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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Ramsey Milholland, by Booth Tarkington
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Ramsey Milholland
+
+Author: Booth Tarkington
+
+Release Date: March 21, 2006 [EBook #2595]
+[Last updated: January 13, 2012]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RAMSEY MILHOLLAND ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Earle Beach and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+RAMSEY MILHOLLAND
+
+
+by Booth Tarkington
+
+
+
+
+To the Memory of Billy Miller (William Henry Harrison Miller II) 1908 -
+1918 Little Patriot, Good Citizen Friend of Mankind
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+     When Johnnie comes marching home again,
+     Hurrah!  Hurrah!
+     We'll give him a hearty welcome then,
+     Hurrah!  Hurrah!
+     The men with the cheers, the boys with shouts,
+     The ladies they will all turn out,
+     And we'll all feel gay, when Johnnie comes marching home again!
+
+The old man and the little boy, his grandson, sat together in the shade
+of the big walnut tree in the front yard, watching the "Decoration
+Day Parade," as it passed up the long street; and when the last of the
+veterans was out of sight the grandfather murmured the words of the tune
+that came drifting back from the now distant band at the head of the
+procession.
+
+"Yes, we'll all feel gay when Johnnie comes marching home again," he
+finished, with a musing chuckle.
+
+"Did you, Grandpa?" the boy asked.
+
+"Did I what?"
+
+"Did you all feel gay when the army got home?"
+
+"It didn't get home all at once, precisely," the grandfather explained.
+"When the war was over I suppose we felt relieved, more than anything
+else."
+
+"You didn't feel so gay when the war _was_, though, I guess!" the boy
+ventured.
+
+"I guess we didn't."
+
+"Were you scared, Grandpa? Were you ever scared the Rebels would win?"
+
+"No. We weren't ever afraid of that."
+
+"Not any at all?"
+
+"No. Not any at all."
+
+"Well, weren't you ever scared yourself, Grandpa? I mean when you were
+in a battle."
+
+"Oh, yes; _then_ I was." The old man laughed. "Scared plenty!"
+
+"I don't see why," the boy said promptly. "I wouldn't be scared in a
+battle."
+
+"Wouldn't you?"
+
+"'Course not! Grandpa, why don't you march in the Decoration Day Parade?
+Wouldn't they let you?"
+
+"I'm not able to march any more. Too short of breath and too shaky in
+the legs and too blind."
+
+"I wouldn't care," said the boy. "I'd be in the parade anyway, if I was
+you. They had some sittin' in carriages, 'way at the tail end; but I
+wouldn't like that. If I'd been in your place, Grandpa, and they'd let
+me be in that parade, I'd been right up by the band. Look, Grandpa!
+Watch me, Grandpa! This is the way I'd be, Grandpa."
+
+He rose from the garden bench where they sat, and gave a complex
+imitation of what had most appealed to him as the grandeurs of the
+procession, his prancing legs simulating those of the horse of the grand
+marshal, while his upper parts rendered the drums and bugles of the
+band, as well as the officers and privates of the militia company which
+had been a feature of the parade. The only thing he left out was the
+detachment of veterans.
+
+"Putty-boom! Putty-boom! Putty-boom-boom-boom!" he vociferated, as the
+drums--and then as the bugles: "Ta, ta, ra, tara!" He addressed his
+restive legs: "_Whoa_, there, you Whitey! Gee! Haw! Git up!" Then,
+waving an imaginary sword: "Col-lumn right! Farwud _March!_ Halt! Carry
+_harms!_" He "carried arms." "Show-dler _harms!_" He "shouldered arms,"
+and returned to his seat.
+
+"That'd be me, Grandpa. That's the way I'd do." And as the grandfather
+nodded, seeming to agree, a thought recently dismissed returned to the
+mind of the composite procession and he asked:
+
+"Well, _why_ weren't you ever afraid the Rebels would whip the Unions,
+Grandpa?"
+
+"Oh, we knew they couldn't."
+
+"I guess so." The little boy laughed disdainfully, thinking his question
+satisfactorily answered. "I guess those ole Rebels couldn't whipped a
+flea! They didn't know how to fight any at all, did they, Grandpa?"
+
+"Oh, yes, they did!"
+
+"What?" The boy was astounded. "Weren't they all just reg'lar ole
+cowards, Grandpa?"
+
+"No," said the grandfather. "They were pretty fine soldiers."
+
+"They were? Well, they ran away whenever you began shootin' at 'em,
+didn't they?"
+
+"Sometimes they did, but most times they didn't. Sometimes they fought
+like wildcats--and sometimes we were the ones that ran away."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"To keep from getting killed, or maybe to keep from getting captured."
+
+"But the Rebels were bad men, weren't they, Grandpa?"
+
+"No."
+
+The boy's forehead, customarily vacant, showed some little vertical
+shadows, produced by a struggle to think. "Well, but--" he began,
+slowly. "Listen, Grandpa, listen here!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Listen! Well, you said--you said you never got scared the ole Rebels
+were goin' to win."
+
+"They did win pretty often," said the grandfather. "They won a good many
+battles."
+
+"I mean, you said you never got scared they'd win the war."
+
+"No, we were never afraid of that."
+
+"Well, but if they were good men and fought like wildcats, Grandpa, and
+kep' winning battles and everything, how could that be? How could you
+_help_ bein' scared they'd win the war?"
+
+The grandfather's feeble eyes twinkled brightly. "Why, we _knew_ they
+couldn't, Ramsey."
+
+At this, the little vertical shadows on Ramsey's forehead became more
+pronounced, for he had succeeded in thinking. "Well, _they_ didn't know
+they couldn't, did they?" he argued. "They thought they were goin' to
+win, didn't they?"
+
+"Yes, I guess they did. Up till toward the last, I suppose they probably
+did. But you see they were wrong."
+
+"Well, but--" Ramsey struggled. "Listen! Listen here, Grandpa! Well,
+anyway, if they never got scared _we'd_ win, and nobody got scared
+_they'd_ win--well, I don't see--"
+
+"You don't see what?"
+
+But Ramsey found himself unable to continue his concentration; he
+slumped down upon the small of his back, and his brow relaxed to its
+more comfortable placidity, while his eyes wandered with a new butterfly
+fluttering over the irises that bordered the iron picket fence at the
+south side of the yard. "Oh, nothin' much," he murmured.
+
+"I see." And his grandfather laughed again. "You mean: If the Rebels
+felt just as sure of winning the war as we did, and kept winning battles
+why shouldn't we ever have had any doubts that we were going to win?
+That's it, isn't it?"
+
+"I guess so, Grandpa."
+
+"Well, I think it was mostly because we were certain that we were
+right."
+
+"I see," said Ramsey. "The Rebels knew they were on the side of the
+Devil." But at this, the grandfather's laugh was louder than it had been
+before, and Ramsey looked hurt. "Well, you can laugh if you want to!" he
+objected in an aggrieved voice. "Anyway, the Sunday-school sup'intendent
+told us when people knew they were on the Devil's side they always--"
+
+"I dare say, I dare say," the old man interrupted, a little impatiently.
+"But in this world mighty few people think they're on the Devil's side,
+Ramsey. There was a Frenchman once, in olden times; he said people were
+crazy because, though they couldn't even make worms, they believed they
+could make gods. And so whenever countries or parts of a country get
+into a war, each side makes a god and a devil, and says: 'God's on our
+side and the Devil's on the other.' The South thought the Devil was on
+our side, you see."
+
+"Well, that kind o' mixes it all up more'n ever."
+
+"Yes, it seems so; but Abraham Lincoln wasn't mixed up about it. When
+some people told him that God was on our side, he said the important
+thing was to find out if we were on God's side. That was the whole
+question, you see; because either side could make up a god, the kind of
+a god they liked and wanted; and then they'd believe in him, too, and
+fight for him--but if he was only a made-up god they'd lose. President
+Lincoln didn't want to have a made-up god on his side; he wanted to find
+God Himself and find out what he wanted, and then do it. And that's what
+Lincoln did."
+
+"Well, I don't understand much of all _that_!"
+
+"No? Then suppose you look at it this way: The South was fighting
+for what it believed to be its rights, but we weren't fighting for our
+rights; we were fighting for the right. The South was fighting for
+what it believed to be its right to split the Union and be a country by
+itself; but we were fighting for 'Liberty and Union, now and forever,
+one and inseparable.' It wasn't only the Union we fought for; it was
+Freedom. The South wanted freedom to leave the Union; but the reason the
+South wanted that freedom to separate from us was because _we_ wanted
+the Freedom of Man. _There's_ the reason we had the certain knowledge
+that we were going to win the war. How plain and simple it is!"
+
+Ramsey didn't think so. He had begun to feel bored by the conversation,
+and to undergo the oppression he usually suffered in school; yet he took
+a little interest in the inexplicable increase of fervour with which his
+grandfather spoke, and in a shoot of sunshine which somehow got through
+the foliage of the walnut tree and made a bedazzlement of glinting fine
+lines in one spot, about the size of a saucer, upon the old man's head
+of thick white hair. Half closing his eyes, drowsily, Ramsey played that
+this sunshine spot was a white bird's-nest and, and he had a momentary
+half dream of a glittering little bird that dwelt there and wore a blue
+soldier cap on its head. The earnest old voice of the veteran was only a
+sound in the boy's ears.
+
+"Yes, it's simple and plain enough now, though then we didn't often
+think of it in exactly this way, but just went on fighting and
+never doubted. We knew the struggle and suffering of our fathers and
+grandfathers to make a great country here for Freedom, and we knew that
+all this wasn't just the whim of a foolish god, willing to waste such
+great things--we knew that such a country couldn't have been building up
+just to be wasted. But, more than that, we knew that armies fighting
+for the Freedom of Man _had_ to win, in the long run, over armies that
+fought for what they considered their rights.
+
+"We didn't set out to free the slaves, so far as we knew. Yet our being
+against slavery was what made the war, and we had the consciousness
+that we were on the side of God's plan, because His plan is clearly the
+Freedom of Man. Long ago we began to see the hints of His plan--a little
+like the way you can see what's coming in August from what happens in
+April, but man has to win his freedom from himself--men in the light
+have to fight against men in the dark of their own shadow. That light is
+the answer; we had the light that made us never doubt. Ours was the true
+light, and so we--"
+
+
+"Boom--" The veterans had begun to fire their cannon on the crest of
+the low hill, out at the cemetery; and from a little way down the street
+came the rat-a-tat of a toy drum and sounds of a fife played execrably.
+A file of children in cocked hats made of newspapers came marching
+importantly up the sidewalk under the maple shade trees; and in advance,
+upon a velocipede, rode a tin-sworded personage, shrieking incessant
+commands but not concerning himself with whether or not any military
+obedience was thereby obtained. Here was a revivifying effect upon young
+Ramsey; his sluggard eyelids opened electrically; he leaped to his feet
+and, abandoning his grandfather without preface or apology, sped across
+the lawn and out of the gate, charging headlong upon the commander of
+the company.
+
+"You get off that 'locipede, Wesley Bender!" he bellowed. "You gimme
+that sword! What rights you got to go bein' captain o' my army, I'd like
+to know! Who got up this army, in the first place, I'd like to know! I
+did, myself yesterd'y afternoon, and you get back in line or I won't let
+you b'long to it at all!"
+
+The pretender succumbed; he instantly dismounted, being out-shouted and
+overawed. On foot he took his place in the ranks, while Ramsey became
+sternly vociferous. "In-tention, company! Farwud _march_! Col-lumn
+_right_! Right-showdler _harms_! Halt! Far-wud _march_. Carry harms--"
+
+The Army went trudging away under the continuous but unheeded fire of
+orders, and presently disappeared round a corner, leaving the veteran
+chuckling feebly under his walnut tree and alone with the empty street.
