Bettina and her teacher walked on up the shady lane, feeling that they had a secret. They were very nearly on a parity as to the innocence of soul with which they held this secret, except that Bettina was much more single-minded toward it than Jim. To her he had been gradually attaining the status of a hero whose clasp of her in that iron-armed way was mysteriously blissful—and beyond that her mind had not gone. To Jim, Bettina represented in a very sweet way the disturbing influences which had recently risen to the threshold of consciousness in his being, and which were concretely but not very hopefully embodied in Jennie Woodruff.
Thus interested in each other, they turned the corner which took them out of sight of the lineman, and stopped at the shady avenue leading up to Nils Hansen’s farmstead. Little Hans Nilsen had disappeared by the simple method of cutting across lots. Bettina’s girlish instinct called for something more than the casual good-by which would have sufficed yesterday. She lingered, standing close by Jim Irwin.
“Won’t you come in and let me clean the mud off you,” she asked, “and give you some dry socks?”
“Oh, no!” replied Jim. “It’s almost as far to your house as it is home. Thank you, no.”
“There’s a splash of mud on your face,” said Bettina. “Let me—” And with her little handkerchief she began wiping off the mud. Jim stooped to permit the attention, but not much, for Bettina was of the mold of women of whom warriors are born—their faces approached, and Jim recognized a crisis in the fact that Bettina’s mouth was presented for a kiss. Jim met the occasion like the gentleman he was. He did not leave her stung by rejection; neither did he obey the impulse to respond to the invitation according to his man’s instinct; he took the rosy face between his palms and kissed her forehead—and left her in possession of her self-respect. After that Bettina Hansen felt, somehow, that the world could not possibly contain another man like Jim Irwin—a conviction which she still cherishes when that respectful caress has been swept into the cloudy distance of a woman’s memories.
Pete, Colonel Woodruff’s hired man, was watering the horses at the trough when the trouble shooter reached the Woodruff telephone. County Superintendent Jennie had run for her father’s home in her little motor-car in the face of the shower, and was now on the bench where once she had said “Humph!” to Jim Irwin—and thereby started in motion the factors in this story.
“Anything wrong with your phone?” asked the trouble man of Pete.
“Nah,” replied Pete. “It was on the blink till you done something down the road.”
“Crossed up,” said the lineman. “These trees along here are something fierce.”
“I’d cut ’em all if they was mine,” said Pete, “but the colonel set ’em out, along about sixty-six, and I reckon they’ll have to go on a-growin’.”