Then she appeared. At sight of her his heart dropped its armor. She brought back a whiff of the sweetness of a past atmosphere. Was it possible he had ever been the happy boy he seemed to remember! He smiled up in her face with cheek-muscles stiffened by disuse, and eyes ringed with studious shadows. She had on a flimsy frock, printed all over with little flowers that seemed to him to smell good; her hair, where the great wad projected beyond the straw brim, was touched with a warm, peculiar glory. He had meant to keep himself well hardened against her, tell her the various things necessary in a matter-of-fact way, and bid her good-bye indefinitely. He felt more like crying with his disgraced head in her lap.
He conquered his weakness.... A pretty man he made!
He got out with sufficient composure and dignity what he had to say. He told her all that had happened, the change it made in the coming months. He was not going home for the holidays; he could not endure to see the folks. He was going into the country to spend the summer in hard study, to make sure of "passing" next term. He was going to the particular place he mentioned because he had a friend there, a fellow he had taken up with in the last weeks, one that had had the same bad luck as himself. This man's family lived there; it would not be quite so dreary as being alone.
She chaffed and consoled him in turns. Now that the world had gone all wrong with him, her eyes seemed to him sweeter and softer than he had ever observed. What a good, kind little friend! Lord! what a good, crazy, light-hearted time they had had, and how pretty she looked to-day! What wonderful, thrice wonderful hair it was, waving and ringletting about her glowing summer face, coiling massively on the back of her head! No woman on earth had such hair!
He did wish for a moment that Green, his new friend, might see her—he was proud of her. One night, when they had sat grinding together for mutual assistance, the oil giving out, Green had told him of a cousin of his. Fraisier had said nothing of any girl. He only wished that Green might see the hair of this girl whose name he had foreborne to speak.
Good-bye, Minnie! He should be working like a slave all through the burning golden days—let her think of him a little. He should be very lonesome. When he had studied until his eyes smarted and his head swam, there would be nothing pleasant to do, no one pleasant to talk with—she might spare a moment to be sorry for him now and then. He should be back in the fall. Bless the beautiful and beautiful and beautiful hair! Good-bye, Minnie!
She so little perished from his mind after their parting that whenever—as Green and he lay under the trees, withdrawn from the world and devoted to arduous studies, keeping off the insects by smoke—Green began talking about that cousin of his, Fraisier became half sick with reminiscence. He could not resist replying by talking—with the finest, shyest reverence always—of Minnie. There was a dreamy solace in talking of her to some one. She described so well, too; so unusually. He had a proud secret assurance that as an incident in a man's life she altogether eclipsed a cousin in interest.
"How long is your cousin's hair?" he asked, with assumed casualness, once. Green stared a little, and confessed not having the slightest idea. Fraisier opened his arms as wide as they could go, and said, vaguely blushing, "The young lady I spoke of has hair as long as this!"
"Come! I should like to see it!" spoke Green, in such a tone that Fraisier turned a deep, vexed red.