+All trace of what he had said seemed to have been wiped from the
+grandson's mind; but memory has curious ways. Ramsey had understood
+not a fifth nor a tenth of his grandfather's talk, and already he had
+"forgotten" all of it--yet not only were there many, many times in the
+boy's later life when, without ascertainable cause, he would remember
+the sunlight falling upon the old man's white head, to make that
+semblance of a glittering bird's-nest there, but with the picture came
+recollections of words and sentences spoken by the grandfather, though
+the listener, half-drowsily, had heard but the sound of an old,
+earnest voice--and even the veteran's meaning finally took on a greater
+definiteness till it became, in the grandson's thoughts, something clear
+and bright and beautiful that he knew without being just sure where or
+how he had learned it.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+Ramsey Milholland sat miserably in school, his conscious being
+consisting principally of a dull hate. Torpor was a little dispersed
+during a fifteen-minute interval of "Music," when he and all the other
+pupils in the large room of the "Five B. Grade" sang repeated fractions
+of what they enunciated as "The Star Span-guh-hulled Banner"; but
+afterward he relapsed into the low spirits and animosity natural to
+anybody during enforced confinement under instruction. No alleviation
+was accomplished by an invader's temporary usurpation of the teacher's
+platform, a brisk and unsympathetically cheerful young woman mounting
+thereon to "teach German."
+
+For a long time mathematics and German had been about equally repulsive
+to Ramsey, who found himself daily in the compulsory presence of both;
+but he was gradually coming to regard German with the greater horror,
+because, after months of patient mental resistance, he at last began to
+comprehend that the German language has sixteen special and particular
+ways of using the German article corresponding to that flexible bit of a
+word so easily managed English--_the_. What in the world was the use of
+having sixteen ways of doing a thing that could just as well be done in
+one? If the Germans had contented themselves with insisting upon sixteen
+useless variations for infrequent words, such as _hippopotamus_, for
+instance, Ramsey might have thought the affair unreasonable but not
+necessarily vicious--it would be easy enough to avoid talking about
+a hippopotamus if he ever had to go to Germany. But the fact that the
+Germans picked out _a_ and _the_ and many other little words in use all
+the time, and gave every one of them sixteen forms, and expected Ramsey
+Milholland to learn this dizzying uselessness down to the last crotchety
+detail, with "When to employ Which" as a nausea to prepare for the
+final convulsion when one _didn't_ use Which, because it was an
+"Exception"--there was a fashion of making easy matters hard that was
+merely hellish.
+
+The teacher was strict but enthusiastic; she told the children, over and
+over, that German was a beautiful language, and her face always had a
+glow when she said this. At such times the children looked patient; they
+supposed it must be so, because she was an adult and their teacher; and
+they believed her with the same manner of believing which those of them
+who went to Sunday-school used there when the Sunday-school teachers
+were pushed into explanations of various matters set forth in the Old
+Testament, or gave reckless descriptions of heaven. That is to say, the
+children did not challenge or deny; already they had been driven into
+habits of resignation and were passing out of the age when childhood is
+able to reject adult nonsense.
+
+Thus, to Ramsey Milholland, the German language seemed to be a
+collection of perverse inventions for undeserved torment; it was full of
+revolting surprises in the way of genders; vocally it often necessitated
+the employment of noises suggestive of an incompletely mastered
+knowledge of etiquette; and far inside him there was something faintly
+but constantly antagonistic to it--yet, when the teacher declared that
+German was incomparably the most beautiful language in the world, one of
+the many facets of his mind submissively absorbed the statement as light
+to be passed inward; it was part of the lesson to be learned. He did not
+know whether the English language was beautiful or not; he never thought
+about that, and no one ever said anything to him about it. Moreover,
+though his deeper inward hated "German," he liked his German teacher,
+and it was pleasant to look at her when that glow came upon her face.
+
+Sometimes, too, there were moments of relaxation in her class, when
+she would stop the lesson and tell the children about Germany: what a
+beautiful, good country it was, so trim and orderly, with such pleasant
+customs, and all the people sensible and energetic and healthy. There
+was "Music" again in the German class, which was another alleviation;
+though it was the same old "Star Spangled Banner" over again. Ramsey
+was tired of the song and tired of "My Country 'Tis of Thee"; they were
+bores, but it was amusing to sing them in German. In German they sounded
+"sort o' funny," so he didn't mind this bit of the day's work.
+
+Half an hour later there arrived his supreme trial of this particular
+morning. Arithmetic then being the order of business before the house,
+he was sent alone to the blackboard, supposedly to make lucid the proper
+reply to a fatal conundrum in decimals, and under the glare and focus of
+the whole room he breathed heavily and itched everywhere; his brain at
+once became sheer hash. He consumed as much time as possible in getting
+the terms of the problem stated in chalk; then, affecting to be critical
+of his own handiwork, erased what he had done and carefully wrote it
+again. After that, he erased half of it, slowly retraced the figures,
+and stepped back as if to see whether perspective improved their
+appearance. Again he lifted the eraser.
+
+"Ramsey Milholland!"
+
+"Ma'am?"
+
+"Put down that eraser!"
+
+"Yes'm. I just thought--"
+
+Sharply bidden to get forward with his task, he explained in a feeble
+voice that he had first to tie a shoe string and stooped to do so, but
+was not permitted. Miss Ridgely tried to stimulate him with hints and
+suggestion; found him, so far as decimals went, mere protoplasm, and,
+wondering how so helpless a thing could live, summoned to the board
+little Dora Yocum, the star of the class, whereupon Ramsey moved toward
+his seat.
+
+"Stand still, Ramsey! You stay right where you are and try to learn
+something from the way Dora does it."
+
+The class giggled, and Ramsey stood, but learned nothing. His
+conspicuousness was unendurable, because all of his schoolmates
+naturally found more entertainment in watching him than in following
+the performance of the capable Dora. He put his hands in and out of his
+pockets; was bidden to hold them still, also not to shuffle his feet;
+and when in a false assumption of ease he would have scratched his head
+Miss Ridgely's severity increased, so that he was compelled to give over
+the attempt.
+
+Instructed to watch every figure chalked up by the mathematical wonder,
+his eyes, grown sodden, were unable to remove themselves from the part
+in her hair at the back of her head, where two little braids began their
+separate careers to end in a couple of blue-and-red checked bits of
+ribbon, one upon each of her thin shoulder blades. He was conscious that
+the part in Dora's shining brown hair was odious, but he was unconscious
+of anything arithmetical. His sensations clogged his intellect; he
+suffered from unsought notoriety, and hated Dora Yocum; most of all he
+hated her busy little shoulder blades.
+
+He had to be "kept in" after school; and when he was allowed to go home
+he averted his eyes as he went by the house where Dora lived. She was
+out in the yard, eating a doughnut, and he knew it; but he had passed
+the age when it is just as permissible to throw a rock at a girl as at a
+boy; and stifling his normal inclinations, he walked sturdily on, though
+he indulged himself so far as to engage in a murmured conversation with
+one of the familiar spirits dwelling somewhere within him. "Pfa!" said
+Ramsey to himself--or himself to Ramsey, since it is difficult to say
+which was which. "Pfa! Thinks she's smart, don't she?"... "Well, I guess
+she does, but she ain't!" ... "I hate her, don't you?"... "You bet
+your life I hate her!"... "Teacher's Pet, that's what _I_ call her!"...
+"Well, that's what _I_ call her, too, don't I?" "Well, _I_ do; that's
+all she is, anyway--dirty ole Teacher's Pet!"
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+He had not forgiven her four years later when he entered high school
+in her company, for somehow Ramsey managed to shovel his way through
+examinations and stayed with the class. By this time he had a long
+accumulation of reasons for hating her: Dora's persistent and increasing
+competency was not short of flamboyant, and teachers naturally got the
+habit of flinging their quickest pupil in the face of their slowest and
+"dumbest." Nevertheless, Ramsey was unable to deny that she had become
+less awful lookin' than she used to be. At least, he was honest enough
+to make a partial retraction when his friend and classmate, Fred
+Mitchell, insisted that an amelioration of Dora's appearance could be
+actually proven.
+
+"Well, I'll take it back. I don't claim she's every last bit as awful
+lookin' as she always has been," said Ramsey, toward the conclusion of
+the argument. "I'll say this for her, she's awful lookin', but she may
+not be as awful lookin' as she was. She don't come to school with the
+edge of some of her underclo'es showin' below her dress any more, about
+every other day, and her eyewinkers have got to stickin' out some, and
+she may not be so abbasa_loot_ly skinny, but she'll haf to wait a mighty
+long while before _I_ want to look at her without gettin' sick!"
+
+The implication that Miss Yocum cared to have Ramsey look at her, either
+with or without gettin' sick, was mere rhetoric, and recognized as such
+by the producer of it; she had never given the slightest evidence of
+any desire that his gaze be bent upon her. What truth lay underneath his
+flourish rested upon the fact that he could not look at her without some
+symptoms of the sort he had tersely sketched to his friend; and yet, so
+pungent is the fascination of self-inflicted misery, he did look at her,
+during periods of study, often for three or four minutes at a stretch.
+His expression at such times indeed resembled that of one who has dined
+unwisely; but Dora Yocum was always too eagerly busy to notice it. He
+was almost never in her eye, but she was continually in his; moreover,
+as the banner pupil she was with hourly frequency an exhibit before the
+whole class.
+
+Ramsey found her worst of all when her turn came in "Declamation,"
+on Friday afternoons. When she ascended the platform, bobbed a little
+preliminary bow and began, "Listen, my children, and you shall hear,"
+Ramsey included Paul Revere and the Old North Church and the whole
+Revolutionary War in his antipathy, since they somehow appeared to
+be the property of the Teacher's Pet. For Dora held this post in
+"Declamation" as well as in everything else; here, as elsewhere, the
+hateful child's prowess surpassed that of all others; and the teacher
+always entrusted her with the rendition of the "patriotic selections":
+Dora seemed to take fire herself when she declared:
+
+     "The fate of a nation was riding that night;
+     And the spark struck out by that steed in his flight,
+     Kindled the land into flame with its heat."
+
+Ramsey himself was in the same section of declaimers, and performed
+next--a ghastly contrast. He gave a "selection from Shakespeare,"
+assigned by the teacher; and he began this continuous misfortune by
+stumbling violently as he ascended the platform, which stimulated a
+general giggle already in being at the mere calling of his name. All of
+the class were bright with happy anticipation, for the miserable Ramsey
+seldom failed their hopes, particularly in "Declamation." He faced them,
+his complexion wan, his expression both baleful and horrified; and he
+began in a loud, hurried voice, from which every hint of intelligence
+was excluded:
+
+"Most pottent, grave, and rev--"
+
+The teacher tapped sharply on her desk, and stopped him. "You've
+forgotten to bow," she said. "And don't say 'pottent.' The word is
+'potent'."
+
+Ramsey flopped his head at the rear wall of the room, and began again:
+
+"Most pottent potent gray and revenerd signers my very nobe and approve
+good masters that I have tan away this sole man's dutter it is mose true
+true I have marry dur the very headman frun tuv my fending hath this
+extent no more rude am I in speech--in speech--rude am I in speech--in
+speech--in speech--in speech--"
+
+He had stalled. Perhaps the fatal truth of that phrase, and some sense
+of its applicability to the occasion had interfered with the mechanism
+which he had set in operation to get rid of the "recitation" for him.
