Distances are not great in Riceville. For this reason the ceremony of "seeing home" is usually termed by a circuitous route, sometimes involving the entire circumference of the "nice" part of the town. But on this occasion John and Mollie June had gone directly, as though their object had been to arrive. They reached her home--a matter of two blocks from the church-before another word had been said.
There Mollie June carefully extricated her arm from his mechanical grasp and confronted him.
He looked at her face, peeping out of the fur collar of her coat in the starlight, and for one instant into her eyes.
She was saying: "I am very grateful to you, Merriam, for all the help you have given me--in--algebra."
He ought to have kissed her. She wanted him to. He half divined as much--afterwards.
But the awkward, callow, Anglo-Saxon, rural, pedagogical cub in him replied, "I am glad if I have been able to help you in anything."
That, I judge, was too much for Mollie June. She held out her little gloved hand.
"Good-bye, Mr. Merriam!"
He took her hand. And now appears the advantage of a college education, including amateur dramatics and courses in English poetry and romantic fiction. He did what no other swain in Riceville could have done. He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it! At least he kissed the glove which tightly enclosed the hand.
"Good-bye, Mollie June!" he said, using that name for the first time.