Roscoe held his hand tight for a full minute. Then they parted and he hurried along the River Road.
He was already late, but he would probably have hurried anyway, for when the heart is dancing it is hard for the feet to move slowly. And Roscoe's heart was dancing. He could "see straight" now, all right. To be a soldier you must see straight as well as shoot straight.
He swung along the River Road with a fine air, as if he owned it, and passing a small boy (bound across the river, perhaps) he lifted the youngster's hat off and handed it to him with a laugh. When he reached the Ellison cottage he deliberately kept pushing the bell button again and again, just out of sheer exuberance, until Margaret herself threw the door open and exclaimed,
"What in the world is the matter?"
"Nothing; can't you take a joke?"
"You're late," she said.
"Sure; I'm a punk soldier. That's a swell hat you've got on. Can you hustle? If you don't mind, we'll take the short cut through the grove."
It was a swell hat, there is no denying that, and she looked very pretty in it.
"I'm taking my knitting," she said, handing him one of those sumptuous bags with two vicious-looking knitting needles sticking out of it.
"I hate to go through the grove, it's so spooky," she said, as they hurried along. "I'm always seeing things there. Do you, ever?"