+At all events, the machine had to run off its job all at once, or it
+wouldn't run at all. Stopped, it stayed stopped, and backing off granted
+no new impetus, though he tried, again and again. "Hath this extent
+no more rude am I in speech--" He gulped audibly. "Rude rude rude am
+I--rude am I in speech--in speech--in speech. Rude am I in speech--"
+
+"Yes," the irritated teacher said, as Ramsey's failing voice continued
+huskily to insist upon this point. "I think you are!" And her nerves
+were a little soothed by the shout of laughter from the school--it was
+never difficult for teachers to be witty. "Go sit down, Ramsey, and do
+it after school."
+
+His ears roaring, the unfortunate went to his seat, and, among all
+the hilarious faces, one stood out--Dora Yocum's. Her laughter was
+precocious; it was that of a confirmed superior, insufferably adult--she
+was laughing at him as a grown person laughs at a child. Conspicuously
+and unmistakably, there was something indulgent in her amusement. He
+choked. Here was a little squirt of a high-school girl who would trot
+up to George Washington himself and show off around him, given the
+opportunity; and George Washington would probably pat her on the head,
+or give her a medal--or something. Well, let him! Ramsey didn't care.
+He didn't care for George Washington, or Paul Revere, or Shakespeare, or
+any of 'em. They could all go to the dickens with Dora Yocum. They were
+all a lot of smarties anyway and he hated the whole stew of 'em!
+
+There was one, however, whom he somehow couldn't manage to hate, even
+though this one officially seemed to be as intimately associated with
+Dora Yocum and superiority as the others were. Ramsey couldn't hate
+Abraham Lincoln, even when Dora was chosen to deliver the "Gettysburg
+Address" on the twelfth of February. Vaguely, yet reassuringly, Ramsey
+felt that Lincoln had resisted adoption by the intellectuals. Lincoln
+had said "Government of the people, by the people, for the people," and
+that didn't mean government by the teacher and the Teacher's Pet
+and Paul Revere and Shakespeare and suchlike; it meant government by
+everybody, and therefore Ramsey had as much to do with it as anybody
+else had. This was friendly; and he believed that if Abraham Lincoln
+could have walked into the schoolroom, Lincoln would have been as
+friendly with him as with Dora and the teacher herself. Beyond a doubt,
+Dora and the teacher _thought_ Lincoln belonged to them and their crowd
+of exclusives; they seemed to think they owned the whole United States;
+but Ramsey was sure they were mistaken about Abraham Lincoln.
+
+He felt that it was just like this little Yocum snippet to assume such a
+thing, and it made him sicker than ever to look at her.
+
+Then, one day, he noticed that her eye-winkers were stickin' out farther
+and farther.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+His discovery irritated him the more. Next thing, this ole Teacher's Pet
+would do she'd get to thinkin' she was pretty! If _that_ happened, well,
+nobody _could_ stand her! The long lashes made her eyes shadowy, and it
+was a fact that her shoulder blades ceased to insist upon notoriety; you
+couldn't tell where they were at all, any more. Her back seemed to be
+just a regular back, not made up of a lot of implements like shoulder
+blades and things.
+
+A contemptible thing happened. Wesley Bender was well known to be the
+most untidy boy in the class and had never shown any remorse for his
+reputation or made the slightest effort either to improve or to dispute
+it. He was content: it failed to lower his standing with his fellows
+or to impress them unfavourably. In fact, he was treated as one who has
+attained a slight distinction. At least, he owned one superlative, no
+matter what its quality, and it lifted him out of the commonplace. It
+helped him to become better known, and boys liked to be seen with him.
+But one day, there was a rearrangement of the seating in the schoolroom:
+Wesley Bender was given a desk next in front of Dora Yocum's; and within
+a week the whole room knew that Wesley had begun voluntarily to wash his
+neck--the back of it, anyhow.
+
+This was at the bottom of the fight between Ramsey Milholland and Wesley
+Bender, and the diplomatic exchanges immediately preceding hostilities
+were charmingly frank and unhyprocitical, although quite as mixed-up
+and off-the-issue as if they had been prepared by professional foreign
+office men. Ramsey and Fred Mitchell and four other boys waylaid young
+Bender on the street after school, intending jocosities rather than
+violence, but the victim proved sensitive. "You take your ole hands off
+o' me!" he said fiercely, as they began to push him about among them.
+
+"Ole dirty Wes!" they hoarsely bellowed and squawked, in their changing
+voices. "Washes his ears!"... "Washes his _neck!_"... "Dora Yocum told
+his mama to turn the hose on him!"... "Yay-ho! Ole dirty Wes tryin to be
+a duke!"
+
+Wesley broke from them and backed away, swinging his strapped books in
+a dangerous circle. "You keep off!" he warned them. "I got as much right
+to my pers'nal appearance as anybody!"
+
+This richly fed their humour, and they rioted round him, keeping outside
+the swinging books at the end of the strap. "Pers'nal appearance!"...
+"Who went and bought it for you, Wes?"... "Nobody bought it for him.
+Dora Yocum took and give him one!"
+
+"You leave ladies' names alone!" cried the chivalrous Wesley. "You ought
+to know better, on the public street, you--pups!"
+
+Here was a serious affront, at least to Ramsey Milholland's way
+of thinking; for Ramsey, also, now proved sensitive. He quoted his
+friends--"Shut up!"--and advanced toward Wesley. "You look here! Who you
+callin' 'pups'?"
+
+"Everybody!" Wesley hotly returned. "Everybody that hasn't got any
+more decency than to go around mentioning ladies' names on the public
+streets. Everybody that goes around mentioning ladies' names on the
+public streets are pups!"
+
+"They are, are they?" Ramsey as hotly demanded. "Well, you just look
+here a minute; my own father mentions my mother's name on the public
+streets whenever he wants to, and you just try callin' my father a pup,
+and you won't know what happened to you!"
+
+"What'll _you_ do about it?"
+
+"I'll put a new head on you," said Ramsey. "That's what I'll do, because
+anybody that calls my father or mother a pup--"
+
+"Oh, shut up! I wasn't talking about your ole father and mother. I said
+everybody that mentioned Dora Yocum's name on the public streets was
+a pup, and I mean it! Everybody that mentions Dora Yocum's name on the
+pub--"
+
+"Dora Yocum!" said Ramsey. "I got a perfect right to say it anywhere I
+want to. Dora Yocum, Dora Yocum, Dora Yocum!--"
+
+"All right, then you're a pup!"
+
+Ramsey charged upon him and received a suffocating blow full in the
+face, not from Mr. Bender's fist but from the solid bundle of books
+at the end of the strap. Ramsey saw eight or ten objectives instantly:
+there were Wesley Benders standing full length in the air on top of
+other Wesley Benders, and more Wesley Benders zigzagged out sideways
+from still other Wesley Benders; nevertheless, he found one of these and
+it proved to be flesh. He engaged it wildly at fisticuffs; pounded
+it upon the countenance and drove it away. Then he sat down upon the
+curbstone, and, with his dizzy eyes shut, leaned forward for the better
+accommodation of his ensanguined nose.
+
+Wesley had retreated to the other side of the street holding a grimy
+handkerchief to the midmost parts of his pallid face. "There, you ole
+damn pup!" he shouted, in a voice which threatened to sob. "I guess
+_that'll_ teach you to be careful how you mention Dora Yocum's name on
+the public streets!"
+
+At this, Ramsey made a motion as if to rise and pursue, whereupon Wesley
+fled, wailing back over his shoulder as he ran, "You wait till I ketch
+you out alone on the public streets and I'll--"
+
+His voice was lost in an outburst of hooting from his former friends,
+who sympathetically surrounded the wounded Ramsey. But in a measure,
+at least, the chivalrous fugitive had won his point. He was routed and
+outdone, yet what survived the day was a rumour, which became a sort of
+tenuous legend among those interested. There had been a fight over Dora
+Yocum, it appeared, and Ramsey Milholland had attempted to maintain
+something derogatory to the lady, while Wesley defended her as a
+knightly youth should. The something derogatory was left vague; nobody
+attempted to say just what it was, and the effects of the legend divided
+the schoolroom strictly according to gender.
+
+The boys, unmindful of proper gallantry, supported Ramsey on account of
+the way he had persisted in lickin' the stuffin' out of Wesley Bender
+after receiving that preliminary wallop from Wesley's blackjack
+bundle of books. The girls petted and championed Wesley; they talked
+outrageously of his conqueror, fiercely declaring that he ought to be
+arrested; and for weeks they maintained a new manner toward him. They
+kept their facial expressions hostile, but perhaps this was more for one
+another's benefit than for Ramsey's; and several of them went so far out
+of their way to find even private opportunities for reproving him that
+an alert observer might have suspected them to have been less indignant
+than they seemed--but not Ramsey. He thought they all hated him, and
+said he was glad of it.
+
+Dora was a non-partisan. The little prig was so diligent at her books
+she gave never the slightest sign of comprehending that there had been
+a fight about her. Having no real cognizance of Messrs. Bender and
+Milholland except as impediments to the advance of learning, she did not
+even look demure.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+With Wesley Bender, Ramsey was again upon fair terms before the winter
+had run its course; the two were neighbours and, moreover, were drawn
+together by a community of interests which made their reconciliation a
+necessity. Ramsey played the guitar and Wesley played the mandolin.
+
+All ill feeling between them died with the first duet of spring, yet the
+twinkling they made had no charm to soothe the savage breast of Ramsey
+whenever the Teacher's Pet came into his thoughts. He daydreamed a
+thousand ways of putting her in her place, but was unable to carry
+out any of them, and had but a cobwebby satisfaction in imagining
+discomfitures for her which remained imaginary. With a yearning so
+poignant that it hurt, he yearned and yearned to show her what she
+really was. "Just once!" he said to Fred Mitchell. "That's all I ask,
+just once. Just gimme one chance to show that girl what she really is.
+I guess if I ever get the chance she'll find out what's the matter with
+her, for _once_ in her life, anyway!" Thus it came to be talked about
+and understood and expected in Ramsey's circle, all male, that Dora
+Yocum's day was coming. The nature of the disaster was left vague, but
+there was no doubt in the world that retribution merely awaited its
+ideal opportunity. "You'll see!" said Ramsey. "The time'll come when
+that ole girl'll wish she'd moved o' this town before she ever got
+appointed monitor of _our_ class! Just you wait!"
+
+They waited, but conditions appeared to remain unfavourable
+indefinitely. Perhaps the great opportunity might have arrived if Ramsey
+had been able to achieve a startling importance in any of the "various
+divergent yet parallel lines of school endeavour"--one of the phrases by
+means of which teachers and principal clogged the minds of their unarmed
+auditors. But though he was far from being the dumb driven beast of
+misfortune that he seemed in the schoolroom, and, in fact, lived a
+double life, exhibiting in his out-of-school hours a remarkable example
+of "secondary personality"--a creature fearing nothing and capable
+of laughter; blue-eyed, fairly robust, and anything but dumb--he was
+nevertheless without endowment or attainment great enough to get him
+distinction.
+
+He "tried for" the high-school eleven, and "tried for" the nine, but
+the experts were not long in eliminating him from either of these
+competitions, and he had to content himself with cheering instead of
+getting cheered. He was by no manner of means athlete enough, or enough
+of anything else, to put Dora Yocum in her place, and so he and the
+great opportunity were still waiting in May, at the end of the second
+year of high school, when the class, now the "10 A," reverted to an old
+fashion and decided to entertain itself with a woodland picnic.
