As Homer Sage remarked that evening on the stoop of the Excelsior Hotel, this event made the departure of Battery G seem by comparison very small potatoes indeed.
It was impossible for the twain not to realize that everybody was looking at them, as they made their way up the shady side of the main street. But there is another language of the hands than that taught in deaf-mute schools, and Julia's hand seemed to tell Marsena's arm distinctly that she didn't care a bit. As for him, after that first nervous minute or two, the experience was all joy—joy so profound and overwhelming that he could only ponder it in dazzled silence. It is true that Julia was talking—rattling on with sprightly volubility about all sorts of things—but to Marsena her remarks no more invited answers than does so much enthralling music. When she stopped for a breath he did not remember what she had been saying. He only knew how he felt.
"I wish you'd come straight to the gallery with me," he said; "I'd like first-rate to make a real picture of you—by yourself."
"Well, I swow!" remarked Mr. Newton Shull, along in the later afternoon; "I didn't expect we'd make our salt to-day, with Marsena away pretty near the whole forenoon, and all the folks down to the depot, and here it turns out way the best day we've had yet. Actually had to send people away!"
"Guess that didn't worry him much," commented the boy, from where he sat on the work-bench swinging his legs in idleness.
Mr. Shull nodded his head suggestively. "No, I dare say not," he said. "I kind o' begrudge not bein' an operator myself, when such setters as that come in. She must have been up there, a full two hours—them two all by themselves—and the countrymen loafin' around out in the reception-room there, stompin' their feet and grindin' their teeth, jest tired to death o' waitin'. It went agin my grain to tell them last two lots they'd have to come some other day; but—I dunno—perhaps it's jest as well. They'll go and tell it around that we've got more'n we can do—and that's good for business. But, all the same, it seemed to me as if he took considerable more time than was really needful. He can turn out four farmers in fifteen minutes, if he puts on a spurt; and here he was a full two hours, and only five pictures of her to show for it."
"Six," said the boy.
"Yes, so it was—countin' the one with her hair let down," Mr. Shull admitted. "I dunno whether that one oughtn't to be a little extry. I thought o' tellin' her that it would be, on account of so much hair consumin' more chemicals; but—I dunno'—somehow—she sort o' looked as if she knew better. Did you ever notice them eyes o' hern, how they look as if they could see straight through you, and out on the other side?"
The boy shook his head. "I don't bother my head about women," he said. "Got somethin' better to do."
"Guess that's a pretty good plan too," mused Mr. Shull. "Somehow you can't seem to make 'em out at all. Now, I've been around a good deal, and yet somehow I don't feel as if I knew much about women. I'm bound to say, though," he added upon reflection, "they know considerable about me."