale, was decided upon.
Most of this summer too was spent at the grandparents' place; but he came home early, to help his mother get his things ready for the longer separation.