+
+They gathered upon the sandy banks of a creek, in the blue shade of big,
+patchy-barked sycamores, with a dancing sky on top of everything and
+gold dust atwinkle over the water. Hither the napkin-covered baskets
+were brought from the wagons and assembled in the shade, where they
+appeared as an attractive little meadow of white napery, and gave both
+surprise and pleasure to communities of ants and to other original
+settlers of the neighbourhood.
+
+From this nucleus or headquarters of the picnic, various expeditions
+set forth up and down the creek and through the woods that bordered it.
+Camera work was constant; spring wild flowers were accumulated by groups
+of girls who trooped through the woods with eager eyes searching the
+thickets; two envied boy fishermen established themselves upon a bank
+up-stream, with hooks and lines thoughtfully brought with them, and
+poles which they fashioned from young saplings. They took mussels from
+the shallows, for bait, and having gone to all this trouble, declined
+to share with friends less energetic and provident the perquisites and
+pleasures secured to themselves.
+
+Albert Paxton was another person who proved his enterprise. Having
+visited the spot some days before, he had hired for his exclusive use
+throughout the duration of the picnic an old rowboat belonging to a
+shanty squatter; it was the only rowboat within a mile or two and Albert
+had his own uses for it. Albert was the class lover and, after first
+taking the three chaperon teachers "out for a row," an excursion
+concluded in about ten minutes, he disembarked them; Sadie Clews stepped
+into the boat, a pocket camera in one hand, a tennis racket in the
+other; and the two spent the rest of the day, except for the luncheon
+interval, solemnly drifting along the banks or grounded on a shoal. Now
+and then Albert would row a few strokes, and at almost any time when the
+populated shore glanced toward them, Sadie would be seen photographing
+Albert, or Albert would be seen photographing Sadie, but the tennis
+racket remained an enigma. Oarsman and passenger appeared to have no
+conversation whatever--not once was either seen or heard to address a
+remark to the other; and they looked as placid as their own upside-down
+reflections in one of the still pools they slowly floated over. They
+were sixteen, and had been "engaged" more than two years.
+
+On the borders of the little meadow of baskets there had been deposited
+two black shapes, which remained undisturbed throughout the day, a
+closed guitar case and a closed mandolin case, no doubt containing each
+its proper instrument. So far as any use of these went they seemed to be
+of the same leisure class to which Sadie's tennis racket belonged, for
+when one of the teachers suggested music, the musicians proved shy.
+Wesley Bender said they hadn't learned to play anything much and,
+besides, he had a couple o' broken strings he didn't know as he could
+fix up; and Ramsey said he guessed it seemed kind o' too hot to play
+much. Joining friends, they organized a contest in marksmanship, the
+target being a floating can which they assailed with pebbles; and after
+that they "skipped" flat stones upon the surface of the water, then went
+to join a group gathered about Willis Parker and Heinie Krusemeyer.
+
+No fish had been caught, a lack of luck crossly attributed by the
+fishermen to the noise made by constant advice on the part of their
+attendant gallery. Messrs. Milholland, Bender, and the other rock
+throwers came up shouting, and were ill received.
+
+"For heaven's sakes," Heinie Krusemeyer demanded, "can't you shut up?
+Here we just first got the girls to keep their mouths shut a minute and
+I almost had a big pickerel or something on my hook, and here you got
+to up and yell so he chases himself away! Why can't nobody show a little
+sense sometimes when they ought to?"
+
+"I should say so!" his comrade exclaimed. "If people would only just
+take and think of all the trouble we been to, it seems funny somebody
+couldn't let us have half a chance to get a few good fish. What chance
+they got to bite with a lot o' _girls_ gabbin' away, and then, just as
+we get 'em quieted down, all you men got to come bustin' up here yellin'
+your heads off. A fish isn't goin' to bite when he can't even hear
+himself think! Anybody ought to know that much."
+
+But the new arrivals hooted. _"Fish!"_ Ramsey vociferated. "I'll bet
+a hundred dollars there hasn't been even a minny in this creek for the
+last sixty years!"
+
+"There is, too!" said Heinie, bitterly. "But I wouldn't be surprised
+there wouldn't be no longer if you got to keep up this noise. If you'd
+shut up just a minute you could see yourself there's fish here."
+
+In whispers several of the tamed girls at once heartily corroborated
+this statement, whereupon the newcomers ceased to gibe and consented to
+silence. Ramsey leaned forth over the edge of the overhanging bank,
+a dirt precipice five feet above the water, and peered into the
+indeterminable depths below. The pool had been stirred, partly by the
+inexpert pokings of the fishermen and partly by small clods and bits
+of dirt dislodged from above by the feet of the audience. The water,
+consequently, was but brownly translucent and revealed its secrets
+reluctantly; nevertheless certain dim little shapes had been observed
+to move within it, and were still there. Ramsey failed to see them at
+first.
+
+"Where's any ole fish?" he inquired, scornfully.
+
+"Oh, my goodness!" Heinie Krusemeyer moaned. "_Can't_ you shut up?"
+
+"Look!" whispered the girl who stood nearest to Ramsey. She pointed.
+"There's one. Right down there by Willis's hook. Don't you see him?"
+
+Ramsey was impressed enough to whisper. "Is there? I don't see him. I
+can't--"
+
+The girl came closer to him, and, the better to show him, leaned out
+over the edge of the bank, and, for safety in maintaining her balance,
+rested her left hand upon his shoulder while she pointed with her right.
+Thereupon something happened to Ramsey. The touch upon his shoulder was
+almost nothing, and he had never taken the slightest interest in Milla
+Rust (to whom that small warm hand belonged), though she was the class
+beauty, and long established in the office. Now, all at once, a peculiar
+and heretofore entirely unfamiliar sensation suddenly became important
+in the upper part of his chest. For a moment he held his breath, an
+involuntary action;--he seemed to be standing in a shower of flowers.
+
+"Don't you see it, Ramsey?" Milla whispered. "It's a great big one. Why,
+it must be as long as--as your shoe! Look!"
+
+Ramsey saw nothing but the thick round curl on Milla's shoulder. Milla
+had a group of curls on each of her shoulders, for she got her modes at
+the Movies and had that sort of prettiness: large, gentle, calculating
+eyes, and a full, softly modelled face, implacably sweet. Ramsey was
+accustomed to all this charm, and Milla had never before been of more
+importance to him than an equal weight of school furniture--but all at
+once some magic had enveloped her. That curl upon the shoulder
+nearest him was shot with dazzling fibres of sunshine. He seemed to be
+trembling.
+
+"I don't see it," he murmured, huskily, afraid that she might remove her
+hand. "I can't see any fish, Milla."
+
+She leaned farther out over the bank. "Why, there, goosie!" she
+whispered. "Right there."
+
+"I can't see it."
+
+She leaned still farther, bending down to point. "Why right th--"
+
+At this moment she removed her hand from his shoulder, though
+unwillingly. She clutched at him, in fact, but without avail. She had
+been too amiable.
+
+A loud shriek was uttered by throats abler to vocalize, just then, than
+Milla's, for in her great surprise she said nothing whatever--the shriek
+came from the other girls as Milla left the crest of the overhanging
+bank and almost horizontally disappeared into the brown water. There
+was a tumultuous splash, and then of Milla Rust and her well-known
+beautifulness there was nothing visible in the superficial world, nor
+upon the surface of that creek. The vanishment was total.
+
+"_Save_ her!"
+
+Several girls afterward admitted having used this expression, and little
+Miss Floy Williams, the youngest and smallest member of the class, was
+unable to deny that she had said, "Oh, God!" Nothing could have been
+more natural, and the matter need not have been brought before her with
+such insistence and frequency, during the two remaining years of her
+undergraduate career.
+
+Ramsey was one of those who heard this exclamation, later so famous,
+and perhaps it was what roused him to heroism. He dived from the bank,
+headlong, and the strange thought in his mind was "I guess _this_'ll
+show Dora Yocum!" He should have been thinking of Milla, of course, at
+such a time, particularly after the little enchantment just laid upon
+him by Milla's touch and Milla's curls; and he knew well enough that
+Miss Yocum was not among the spectators. She was half a mile away, as
+it happened, gathering "botanical specimens" with one of the
+teachers--which was her idea of what to do at a picnic!
+
+Ramsey struck the water hard, and in the same instant struck something
+harder. Wesley Bender's bundle of books had given him no such shock
+as he received now, and if the creek bottom had not been of mud, just
+there, the top of his young head might have declined the strain. Half
+stunned, choking, spluttering he somehow floundered to his feet; and
+when he could get his eyes a little cleared of water he found himself
+wavering face to face with a blurred vision of Milla Rust. She had risen
+up out of the pond and stood knee deep, like a lovely drenched figure in
+a fountain.
+
+Upon the bank above them, Willis Parker was jumping up and down,
+gesticulating and shouting fiercely. "Now I guess you're satisfied our
+fishin' _is_ spoilt! Whyn't you listen me? I _told_ you it wasn't more'n
+three feet deep! I and Heinie waded all over this creek gettin' our
+bait. You're a pretty sight!"
+
+Of Milla he spoke unwittingly the literal truth. Even with her hair thus
+wild and sodden, Milla rose from immersion blushing and prettier than
+ever; and she was prettiest of all when she stretched out her hand
+helplessly to Ramsey and he led her up out of the waters. They had
+plenty of assistance to scramble to the top of the bank, and there Milla
+was surrounded and borne away with a great clacketing and tumult. Ramsey
+gave his coat into the hands of friends, who twisted the water out of
+it for him, while he sat upon the grass in the sun, rubbed his head, and
+experimented with his neck to see if it would "work." The sunshine was
+strong and hot; in half an hour he and his clothes were dry--or at least
+"dry enough," as he said, and except for some soreness of head and neck,
+and the general crumpledness of his apparel, he seemed to be in all
+ways much as usual when shouts and whistlings summoned all the party
+to luncheon at the rendezvous. The change that made him different was
+invisible.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+The change in Ramsey was invisible, and yet something must have been
+seen, for everyone appeared to take it for granted that he was to
+sit next to Milla at the pastoral meal. She herself understood it,
+evidently, for she drew in her puckered skirts and without any words
+make a place for him beside her as he driftingly approached her,
+affecting to whistle and keeping his eyes on the foliage overhead. He
+still looked upward, even in the act of sitting down.
+
+"Squirrel or something," he said, feebly, as if in explanation.
+
+"Where?" Milla asked.
+
+"Up there on a branch." He accepted a plate from her (she had provided
+herself with an extra one), but he did not look at it or her. "I'm not
+just exactly sure it's a squirrel," he said. "Kind of hard to make out
+exactly what it is." He continued to keep his eyes aloft, because he
+imagined that all of the class were looking at him and Milla, and he
+felt unable to meet such publicity. It was to him as if the whole United
+States had been scandalized to attention by this act of his in going
+to sit beside Milla; he gazed upward so long that his eyeballs became
+sensitive under the strain. He began to blink. "I can't make out whether
+it's a squirrel or just some leaves that kind o' got fixed like one,"
+he said. "I can't make out yet which it is, but I guess when there's a
+breeze, if it's a squirrel he'll prob'ly hop around some then, if he's
+alive or anything."
+
+It had begun to seem that his eyes must remain fixed in that upward
+stare forever; he wanted to bring them down, but could not face the
+glare of the world. So the fugitive ostrich is said to bury his head in
+the sand; he does it, not believing himself thereby hidden but trying to
+banish from his own cognizance terrible facts which his unsheltered eyes
+have seemed to reveal. So, too, do nervous children seek to bury their
+eyes under pillows, and nervous statesmen theirs under oratory. Ramsey's
+ostrichings can happen to anybody. But finally the brightness of the sky
+between the leaves settled matters for him; he sneezed, wept, and for
+a little moment again faced his fellowmen. No one was looking at him;
+everybody except Milla had other things to do.
