She had not seen Frank Bowman since the time they had separated on the street corner by the drug store, late Saturday night, when she had taken Hopewell Drugg home.
Bowman was with his railroad construction gang not far off the Lower
Middletown Road. But Janice had been going to and from school by the
Upper Road, past Elder Concannon's place, because it was dryer.
This morning, however, Frank heard her car coming, and he appeared, plunging through the jungle, shouting to her to stop. He could scarcely make a mistake in hailing the car, for Janice's automobile was almost the only one that ran on this road. By summer time, however, the boarding house people and Lem Parraday hoped that automobiles in Polktown would be, in the words of Walky Dexter, "as thick as fleas on a yaller hound."
Janice saw Frank Bowman coming, if she did not hear him call, and slowed down. He strode crashingly down the hillside in his high boots, corduroys, and canvas jacket, his face flushed with exercise and, of course, broadly smiling. Janice liked the civil engineer immensely. He lacked Nelson Haley's solid character and thoughtfulness; but he always had a fund of enthusiasm on tap.
"How goes the battle, Janice?" was his cheery call, as he leaped down into the roadway and thrust out a gloved hand to grasp hers.
"I guess, by now, Simmy Howell has learned a thing or two," she declared, her mind on the scrimmage she had just seen.
"What?" demanded Bowman, wonderingly.
At that Janice burst into a laugh. "Oh! I am a perfect heathen. I suppose you did not mean Marty's battle with his schoolmate. But that was in my mind."
"What's Marty fighting about now?" asked the civil engineer, with a puzzled smile. "And are you interested in such sparring encounters?"
"I was in this one," confessed Janice. Then she told him of the occurrence—and its cause, of course.