“Bird of Paradise! Madelaine left here night before last for boarding-school. But what school it is, or where it is, you’ll never learn—if I can help it!”
“Hid her away from me, eh?”
“Speaking bluntly, precisely that! For a time at least.”
“All right, Aunt Gracia! If you want to make it personal, I accept the challenge. We’ll see who gets Madelaine in the end—you or I. Only be a good sport if you lose, Aunt Grace. Be a good sport if you lose!”
He vaulted the hedge and was gone.
CHAPTER X
THE SEX
I
In the summer of 1904, the Methodist Sunday school held a picnic six miles up the river. It was a popular place for picnics,—a glen sloping down to a bathing beach, roofed with tall hemlocks and cut off from the road by a level meadow that made an excellent ball field.
Nathan’s father had no grudge against picnics, at least Sunday-school picnics. But he did resent the dangerous mingling and flagrant propinquity of the sexes which such affairs occasioned. So Johnathan, not being able to attend the picnic himself and “keep an eye” on the boy, prohibited him the outing altogether. Girls—slathers of girls—would attend and lead Nat’s feet into paths of wickedness and byways that were vile. Johnathan had to go to Williams Falls and “see about a position” which had been “offered” him at more money than he was making in the cobbler shop. But Nathan’s mother, half in pique at John and half in distressed mother-love at the bitterness of her boy’s disappointment, told him to go ahead and enjoy the picnic and if his father said anything on his return, she would pay the piper.