+
+Having sneezed involuntarily, he added a spell of coughing for which
+there was no necessity. "I guess I must be wrong," he muttered thickly.
+
+"What about, Ramsey?"
+
+"About it bein' a squirrel." With infinite timidity he turned his head
+and encountered a gaze so soft, so hallowed, that it disconcerted him,
+and he dropped a "drumstick" of fried chicken, well dotted with ants,
+from his plate. Scarlet he picked it up, but did not eat it. For the
+first time in his life he felt that eating fried chicken held in the
+fingers was not to be thought of. He replaced the "drumstick" upon his
+plate and allowed it to remain there untouched, in spite of a great
+hunger for it.
+
+Having looked down, he now found difficulty in looking up, but gazed
+steadily at his plate, and into this limited circle of vision came
+Milla's delicate and rosy fingers, bearing a gift. "There," she said in
+a motherly little voice. "It's a tomato mayonnaise sandwich and I made
+it myself. I want you to eat it, Ramsey."
+
+His own fingers approached tremulousness as he accepted the thick
+sandwich from her and conveyed it to his mouth. A moment later his soul
+filled with horror, for a spurt of mayonnaise dressing had caused a
+catastrophe the scene of which occupied no inconsiderable area of his
+right cheek; which was the cheek toward Milla. He groped wretchedly for
+his handkerchief but could not find it; he had lost it. Sudden death
+would have been relief; he was sure that after such grotesquerie Milla
+could never bear to have anything more to do with him; he was ruined.
+
+In his anguish he felt a paper napkin pressed gently into his hand; a
+soft voice said in his ear, "Wipe it off with this, Ramsey. Nobody's
+noticing."
+
+So this incredibly charitable creature was still able to be his friend,
+even after seeing him mayonnaised! Humbly marvelling, he did as she told
+him, but avoided all further risks. He ate nothing more.
+
+He sighed his first sigh of inexpressibleness, had a chill or so along
+the spine, and at intervals his brow was bedewed.
+
+Within his averted eyes there dwelt not the Milla Rust who sat beside
+him, but an iridescent, fragile creature who had become angelic.
+
+He spent the rest of the day dawdling helplessly about her; wherever she
+went he was near, as near as possible, but of no deliberate volition of
+his own. Something seemed to tie him to her, and Milla was nothing loth.
+He seldom looked at her directly, or for longer than an instant, and
+more rarely still did he speak to her except as a reply. What few
+remarks he ventured upon his own initiative nearly all concerned the
+landscape, which he commended repeatedly in a weak voice, as "kind of
+pretty," though once he said he guessed there might be bugs in the bark
+of a log on which they sat; and he became so immoderately personal as to
+declare that if the bugs had to get on anybody he'd rather they got on
+him than on Milla. She said that was "just perfectly lovely" of him,
+asked where he got his sweet nature, and in other ways encouraged him to
+continue the revelation, but Ramsey was unable to get forward with it,
+though he opened and closed his mouth a great many times in the effort
+to do so.
+
+At five o'clock everybody was summoned again to the rendezvous for a
+ceremony preliminary to departure: the class found itself in a large
+circle, standing, and sang "The Star Spangled Banner." Ordinarily, on
+such an open-air and out-of-school occasion, Ramsey would have joined
+the chorus uproariously with the utmost blatancy of which his vocal
+apparatus was capable; and most of the other boys expressed their humour
+by drowning out the serious efforts of the girls; but he sang feebly,
+not much more than humming through his teeth. Standing beside Milla,
+he was incapable of his former inelegancies and his voice was in a
+semi-paralyzed condition, like the rest of him.
+
+
+Opposite him, across the circle, Dora Yocum stood a little in advance of
+those near her, for of course she led the singing. Her clear and earnest
+voice was distinguishable from all others, and though she did not
+glance toward Ramsey he had a queer feeling that she was assuming more
+superiority than ever, and that she was icily scornful of him and Milla.
+The old resentment rose--he'd "show" that girl yet, some day!
+
+When the song was over, cheers were given for the class, "the good
+ole class of Nineteen Fourteen," the school, the teachers, and for the
+picnic, thus officially concluded; and then the picnickers, carrying
+their baskets and faded wild flowers and other souvenirs and burdens,
+moved toward the big "express wagons" which were to take them back into
+the town. Ramsey got his guitar case, and turned to Milla.
+
+"Well--" he said.
+
+"Well what, Ramsey?"
+
+"Well--g'bye."
+
+"Why, no," said Milla. "Anyways not yet. You can go back in the same
+wagon with me. It's going to stop at the school and let us out there,
+and then you could walk home with me if you felt like it. You could come
+all the way to our gate with me, I expect, unless you'd be late home for
+your supper."
+
+"Well--well, I'd be perfectly willing," Ramsey said. "Only I heard we
+all had to go back in whatever wagon we came out in, and I didn't come
+in the same wagon with you, so--"
+
+Milla laughed and leaned toward him a little. "I already 'tended to
+that," she said confidentially. "I asked Johnnie Fiske, that came out in
+my wagon, to go back in yours, so that makes room for you."
+
+"Well--then I guess I could do it." He moved toward the wagon with her.
+"I expect it don't make much difference one way or the other."
+
+"And you can carry my basket if you want to," she said, adding
+solicitously, "Unless it's too heavy when you already got your guitar
+case to carry, Ramsey."
+
+This thoughtfulness of hers almost overcame him; she seemed divine.
+He gulped, and emotion made him even pinker than he had been under the
+mayonnaise.
+
+"I--I'll be glad to carry the basket, too," he faltered. "It-it don't
+weigh anything much."
+
+"Well, let's hurry, so's we can get places together."
+
+Then, as she manoeuvred him through the little crowd about the wagon,
+with a soft push this way and a gentle pull that, and hurried him up the
+improvised steps and found a place where there was room for them to sit,
+Ramsey had another breathless sensation heretofore unknown to him.
+He found himself taken under a dovelike protectorship; a wonderful,
+inexpressible Being seemed to have become his proprietor.
+
+"Isn't this just perfectly lovely?" she said cozily, close to his ear.
+
+He swallowed, but found no words, for he had no thoughts; he was only an
+incoherent tumult. This was his first love.
+
+"Isn't it, Ramsey?" she urged. The cozy voice had just the hint of a
+reproach. "Don't you think it's just perfectly lovely, Ramsey?"
+
+"Yes'm."
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+The next morning Ramsey came into his father's room while Mr. Milholland
+was shaving, an hour before church time, and it became apparent that the
+son had someting on his mind, though for a while he said nothing.
+
+"Did you want anything, Ramsey?"
+
+"Well--"
+
+"Didn't want to borrow my razors?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+Mr. Milholland chuckled. "I hardly supposed so, seriously! Shaving is
+a great nuisance and the longer you keep away from it, the better. And
+when you do, you let my razors alone, young feller!"
+
+"Yes, sir." (Mr. Milholland's razors were safe, Ramsey had already
+achieved one of his own, but he practised the art in secret.) He passed
+his hand thoughtfully over his cheeks, and traces of white powder were
+left upon his fingers, whereupon he wiped his hand surreptitiously, and
+stood irresolutely waiting.
+
+"What is it you really want, Ramsey?"
+
+"I guess I don't want anything."
+
+"Money?"
+
+"No, sir. You gay' me some Friday."
+
+Mr. Milholland turned from his mirror and looked over the edge of a
+towel at his son. In the boy's eyes there was such a dumb agony of
+interrogation that the father was a little startled.
+
+"Why, what is it, Ramsey? Have you--" He paused, frowning and wondering.
+"You haven't been getting into some mess you want to tell me about, have
+you?"
+
+"No, sir."
+
+His tone was meek, but a mute distress lurked within it, bringing to the
+father's mind disturbing suspicions, and foreshadowings of indignation
+and of pity. "See here, Ramsey," he said, "if there's anything you want
+to ask me, or to tell me, you'd better out with it and get it over. Now,
+what is it?"
+
+"Well--it isn't anything."
+
+"Are you _sure?_"
+
+Ramsey's eyes fell before the severe and piercing gaze of his father.
+"Yes, sir."
+
+Mr. Milholland shook his head doubtfully; then, as his son walked slowly
+out of the room, he turned to complete his toilet in a somewhat uneasy
+frame of mind. Ramsey had undoubtedly wanted to say something to him and
+the boy's expression had shown that the matter in question was serious,
+distressing, and, it might be, even critical.
+
+In fact it was--to Ramsey. Having begun within only the last few hours
+to regard haberdashery as of vital importance, and believing his father
+to be possessed of the experience and authority lacking in himself,
+Ramsey had come to get him to settle a question which had been upsetting
+him badly, in his own room, since breakfast. What he wanted to know was:
+Whether it was right to wear an extra handkerchief showing out of the
+coat breast pocket or not, and, if it was right--ought the handkerchief
+to have a coloured border or to be plain white? But he had never before
+brought any such perplexities to his father, and found himself too
+diffident to set them forth.
+
+However, when he left the house, a few minutes later, he boldly showed
+an inch of purple border above the pocket; then, as he was himself about
+to encounter several old lady pedestrians, he blushed and thrust the
+handkerchief down into deep concealment. Having gone a block farther, he
+pulled it up again; and so continued to operate this badge of fashion,
+or unfashion, throughout the morning; and suffered a great deal thereby.
+
+Meantime, his father, rather relieved that Ramsey had not told his
+secret, whatever it was, dismissed the episode from his mind and joined
+Mrs. Milholland at the front door, ready for church.
+
+"Where's Ramsey?" he asked.
+
+"He's gone ahead," she answered, buttoning her gloves as they went
+along. "I heard the door quite a little while ago. Perhaps he went over
+to walk down with Charlotte and Vance. Did you notice how neat he looks
+this morning?"
+
+"Why, no, I didn't; not particularly. Does he?"
+
+"I never saw anything like it before," said Mrs. Milholland. "He went
+down in the cellar and polished his own shoes."
+
+"What!"
+
+"For about an hour, I think," she said, as one remaining calm before a
+miracle. "And he only has three neckties, but I saw him several times in
+each of them. He must have kept changing and changing. I wonder--" She
+paused.
+
+"I'm glad he's begun to take a little care of his appearance at last.
+Business men think a good deal about that, these days, when he comes to
+make his start in the world. I'll have to take a look at him and give
+him a word of praise. I suppose he'll be in the pew when we get there."
+
+But Ramsey wasn't in the pew; and Charlotte, his sister, and her
+husband, who were there, said they hadn't seen anything of him. It was
+not until the members of the family were on their way home after the
+services that they caught a glimpse of him.
+
+They were passing a church a little distance from their own; here the
+congregation was just emerging to the open, and among the sedate throng
+descending the broad stone steps appeared an accompanied Ramsey--and a
+red, red Ramsey he was when he beheld his father and mother and sister
+and brother-in-law staring up at him from the pavement below. They were
+kind enough not to come to an absolute halt, but passed slowly on, so
+that he was just able to avoid parading up the street in front of
+them. The expressions of his father, mother, and sister were of a
+dumfoundedness painful to bear, while such lurking jocosity as that
+apparent all over his brother-in-law no dignified man should either
+exhibit or be called upon to ignore.
+
+In hoarse whispers, Mrs. Milholland chided her husband for an
+exclamation he had uttered. "John! On Sunday! You ought to be ashamed."
+
+"I couldn't help it," he exclaimed. "Who on earth is his clinging vine?
