The Gridleys reached Foxboro Center. John Forge was at home, “getting in” his hay. Arrived there, old Caleb descended, backed the mare around and unhooked her check-rein. He trusted her to remain without hitching, so long as her nose was in the clover growing outside the Forge front fence. Thereupon Caleb went down into the fragrant hayfields in search of Johnathan. The mare spread her front legs and began to enjoy herself.
Little Bernice-Theresa’s first maneuver was to unwind the reins from the whip. Holding them in one hand and the foolish little parasol in the other, she greatly hoped sundry persons would appear and remark upon what a marvelous child was this, who could assume jurisdiction of an untied mare while her elders were flagrantly absent.
It may be recorded that some one did appear; Nathan Forge “materialized” beside the picket fence and the drama, old as the hills eternal, was commenced.
Nathan Forge, living in Foxboro Center, was naturally of the earth, earthy. He was likewise of the soil, soily, very much soiled in comparison with the starched and beribboned daintiness of little Bernice-Theresa. His hair needed cutting; his eyes were vague. His face had grown a few odd-thousand additional freckles with the summer vacation and one great toe was wrapped in a horribly unsanitary rag.
This product of the disgustingly prolific lower classes beheld the smart rig halted before the house and was seized with an exasperating interest.
Now every one who has been a boy, or who owns a boy, appreciates that while sisters are, generally speaking, of no earthly consequence or account whatsoever, there are girls and girls! This is better explained by studying the behavior of such a boy in propinquity with a feminine stranger who had first been properly starched and ironed and curled and furbelowed, though not conventionally introduced.
The boy does not place his feet upon the surface of the world in a methodical, orderly manner, maintaining himself in a status of physical poise and bodily rectitude. He demonstrates the difference between girls and girls by the knots in which he proceeds to tie his spine. No boy ties his spine into knots for his sister. So Nat made his first concessions to The Sex by starting to wind himself in and out through the holes where pickets were missing in his father’s fence.
I forego a record of the twistings and turnings, the writhings and contortions, which ensued to attract the attention of the Fayre Ladye and bind her to his chariot forever. He did not neglect to rub his backbone on the gatepost four times, whirl about without upsetting himself three, hit the trunk of an adjacent tree with stones twice, and balance a stick on his nose once. Then he climbed the gate and swung head downward in horrible danger of dashing out his brains.
“Lo!” he greeted. And he grinned.
The crass effrontery, the lèse-majesté, of daring to address Her Royal Highness was bad enough. But that grin!