It was then that the games began. Even the boys—Jim, "Capt." "Leggins," and the rest—seemed more at ease, and the chances were, from appearances, he believed, that they were actually going to have some fun. Before he knew just how it happened, and wholly unconscious of its nature, he was in a game in which the reward, or penalty it would have seemed to him, was kissing the upturned cheek of some fluttering little maid. Very abruptly, so it seemed, Nance stood before him. There was a look of mischief in her dancing eyes, a droop of mock timidity about her mouth, and a round, flushed, dimpled cheek was held for his lips. As the other girls were always inclined to let him alone, this was a part of the game he had not anticipated. Just as a drowning man thinks in a second of every wicked act of his life, so the boy thought of every worm he had ever put on her, of every pinch, every twitch of her hair, of every bit of tantalizing of which he had ever been guilty. Most of all he remembered the vengeance she had promised him for refusing to go away while she skinned the cat.... At any rate, there she stood, her happy little face sparkling from without a perfect mass of fluffy red curls, that, to the boy, seemed quite as bright and beautiful as the sunshine on the river in the early morning. Beneath this hair and lifted cheek stood an eager small body, very much frilled and furbelowed, which to him, for the first time, was very mysterious and alluring. It was decidedly a new experience for him. For a moment he hesitated, uneasy, blushing vigorously; then he glanced behind. Yes, it was there and open! One bound and he was through the window, running and stumbling toward the crack in the fence. For a second Nance gazed in amused amazement at the place left vacant, and out into the night into which he had escaped. Then she turned to another and the game continued. Within her heart was a feeling of deep satisfaction.
The boy was down in the buggy shed, his coat off, hanging on the bar skinning the cat several times in rapid succession.
"Huh," he exclaimed as he came to a sudden stop. "I bet she couldn't do it agin!" It might be well to here record the fact that so far as anybody ever knew, she never did.
All of this was what passed in review as he sat paddling in the water that June morning. He wondered what Jean François would say when he heard about it. He was filled with pride and humiliation all at one time. An unusual relationship was now evident. She was in the ascendancy.... He wanted to think it all out, if it were possible, and the river, rippling about his bare feet, felt very cool and very soothing.
CHAPTER SIX
THE JADE, A NONENTITY, BECOMES THE ILLUSTRIOUS NANCE
When our grandfathers were snub-nosed little boys, quaintly dressed in the toggery of near a century ago, every town in the South boasted of its college. It was long before the coming of the state universities and the heavily endowed Church institutions. They were usually the property of some pompous individual whose pedantry and assumption, among the simple folk about him, went by the name of culture and learning. He was usually looked upon as being something sacred. His authority upon matters generally, and letters specifically, was indisputable. That being a day when, though there were no poor, there were also no rich, ancestry and one's mind counted for something. Therefore these old scholars, whose charlatanry was what they deemed an honest part of pedagogy, were honored with the very highest esteem. These schools soon acquired an atmosphere very dear to the Southern heart: a quiet air of good breeding. This was frequently abused by the institutions themselves inasmuch as it was made an inducement to secure attendance. To-day our very same grandparents are not so proud of the education attained, for that was usually very meager, but of the aristocratic name left to the now tottering buildings.
One of the most popular of all of these in its day was Oldmeadow College. Even to this time its legends are passed by careful and reverent tongues to those born in so unfortunate a period as not to have been able to attend it. In the narrow vision of many of our cracker-barrel philosophers there never existed men so erudite, so acceptably great as many of the old professors. Now and then, with modifications, this was true. Our village had no doubt whatever that she was the moral and culture center of Kentucky. It might please you to know that from Lexington, with Transylvania University, down to the least hamlet possessed of her college, every town in the State thought the same thing ... feel reasonably sure each one of them was right!