Nathan was “goin’ on fourteen” now. He had grown older, somehow, older than the twenty months which had intervened since I had last seen him warranted.
These three—Nathan, the Dresden Doll and a shocky-headed young troglodyte who had just arrived from the wilds of Foxboro Center—were seated near one another during that year in the seventh grade of the old Academy on the hill.
The American public school being the great common denominator for juvenile humanity, it had developed after several months’ scholastic propinquity between Nathan and Bernie that he was not quite so impossible as the Dresden Doll had at first assumed. And Bernie’s teachers had rather caustic ideas about the Gridley “blood.” The Dresden Doll became a little more human.
“What are you going to give me for my birthday, boy?” she demanded of Nathan one day, accosting him on the edge of the school yard. “I’m going to have a party, you know. Everybody’s coming and must bring me something.”
The abruptness of meeting and question left Nathan speechless. With his temperament and home training—or lack of it—it was only natural he should have been awkward in her presence.
But he finally rallied.
“Well, I’ll try to give you something bigger ’n better than you’ll get from anybody else. You can bet on that!”
His declaration implied a promise. Moreover, after the nature of such youthful indiscretions, it grew plain he would have to make that promise good or be forever discredited and go through the rest of life a celibant.
What could he give her that would be greater and finer and better than any other person—chiefly boy—might offer? It became an awful quandary. Though only “goin’ on fourteen”, it came to him he had thrust a foot into one of life’s traps. In his little cot-bed up under the eaves of the cottage John Forge had taken for his family in Spring Street, he pondered feverishly far into each night. And with sickening speed the date of the affair approached and found him still debating.
The underlying cause of his predicament was financial. He hadn’t a cent, was never allowed money and would have to steal and lie to get any. If he had millions he could of course present her with a diamond ring or a Maltese cat or something like that. But not a cent! It was humiliating.