+Why, she's got _lavender_ tops on her shoes and--"
+
+"Don't look round!" she warned him sharply. "Don't--"
+
+"Well, what's he doing at a Baptist church? What's he fidgeting at his
+handkerchief about? Why can't he walk like people? Does he think it's
+obligatory to walk home from church anchored arm-in-arm like Swedes on a
+Sunday Out? Who _is_ this cow-eyed fat girl that's got him, anyhow?"
+
+"Hush! Don't look round again, John."
+
+"Never fear!" said her husband, having disobeyed. "They've turned off;
+they're crossing over to Bullard Street. Who is it?"
+
+"I think her name's Rust," Mrs. Milholland informed him. "I don't know
+what her father does. She's one of the girls in his class at school."
+
+"Well, that's just like a boy; pick out some putty-faced flirt to take
+to church!"
+
+"Oh, she's quite pretty--in that way!" said his wife, deprecatingly. "Of
+course that's the danger with public schools. It would be pleasanter if
+he'd taken a fancy to someone whose family belongs to our own circle."
+
+"'Taken a fancy'!" he echoed, hooting. "Why, he's terrible! He looked
+like a red-gilled goldfish that's flopped itself out of the bowl. Why,
+he--"
+
+"I _say_ I wish if he felt that he had to take girls anywhere," said
+Mrs. Milholland, with the primmest air of speaking to the point--"if
+this sort of thing _must_ begin, I wish he might have selected some
+nice girl among the daughters of our own friends, like Dora Yocum, for
+instance."
+
+Upon the spot she began to undergo the mortification of a mother who has
+expected her son, just out of infancy, to look about him with the eye of
+a critical matron of forty-five. Moreover, she was indiscreet enough
+to express her views to Ramsey, a week later, producing thus a scene of
+useless great fury and no little sound.
+
+"I do think it's in _very_ poor taste to see so much of any one girl,
+Ramsey," she said, and, not heeding his protest that he only walked home
+from school with Milla, "about every other day," and that it didn't seem
+any crime to him just to go to church with her a couple o' times, Mrs.
+Milholland went on: "But if you think you really _must_ be dangling
+around somebody quite this much--though what in the world you find to
+_talk_ about with this funny little Milla Rust you poor father says he
+really cannot see--and of course it seems very queer to us that you'd
+be willing to waste so much time just now when your mind ought to be
+entirely on your studies, and especially with such an absurd _looking_
+little thing--
+
+"No, you must listen, Ramsey, and let me speak now. What I meant was
+that we shouldn't be _quite_ so much distressed by your being seen with
+a girl who dressed in better taste and seemed to have some notion of
+refinement, though of course it's only natural she _wouldn't_, with a
+father who is just a sort of ward politician, I understand, and a mother
+we don't know, and of course shouldn't care to. But, oh, Ramsey! if you
+_had_ to make yourself so conspicuous why couldn't you be a little _bit_
+more fastidious? Your father wouldn't have minded nearly so much if it
+had been a self-respecting, intellectual girl. We both say that if you
+_must_ be so ridiculous at your age as to persist in seeing more of one
+girl than another, why, oh why, don't you go and see some really nice
+girl like Dora Yocum?"
+
+Ramsey was already dangerously distended, as an effect of the earlier
+part of her discourse, and the word "fastidious" almost exploded him;
+but upon the climax, "Dora Yocum," he blew up with a shattering report
+and, leaving fragments of incoherence ricocheting behind him, fled
+shuddering from the house.
+
+For the rest of the school term he walked home with Milla every
+afternoon and on Sundays appeared to have become a resolute Baptist. It
+was supposed (by the interested members of the high-school class) that
+Ramsey and Milla were "engaged." Ramsey sometimes rather supposed they
+were himself, and the dim idea gave him a sensation partly pleasant, but
+mostly apprehensive: he was afraid.
+
+He was afraid that the day was coming when he ought to kiss her.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+Vacation, in spite of increased leisure, may bring inconvenience to
+people in Ramsey's strange but not uncommon condition. At home his
+constant air was that of a badgered captive plaintively silent under
+injustice; and he found it difficult to reply calmly when asked where
+he was going--an inquiry addressed to him, he asserted, every time he
+touched his cap, even to hang it up!
+
+The amount of evening walking he did must also have been a trial to his
+nerves, on account of fatigue, though the ground covered was not vast.
+Milla's mother and father were friendly people but saw no reason
+to "move out of house and home," as Mr. Rust said, when Milla had
+"callers"; and on account of the intimate plan of their small dwelling
+a visitor's only alternative to spending the evening with Mr. and Mrs.
+Rust as well as with Milla, was to invite her to "go out walking."
+
+Evening after evening they walked and walked and walked, usually in
+company--at perhaps the distance of half a block--with Albert Paxton and
+Sadie Clews, though Ramsey now and then felt disgraced by having fallen
+into this class; for sometimes it was apparent that Albert casually had
+his arm about Sadie's waist. This allured Ramsey somewhat, but terrified
+him more. He didn't know how such matters were managed.
+
+Usually the quartet had no destination; they just went "out walking"
+until ten o'clock, when both girls had to be home--and the boys did,
+too, but never admitted it. On Friday evenings there was a "public
+open-air concert" by a brass band in a small park, and the four were
+always there. A political speechmaker occupied the bandstand one night,
+and they stood for an hour in the midst of the crowd, listening vaguely.
+
+The orator saddled his politics upon patriotism. "Do you intend to let
+this glorious country go to wrack and ruin, oh, my good friends," he
+demanded, "or do you intend to save her? Look forth upon this country of
+ours, I bid you, oh, my countrymen, and tell me what you see. You see
+a fair domain of forest, mountain, plain, and fertile valleys, sweeping
+from ocean to ocean. Look from the sturdy rocks of old New England,
+pledged to posterity by the stern religious hardihood of the Pilgrim
+Fathers, across the corn-bearing midland country, that land of milk
+and honey, won for us by the pluck and endurance of the indomitable
+pioneers, to where in sunshine roll the smiling Sierras of golden
+California, given to our heritage by the unconquerable energy of those
+brave men and women who braved the tomahawk on the Great Plains, the
+tempest, of Cape Horn, and the fevers of Panama, to make American soil
+of El Dorado! America! Oh, my America, how glorious you stand! Country
+of Washington and Valley Forge, out of what martyrdoms hast thou arisen!
+Country of Lincoln in his box at Ford's theatre, his lifeblood staining
+to a brighter, holier red the red, white, and blue of the Old Flag!
+Always and always I see the Old Flag fluttering the more sacredly
+encrimsoned in the breeze for the martyrs who have upheld it! Always I
+see that Old Flag--"
+
+Milla gave Ramsey's arm, within her own, a little tug. "Come on," she
+said. "Sade says she don't want to hang around here any longer. It's
+awful tiresome. Let's go."
+
+He consented, placidly. The oration meant nothing to him and stirred no
+one in the audience. The orator was impassioned; he shouted himself into
+coughing fits, gesticulated, grew purple; he was so hot that his
+collar caved in and finally swooned upon his neck in soggy exhaustion,
+prostrate round his thunderings. Meanwhile, the people listened with an
+air of patience, yawning here and there, and gradually growing fewer. It
+was the old, old usual thing, made up of phrases that Ramsey had heard
+dinning away on a thousand such occasions, and other kinds of occasions,
+until they meant to him no more than so much sound. He was bored, and
+glad to leave.
+
+"Kind o' funny," he said, as they sagged along the street at their usual
+tortoise gait.
+
+"What is it, Ramsey?"
+
+"Seems kind o' funny they never have anything to say any one can
+take any interest in. Always the same ole whoopety-whoop about George
+Washington and Pilgrim Fathers and so on. I bet five dollars before
+long we'd of heard him goin' on about our martyred Presidents, William
+McKinley and James A. Garfield and Benjamin Harrison and all so on, and
+then some more about the ole Red, White, and Blue. Don't you wish they'd
+_quit_, sometimes, about the 'Ole Flag'?"
+
+"I dunno," said Milla. "I wasn't listening any at all. I hate speeches."
+
+"Well, I could _stand_ 'em," Ramsey said, more generously, "if they'd
+ever give anybody a little to think about. What's the use always
+draggin' in George Warshington and the Ole Flag? And who wants to
+hear any more ole truck about 'from ole rocky New England to golden
+California,' and how big and fine the United States is and how it's the
+land of the Free and all that? Why don't they ever say anything new?
+That's what I'd like to know."
+
+Milla laughed, and when he asked why, she told him she'd never heard
+him talk so much "at one stretch." "I guess that speech got you kind of
+wound up," she said. "Let's talk about something different."
+
+"I just soon," he agreed. And so they walked on in silence, which
+seemed to suit Milla. She hung weightily upon his arm, and they dawdled,
+drifting from one side of the pavement to the other as they slowly
+advanced. Albert and Sadie, ahead of them, called "good-night" from a
+corner, before turning down the side street where Sadie lived; and then,
+presently, Ramsey and Milla were at the latter's gate. He went in with
+her, halting at the front steps.
+
+"Well, g'night, Milla," he said. "Want to go out walking to-morrow
+night? Albert and Sadie are."
+
+"I can't to-morrow night," she told him with obvious regret. "Isn't it
+the worst luck! I got an aunt comin' to visit from Chicago, and she's
+crazy about playing 'Five Hundred,' and Mama and Papa said I haf to stay
+in to make four to play it. She's liable to be here three or four days,
+and I guess I got to be around home pretty much all the time she's here.
+It's the worst luck!"
+
+He was doleful, but ventured to be literary. "Well, what can't be helped
+must be endured. I'll come around when she's gone."
+
+He moved as if to depart, but she still retained his arm and did not
+prepare to relinquish it.
+
+"Well--" he said.
+
+"Well what, Ramsey?"
+
+"Well--g'night."
+
+She glanced up at the dark front of the house. "I guess the family's
+gone to bed," she said, absently.
+
+"I s'pose so."
+
+"Well, good-night, Ramsey." She said this but still did not release his
+arm, and suddenly, in a fluster, he felt that the time he dreaded had
+come. Somehow, without knowing where, except that it was somewhere upon
+what seemed to be a blurred face too full of obstructing features, he
+kissed her.
+
+She turned instantly away in the darkness, her hands over her cheeks;
+and in a panic Ramsey wondered if he hadn't made a dreadful mistake.
+
+"S'cuse me!" he said, stumbling toward the gate. "Well, I guess I got to
+be gettin' along back home."
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+He woke in the morning to a great self-loathing: he had kissed a girl.
+Mingled with the loathing was a curious pride in the very fact that
+caused the loathing, but the pride did not last long. He came downstairs
+morbid to breakfast, and continued this mood afterward. At noon Albert
+Paxton brought him a note which Milla had asked Sadie to ask Albert to
+give him.
+
+Dearie: I am just wondering if you thought as much about something so
+sweet that happened last night as I did you know what. I think it was
+the sweetest thing. I send you one with this note and I hope you will
+think it is a sweet one. I would give you a real one if you were here
+now and I hope you would think it was sweeter still than the one I put
+in this note. It is the sweetest thing now you are mine and I am yours
+forever kiddo. If you come around about friday eve it will be all right.
+aunt Jess will be gone back home by then so come early and we will get
+Sade and Alb and go to the band Concert. Don't forget what I said about
+my putting something sweet in this note, and I hope you will think it is
+a sweet one but not as sweet as the _real_ sweet one I would like to--
+
+At this point Ramsey impulsively tore the note into small pieces. He
+turned cold as his imagination projected a sketch of his mother in
+the act of reading this missive, and of her expression as she read the
+sentence: "It is the sweetest thing now you are mine and I am yours
+forever kiddo." He wished that Milla hadn't written "kiddo." She called
+him that, sometimes, but in her warm little voice the word seemed not at
+all what it did in ink. He wished, too, that she hadn't said she was his
+forever.
