In a moment she darts at you a sly glance (the coquette! How vastly superior she is to you in the wiles of love!), and you swell and swell, until it seems to you that you are towering into the raftered heights above.
And at the conspicuousness thus entailed you blush yet deeper.
Ah, her folks are about to leave town; she is to move away! The news comes with sickening directness, and on top of the announcement she pitilessly asserts that she is glad. You muster courage to declare that you are “going to write.” She flirts her bangs, and retorts grudgingly: “I don’t care.”
Which is all the good-by that you get.
Beyond childish notes, you never have written to a girl; and what a bothersome time this first letter gives you! The chief trouble lies in the start. “Dear Friend,” which appears to be the address sanctioned by society, is too common-place and formal; “Dear Lillian” may err in the other direction, she is ridiculously touchy. You want something unique, and in your researches you encounter “Chérie”—where, history reveals not.
“Chérie” sounds nice; you do not know what it means, but all the better, for consequently it is finely ambiguous; and, proud of your originality, you take it. Once started, you occupy four pages, in your scrawling script, with what you deem to be clever badinage. Badinage is the main conversational stock in trade of girl-and-boy days.
Principally you rail her about a certain youth of your town with whom she used, to your torment, to run races. You hope that she will reply in a manner to convey that really she despised that other chap and is longing for you.
Two weeks of waiting. Then, one noon, your father, with an arch remark, fishes from an inside pocket a little square envelope, and passes it to you, at the dinner-table. The dinner-table, of all public places!
You endeavor calmly to receive it with a cursory glance; but you deposit it in your jacket well aware that your trembling frame emanates confusion.