They passed a boy who knew Chad, but not Margaret. The lad took off his hat, but Chad did not lift his; then a boy and a girl and, when only the two girls spoke, the other boy lifted his hat, though he did not speak to Margaret. Still Chad's hat was untouched and when Margaret looked up, Chad's face was red with confusion again. But it never took the boy long to learn and, thereafter, during the walk his hat came off unfailingly. Everyone looked at the two with some surprise and Chad noticed that the little girl's chin was being lifted higher and higher. His intuition told him what the matter was, and when they reached the stile across the campus and Chad saw a crowd of Margaret's friends coming down the street, he halted as if to turn back, but the little girl told him imperiously to come on. It was a strange escort for haughty Margaret—the country-looking boy, in coarse homespun—but Margaret spoke cheerily to her friends and went on, looking up at Chad and talking to him as though he were the dearest friend she had on earth.
At the edge of town she suggested that they walk across a pasture and go back by another street, and not until they were passing through the woodland did Chad come to himself.
"You know I didn't rickollect when you called me 'little boy.'"
"Indeed!"
"Not at fust, I mean," stammered Chad.
Margaret grew mock-haughty and Chad grew grave. He spoke very slowly and steadily. "I reckon I rickollect ever'thing that happened out thar a sight better'n you. I ain't forgot nothin'—anything."
The boy's sober and half-sullen tone made Margaret catch her breath with a sudden vague alarm.
Unconsciously she quickened her pace, but, already, she was mistress of an art to which she was born and she said, lightly:
"Now, that's MUCH better." A piece of pasteboard dropped from Chad's jacket just then, and, taking the little girl's cue to swerve from the point at issue, he picked it up and held it out for Margaret to read. It was the first copy of the placard which he had tied around Jack's neck when he sent him home, and it set Margaret to laughing and asking questions. Before he knew it Chad was telling her about Jack and the mountains; how he had run away; about the Turners and about Melissa and coming down the river on a raft—all he had done and all he meant to do. And from looking at Chad now and then, Margaret finally kept her eyes fixed on his—and thus they stood when they reached the gate, while crows flew cawing over them and the air grew chill.
"And did Jack go home?"