+
+Suddenly he was seized with a horror of her.
+
+Moisture broke out heavily upon him; he felt a definite sickness, and,
+wishing for death, went forth upon the streets to walk and walk. He
+cared not whither, so that his feet took him in any direction away from
+Milla, since they were unable to take him away from himself--of whom he
+had as great a horror. Her loving face was continually before him, and
+its sweetness made his flesh creep. Milla had been too sweet.
+
+When he met or passed people, it seemed to him that perhaps they were
+able to recognize upon him somewhere the marks of his low quality.
+"Softy! Ole sloppy fool!" he muttered, addressing himself. "Slushy ole
+mush!... _Spooner!_" And he added, "Yours forever, kiddo!" Convulsions
+seemed about to seize him.
+
+Turning a corner with his head down, he almost charged into Dora Yocum.
+She was homeward bound from a piano lesson, and carried a rolled leather
+case of sheet music--something he couldn't imagine Milla carrying--and
+in her young girl's dress, which attempted to be nothing else, she
+looked as wholesome as cold spring water. Ramsey had always felt
+that she despised him and now, all at once, he thought that she was
+justified. Leper that he had become, he was unworthy to be even touching
+his cap to her! And as she nodded and went briskly on, he would have
+given anything to turn and walk a little way with her, for it seemed to
+him that this might fumigate his morals. But he lacked the courage, and,
+besides, he considered himself unfit to be seen walking with her.
+
+He had a long afternoon of anguishes, these becoming most violent when
+he tried to face the problem of his future course toward Milla. He did
+not face it at all, in fact, but merely writhed, and had evolved nothing
+when Friday evening was upon him and Milla waiting for him to take her
+to the "band concert" with "Alb and Sade." In his thoughts, by that
+time, this harmless young pair shared the contamination of his own
+crime, and he regarded them with aversion; however, he made shift to
+seek a short interview with Albert, just before dinner.
+
+"I got a pretty rotten headache, and my stomach's upset, too," he said,
+drooping upon the Paxton's fence. "I been gettin' worse every minute.
+You and Sadie go by Milla's, Albert, and tell her if I'm not there by
+ha'-pas'-seven, tell her not to wait for me any longer."
+
+"How do you mean 'wait'?" Albert inquired. "You don't expect her to come
+pokin' along with Sadie and me, do you? She'll keep on sittin' there at
+home just the same, because she wouldn't have anything else to do, if
+you don't come like she expects you to. She hasn't got any way to _stop_
+waitin'!"
+
+At this, Ramsey moaned, without affectation. "I don't expect I _can_,
+Albert," he said. "I'd like to if I could, but the way it looks now,
+you tell her I wouldn't be much surprised maybe I was startin' in with
+typhoid fever or pretty near anything at all. You tell her I'm pretty
+near as disappointed as she's goin' to be herself, and I'd come if I
+could--and I _will_ come if I get a good deal better, or anything--but
+the way it's gettin' to look now, I kind o' feel as if I might be
+breaking out with something any minute." He moved away, concluding,
+feebly: "I guess I better crawl on home, Albert, while I'm still able
+to walk some. You tell her the way it looks now I'm liable to be right
+sick."
+
+And the next morning he woke to the chafings of remorse, picturing a
+Milla somewhat restored in charm waiting hopefully at the gate, even
+after half-past seven, and then, as time passed and the sound of the
+distant horns came faintly through the darkness, going sadly to her
+room--perhaps weeping there. It was a picture to wring him with shame
+and pity, but was followed by another which electrified him, for out
+of school he did not lack imagination. What if Albert had reported his
+illness too vividly to Milla? Milla was so fond! What if, in her alarm,
+she should come here to the house to inquire of his mother about him?
+What if she told Mrs. Milholland they were "engaged"? The next moment
+Ramsey was projecting a conversation between his mother and Milla in
+which the latter stated that she and Ramsey were soon to be married;
+that she regarded him as already virtually her husband, and demanded to
+nurse him.
+
+In a panic he fled from the house before breakfast, going out by way of
+a side door, and he crossed back yards and climbed back fences to reach
+Albert Paxton the more swiftly. This creature, a ladies' man almost
+professionally, was found exercising with an electric iron and a pair of
+flannel trousers in a basement laundry, by way of stirring his appetite
+for the morning meal.
+
+"See here, Albert," his friend said breathlessly. "I got a favour. I
+want you to go over to Milla's--"
+
+"I'm goin' to finish pressin' these trousers," Albert interrupted. "Then
+I've got my breakfast to eat."
+
+"Well, you could do this first," said Ramsey, hurriedly. "It wouldn't
+hurt you to do me this little favour first. You just slip over and see
+Milla for me, if she's up yet, and if she isn't, you better wait around
+there till she is, because I want you to tell her I'm a whole lot better
+this morning. Tell her I'm pretty near practick'ly all right again,
+Albert, and I'll prob'ly write her a note or something right soon--or in
+a week or so, anyhow. You tell her--"
+
+"Well, you act pretty funny!" Albert exclaimed, fumbling in the pockets
+of his coat. "Why can't you go on over and tell her yourself?"
+
+"I would," said Ramsey. "I'd be perfectly willing to go only I got to
+get back home to breakfast."
+
+Albert stared. "Well, I got to go upstairs and eat my own breakfast in
+about a minute, haven't I? But just as it happens there wouldn't be any
+use your goin' over there, or me, either."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Milla ain't there," said Albert, still searching the pockets of his
+coat. "When we went by her house last night to tell her about your
+headache and stomach and all, why, her mother told us Milla'd gone up to
+Chicago yesterday afternoon with her aunt, and said she left a note for
+you, and she said if you were sick I better take it and give it to you.
+I was goin' to bring it over to your house after breakfast." He found
+it. "Here!"
+
+Ramsey thanked him feebly, and departed in a state of partial
+stupefaction, brought on by a glimpse of the instabilities of life. He
+had also, not relief, but a sense of vacancy and loss; for Milla, out of
+his reach, once more became mysteriously lovely.
+
+Pausing in an alley, he read her note.
+
+Dearie: Thought I ought to call you up but over the 'phone is just nix
+for explanations as Mama and Aunt Jess would hear everything and thought
+I might seem cold to you not saying anything sweet on account of them
+listening and you would wonder why I was so cold when telling you
+good-by for a wile maybe weeks. It is this way Uncle Purv wired Aunt
+Jess he has just taken in a big touring car on a debt and his vacation
+starts to-morrow so if they were going to take a trip they better start
+right way so Aunt Jess invited me. It is going to be a big trip up
+around the lakes and I have always wanted to go touring more than
+anything in the world stopping at hotels and all and Mama said I ought
+to it would be so splendid for my health as she thinks I am failing some
+lately. Now dearie I have to pack and write this in a hurry so you will
+not be disappointed when you come by for the B. C. to-night. Do not go
+get some other girl and take her for I would hate her and nothing in
+this world make me false for one second to my kiddo boy. I do not know
+just when home again as the folks think I better stay up there for a
+visit at Aunt Jess and Uncle Purvs home in Chicago after the trip is
+over. But I will think of you all the time and you must think of me
+every minute and believe your own dearie she will never no not for one
+second be false. So tell Sade and Alb good-by for me and do not be
+false to me any more than I would be to you and it will not be long till
+nothing more will interrupt our sweet friendship.
+
+As a measure of domestic prudence, Ramsey tore the note into irreparable
+fragments, but he did this slowly, and without experiencing any of the
+revulsion created by Milla's former missive.
+
+He was melancholy, aggrieved that she should treat him so.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+He never saw her again. She sent him a "picture postal" from Oconomowoc,
+Wisconsin, which his father disengaged from the family mail, one morning
+at breakfast, and considerately handed to him without audible comment.
+Upon it was written, _"Oh, you Ramsey!"_ This was the last of Milla.
+
+Just before school opened, in the autumn, Sadie Clews made some
+revelations. "Milla did like you," said Sadie. "After that time you
+jumped in the creek to save her she liked you better than any boy in
+town, and I guess if it wasn't for her cousin Milt up in Chicago she
+would of liked you the best anywhere. I guess she did, anyway, because
+she hadn't seen him for about a year then.
+
+"Well, that afternoon she went away I was over there and took in
+everything that was goin' on, only she made me promise on my word of
+honour I wouldn't even tell Albert. They didn't get any wire from her
+uncle about the touring car; it was her cousin Milt that jumped on the
+train and came down and fixed it all up for Milla to go on the trip, and
+everything. You see, Ramsey, she was turned back a couple of times in
+school before she came in our class and I don't exactly know how old
+she is and she don't _look_ old yet, but I'm pretty sure she's at least
+eighteen, and she might be over. Her mother kept tellin' her all the
+time you were just a kid, and didn't have anything to support her on,
+and lots of things like that. I didn't think such a great deal of this
+Milt's looks, myself, but he's anyway twenty-one years old, and got a
+good position, and all their family seem to think he's just fine! It
+wasn't his father that took in the touring car on debt, like she said
+she was writing to you; it was Milt himself. He started out in business
+when he was only fifteen years old, and this trip he was gettin' up for
+his father and mother and Milla was the first vacation he ever took.
+Well, of course she wouldn't like my tellin' you, but I can't see the
+harm of it, now everything's all over."
+
+"All--all over? You mean Milla's going to be--to be married?"
+
+"She already is," said Sadie. "They got married at her Aunt Jess and
+Uncle Purv's house, up in Chicago, last Thursday. Yes, sir; that quiet
+little Milla's a regular old married woman by this time, I expect,
+Ramsey!"
+
+When he got over the shock, which was not until the next day, one
+predominating feeling remained: it was a gloomy pride--a pride in his
+proven maturity. He was old enough, it appeared, to have been the same
+thing as engaged to a person who was now a Married Woman. His manner
+thenceforth showed an added trace of seriousness and self-consideration.
+
+Having recovered his equipoise and something more, he entirely forgot
+that moment of humble admiration he had felt for Dora Yocum on the day
+of his flattest prostration. When he saw her sitting in the classroom,
+smiling brightly up at the teacher, the morning of the school's opening
+in the autumn, all his humility had long since vanished and she appeared
+to him not otherwise than as the scholar whose complete proficiency had
+always been so irksome to him.
+
+"Look at her!" he muttered to himself. "Same ole Teacher's Pet!"
+
+Now and then, as the days and seasons passed, and Dora's serene progress
+continued, never checked or even flawed, there stirred within some
+lingerings of the old determination to "show" her; and he would conjure
+up a day-dream of Dora in loud lamentation, while he led the laughter of
+the spectators. But gradually his feelings about her came to be merely a
+dull oppression. He was tired of having to look at her (as he stated it)
+and he thanked the Lord that the time wouldn't be so long now until he'd
+be out of that ole school, and then all he'd have to do he'd just take
+care never to walk by her house; it was easy enough to use some other
+street when he had to go down-town.
+
+"The good ole class of Nineteen-Fourteen is about gone," he said to Fred
+Mitchell, who was still his most intimate friend when they reached the
+senior year. "Yes, sir; it's held together a good many years, Fred, but
+after June it'll be busted plum up, and I hope nobody starts a move to
+have any reunions. There's a good many members of the ole class that I
+can stand and there's some I can't, but there's one I just won't! If we
+ever did call a reunion, that ole Yocum girl would start in right away
+and run the whole shebang, and that's where I'd resign! You know, Fred,
+the thing _I_ think is the one biggest benefit of graduating from this
+ole school? It's never seein' Dora Yocum again."
