"Maxine Larabee!" He rolled the syllables over his tongue and felt the excitement that even her name produced. How delicate and fine and unattainable she was. He felt like a great clumsy oaf beside her. He felt as awkward and shy as the boys in the milling stag corner at the Firemen's Ball.
He only asked to be allowed to watch her from a distance, to wait outside the library hoping that she would speak to him, or to wander disconsolately back and forth before her house, wondering which room was hers, wishing that some marauder might attempt to break in so that he could prove his love by cracking the fellow over the head.
Love-sick and divinely miserable he walked the streets at night listening to the wind in the trees, holding imaginary conversations with his beloved, devising tests and trials for his devotion. Sometimes the sweet pain of his affliction seemed more than he could bear. But when he had a chance to speak to her there was nothing of this he could express. He was apt to be rough and boisterous, or merely shy and dumb.
His emotions could scarcely have been phrased by Shakespeare nor captured in music by Beethoven, yet the most that found utterance was:
"Gee, you look swell tonight."
Coming upon her as he rounded the corner at Main Street and Albion he managed a loud and joyous greeting. But Maxine had no answering shout. She took one look at his greasy coveralls, his blackened hands and face, then turned away. She did not speak as she passed.
2
At the iron sink in the Crandall kitchen Peter Brailsford labored to remove the dirt and grease so offensive to the eyes of Maxine Larabee. He scoured with violence, grimly pleased by the stinging of his outraged skin and the smart of the soap in his eyes. He scowled at himself in the broken mirror, scrubbed his ears until they burned, wiped the last trace of his recent shame on Temperance Crandall's roller towel and was running a comb through his wet curls when Early Ann burst radiantly through the kitchen door followed by the less impulsive Gus.
"Early Ann! Gus!" cried the young fellow.