“Well, I did and I have and you are.”
“Maybe you have but I am not. I bid you good evening, Mr. Harbison. Give me my basket.”
“No, no! Not so fast! You don’t understand, my dearest girl. I really have come up here to see you and a fellow doesn’t take that beastly ride twice in one day without some reward. Come on, like the peach that you resemble, and sit down here in this grove of trees with me. I tell you, honey, I’m loving you good and right.”
“Nonsense! You don’t know me and besides 198 I have no time to sit down as I have two more trolley cars to meet with hot suppers for the motormen. Give me my basket! I must hurry home. I cannot let my customers go hungry.”
“But I am hungry for love,” cried Tom, seizing the hand Judith had stretched out for her basket. In the other hand she carried the empty milk can. Up to this time the girl had been half laughing. She was evidently amused by the gallantries of Tom and had met his advances with badinage, thinking he was in jest. However, when he grasped her hand and attempted to draw her towards him, she grew angry.
“Let me go, Mr. Harbison. You are forgetting yourself.”
“I am not forgetting myself. I am just remembering myself. Here I have been in the same neighborhood with you for days and never once have I had so much as a kiss. Please! Please!” He caught the resisting Judith to him.
Tom was making a fool of himself and no doubt he would have realized it had he known that another man was hearing his pleading. Jeff on the other hand was so conscious of himself that he had not realized, until Harbison plunged into the frantic love-making, that the 199 couple were not aware of his presence. Under the circumstances, what should he do? He certainly could not beat up a man for asking a beautiful girl to sit down in the shade of a beech tree with him, especially since he had meant to do that very thing himself had not Tom got there ahead of him. Should he make his presence known? Did Judith need his help?
The scene progressed so rapidly that before Jeff could make up his mind exactly what he should do Judith raised her empty milk can and gave the persistent Tom such a whack on the side of his head that the cavalier dropped the basket of china and, losing his balance, fell and rolled down the hill.
Evidently Judith did not need anyone’s help. Tom picked himself up ruefully. Without a word he retraced the path he had so blithely taken a moment before and, hearing the outgoing trolley whistling for the station, he speeded up and boarded the car for Louisville.