Nathan bowed stiffly again. It was characteristic of him, a habit he had acquired the last few years, to turn his mutilated ear away from those with whom he might be conversing. But his eyes had met the roguish, laughing face of the Gardner girl. And he had seen—enough. She was very easy to gaze upon.
“If you’re leavin’,” suggested Caleb to Miss Gardner, “Nat better hoof it along with you to see you don’t up-end on the ice. The walk is slippery to-night.”
The Duchess assumed a “this-is-what-I-have-to-endure” expression while Nathan tried to find his tongue. Referring to this girl’s risk of accident between the Forge residence and the business section as an up-ending was embarrassing to the ninth degree.
“If I’m going your way, I’d be glad to see you safe home,” the boy volunteered.
“Oh, that’s so sweet of you!” responded the girl. She found her gray lambskin muff, buried the lower part of her oval face in it, looked slantwise at Nathan and laughed that mischievous giggle again.
They went down the steps to the sidewalk. It was a stinging cold night. The sky was clear, deep sapphire. The full moon resembled a Japanese print, shining through bare, gaunt limbs of winter-creaking trees.
“I better take your arm, Miss Gardner,” the boy suggested. “You might fall down at that.”
“Grab hold!” the girl assented.
Nathan slid his hand in the warm aperture between her right sleeve and her soft body. His fingers closed about that plump arm delicately. The girl in red and gray, a head shorter than himself, pressed against him with the usual helplessness of the man-escorted female.
And at contact with her body thus—in that instant—he knew he had grown a man.