Arthur, quite at ease, took her arm to help her down the slippery steps.
Arthur wore his air of assurance gracefully because he was so used to it. Admiration from the fair sex was no new thing to him. And Missy knew this. Perhaps that was one reason she'd been so modestly pleased that he had wished to bestow his gallantries upon her. She realized that Raymond Bonner was much handsomer and richer; and that Kitty Allen's cousin Jim from Macon City, in his uniform of a military cadet, was much more distinguished-looking; and that Don Jones was much more humbly adoring. Arthur had red hair, and lived in a boarding-house and drove a delivery-wagon, and wasn't the least bit humble; but he had an audacious grin and upcurling lashes and “a way with him.” So Missy accepted his favour with a certain proud gratitude.
She felt herself the heroine of a thrilling situation though their conversation, as Arthur guided her along the icy sidewalks, was of very ordinary things: the weather—Missy's sore throat (sweet solicitude from Arthur)—and gossip of the “crowd”—the weather's probabilities to-morrow—more gossip—the weather again.
The weather was, in fact, in assertive evidence. The wind whipped chillingly about Missy's shortskirted legs, for they were strolling slowly—the correct way to walk when one has a “date.” Missy's teeth were chattering and her legs seemed wooden, but she'd have died rather than suggest running a block to warm up. Anyway, despite physical discomforts, there was a certain deliciousness in the situation, even though she found it difficult to turn the talk into the spiritual trend she had proposed. Finally Arthur himself mentioned the paper-wad episode, laughing at it as though it were a sort of joke.
That was her opening.
“You shouldn't be so worldly, Arthur,” she said in a voice of gentle reproof.
“Worldly?” in some surprise.
She nodded seriously over her serviceable, unworldly brown collarette.
“How am I worldly?” he pursued, in a tone of one not entirely unpleased.
“Why—throwing wads in church—lack of respect for religious things—and things like that.”