+
+This was again his theme as he sat by the same friend's side, in the
+rear row of the class at Commencement, listening to the delivery of
+the Valedictory. "Thinks she's just sooblime, don't she!" he whispered
+morosely. "She wouldn't trade with the President of the United States
+right now. She prob'ly thinks bein' Valedictorian is more important than
+Captain of the State University Eleven. Never mind!" And here his tone
+became huskily jubilant. "Never mind! Just about a half-an-hour more
+and that's the last o' _you_, ole girl! Yes, sir, Fred; one thing we can
+feel pretty good over: this is where we get through with Dora Yocum!"
+
+Ramsey and Fred had arranged to room together at Greenfield, the seat
+of the state university, and they made the short journey in company the
+following September. They arrived hilarious, anticipating pleasurable
+excitements in the way of "fraternity" pledgings and initiations,
+encounters with sophomores, class meetings, and elections; and, also,
+they were not absolutely without interest in the matter of Girls, for
+the state university was co-educational, and it was but natural to
+expect in so broad a field, all new to them, a possible vision of
+something rather thrilling. They whispered cheerfully of all these
+things during the process of matriculation, and signed the registrar's
+book on a fresh page; but when Fred had written his name under Ramsey's,
+and blotted it, he took the liberty of turning over the leaf to examine
+some of the autographs of their future classmates, written on the other
+side. Then he uttered an exclamation, more droll than dolorous, though
+it affected to be wholly the latter; for the shock to Fred was by no
+means so painful as it was to his friend.
+
+Ramsey leaned forward and read the name indicated by Fred's forefinger.
+
+_Dora Yocum._
+
+...When they got back to their pleasant quarters at Mrs. Meig's, facing
+the campus, Ramsey was still unable to talk of anything except the
+lamentable discovery; nor were his companion's burlesquing efforts to
+console him of great avail, though Fred did become serious enough to
+point out that a university was different from a high school.
+
+"It's not like havin' to use one big room as a headquarters, you know,
+Ramsey. Everything's all split up, and she might happen not to be in a
+single of your classes."
+
+"You don't know my luck!" the afflicted boy protested. "I wish I'd gone
+to Harvard, the way my father wanted me to. Why, this is just the worst
+nuisance I ever struck! You'll see! She'll be in everything there is,
+just the way she was back home."
+
+He appeared to be corroborated by the events of the next day, when they
+attended the first meeting to organize the new class. The masculine
+element predominated, but Dora Yocum was elected vice-president. "You
+see?" Ramsey said. "Didn't I tell you? You see what happens?"
+
+But after that she ceased for a time to intrude upon his life, and he
+admitted that his harassment was less grave than he had anticipated.
+There were about five hundred students in the freshman class; he seldom
+saw her, and when he did it was not more than a distant glimpse of her
+on one of the campus paths, her thoughtful head bent over a book as
+she hurried to a classroom. This was bearable; and in the flattering
+agitations of being sought, and even hunted, by several "fraternities"
+simultaneously desirous of his becoming a sworn Brother, he almost
+forgot her. After a hazardous month the roommates fell into the arms of
+the last "frat" to seek them, and having undergone an evening of outrage
+which concluded with touching rhetoric and an oath taken at midnight,
+they proudly wore jewelled symbols on their breasts and were free to
+turn part of their attention to other affairs, especially the affairs of
+the Eleven.
+
+However, they were instructed by the older brethren of their Order,
+whose duty it was to assist in the proper manoeuvring of their young
+careers, that, although support of the 'varsity teams was important,
+they must neglect neither the spiritual nor the intellectual by-products
+of undergraduate doings. Therefore they became members of the college
+Y.M.C.A. and of the "Lumen Society."
+
+According to the charter which it had granted itself, the "Lumen
+Society" was an "Organization of male and female students"--so
+"advanced" was this university--"for the development of the powers of
+debate and oratory, intellectual and sociological progress, and
+the discussion of all matters relating to philosophy, metaphysics,
+literature, art, and current events." A statement so formidable was not
+without a hushing effect upon Messrs. Milholland and Mitchell; they went
+to their first "Lumen" meeting in a state of fear and came away little
+reassured.
+
+"I couldn't get up there," Ramsey declared, "I couldn't stand up there
+before all that crowd and make a speech, or debate in a debate, to save
+my soul and gizzard! Why, I'd just keel right over and haf to be carried
+out."
+
+"Well, the way I understand it," said Fred, "we can't get out of it.
+The seniors in the 'frat' said we had to join, and they said we couldn't
+resign, either, after we had joined. They said we just had to go through
+it, and after a while we'd get used to it and not mind it much."
+
+"_I_ will!" Ramsey insisted. "I couldn't any more stand up there on my
+feet and get to spoutin' about sociology and the radical metempsychorus
+of the metaphysical bazoozum than I could fly a flyin' machine. Why,
+I--"
+
+"Oh, that wasn't anything," Fred interrupted. "The only one that talked
+like that, he was that Blickens; he's a tutor, or something, and really
+a member of the faculty. Most o' the others just kind of blah-blahhed
+around, and what any of 'em tried to get off their chests hardly
+amounted to terribly much."
+
+"I don't care. I couldn't do it at _all!_"
+
+"Well, the way it looks to me," Fred observed, "we simply _got_ to! From
+what they tell me, the freshmen got to do more than anybody. Every other
+Friday night, it's all freshmen and nothin' else. You get a postal card
+on Monday morning in your mail, and it says 'Assignment' on it, and
+then it's got written underneath what you haf to do the next Friday
+night--oration or debate, or maybe just read from some old book or
+something. I guess we got to stand up there and _try_, anyway."
+
+"All right," said Ramsey. "If they want me to commit suicide they can
+send me one o' their ole 'Assignments.' I won't need to commit suicide,
+though, I guess. All I'll do, I'll just fall over in a fit, and stay in
+it."
+
+And, in truth, when he received his first "Assignment," one Monday
+morning, a month later, he seemed in a fair way to fulfil his prophecy.
+The attention of his roommate, who sat at a window of their study, was
+attracted by sounds of strangulation.
+
+"What on earth's the matter, Ramsey?"
+
+"Look! Look at _this!_"
+
+Fred took the card and examined it with an amazement gradually merging
+into a pleasure altogether too perceptible:
+
+ASSIGNMENT
+
+TWELVE-MINUTE DEBATE, CLASS OF 1918. _Subject, Resolved:_ That Germany
+is both legally and morally justified in her invasion of Belgium.
+
+(Debaters are notified that each will be held strictly to the following
+schedule: Affirmative, 4 min., first. Negative, 4 min., first. Affirm, 2
+min., second. Neg., 2 min., second.)
+
+Affirmative Negative R. MILHOLLAND, '18 D. YOCUM, '18
+
+Concluding his reading, which was oral, the volatile Mitchell made use
+of his voice in a manner of heathenish boisterousness, and presently
+reclined upon a lounge to laugh the better. His stricken comrade,
+meanwhile, recovered so far as to pace the floor. "I'm goin' to pack up
+and light out for home!" he declared, over and over. And even oftener
+he read and reread the card to make sure of the actuality of that fatal
+coincidence, "D. Yocum, '18."
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+"If I _could_ do it," he vociferated, "if I _could_ stand up there and
+debate one o' their darn ole debates in the first place--if I had the
+gall to even try it, why, my gosh! you don't suppose I'm goin' to get
+up there and argue with _that girl_, do you? That's a hot way to get
+an education: stand up there and argue with a girl before a couple o'
+hundred people! My _gosh!_"
+
+"You got to!" his prostrate companion cackled, weakly. "You can't get
+out of it. You're a goner, ole Buddy!"
+
+
+"I'll be sick. I'll be sick as a dog! I'll be sick as the sickest dog
+that ever--"
+
+"No use, ole man. The frat seniors'll be on the job. They'll know
+whether you're sick or not, and they'll have you there, right on the
+spot to the minute!"
+
+The prediction was accurate. The too fatherly "frat seniors" did all
+that Fred said they would, and more. For the honour of the "frat," they
+coached the desperate Ramsey in the technic of Lumen debate, told him
+many more things to say than could be said in six minutes, and produced
+him, despairing, ghastly, and bedewed, in the large hall of the Lumen
+Society at eight o'clock on Friday evening.
+
+Four other "twelve-minute debates" preceded his and the sound of these,
+in Ramsey's ears, was the sound of Gabriel practising on his horn in
+the early morning of Judgment Day. The members of the society sat, three
+rows deep, along the walls of the room, leaving a clear oblong of green
+carpet in the centre, where were two small desks, twenty feet apart, the
+rostrums of the debaters. Upon a platform at the head of the room sat
+dreadful seniors, the officers of the society, and, upon benches near
+the platform, the debaters of the evening were aligned. One of the
+fraternal seniors sat with sweltering Ramsey; and the latter, as his
+time relentlessly came nearer, made a last miserable squirm.
+
+"Look here, Brother Colburn, I got to get out o' here."
+
+"No, you don't, young fellow."
+
+"Yes, I do!" Ramsey whispered, passionately. "Honest, I do. Honest,
+Brother Colburn, I got to get a drink of water. I _got_ to!"
+
+"No. You can't."
+
+"Honest, Colburn, I _got_--"
+
+"Hush!"
+
+Ramsey grunted feebly, and cast his dilating eyes along the rows of
+faces. Most of them were but as blurs, swimming, yet he was aware (he
+thought) of a formidable and horrible impassive scrutiny of himself, a
+glare seeming to pierce through him to the back of the belt round his
+waist, so that he began to have fearful doubts about that belt, about
+every fastening and adjustment of his garments, about the expression of
+his countenance, and about many other things jumbling together in his
+consciousness. Over and over he whispered gaspingly to himself the
+opening words of the sentence with which Colburn had advised him to
+begin his argument. And as the moment of supreme agony drew close, this
+whispering became continuous: "In making my first appearance before
+this honor'ble membership I feel constrained to say in making my first
+appearance before this honor'ble membership I feel constrained to say in
+making my first appearance before this honor'ble mem--"
+
+...It had come. The chairman announced the subject of the fourth
+freshman twelve-minute debate; and Dora Yocum, hitherto unperceived
+by Ramsey, rose and went forward to one of the small desks in the open
+space, where she stood composedly, a slim, pretty figure in white.
+Members in Ramsey's neighbourhood were aware of a brief and hushed
+commotion, and of Colburn's fierce whisper, "You can't! You get up
+there!" And the blanched Ramsey came forth and placed himself at the
+other desk.
+
+He stood before the silent populace of that morgue, and it seemed to him
+that his features had forgotten that he was supposed to be their owner
+and in control of them; he felt that they were slipping all over his
+face, regardless of his wishes. His head, as a whole, was subject to
+an agitation not before known by him; it desired to move rustily in
+eccentric ways of its own devising; his legs alternately limbered and
+straightened under no direction but their own; and his hands clutched
+each other fiercely behind his back; he was not one cohesive person,
+evidently, but an assembled collection of parts which had relapsed each
+into its own individuality. In spite of them, he somehow contrived the
+semblance of a bow toward the chairman and the semblance of another
+toward Dora, of whom he was but hazily conscious. Then he opened his
+mouth, and, not knowing how he had started his voice going, heard it as
+if from a distance.
+
+"In making my first appearance before this honor'ble membership I feel
+restrained to say--" He stopped short, and thenceforward shook visibly.
+After a long pause, he managed to repeat his opening, stopped again,
+swallowed many times, produced a handkerchief and wiped his face, an act
+of necessity--then had an inspiration.
+
+"The subject assigned to me," he said, "is resolved that Germany is
+mor'ly and legally justified in Belgians--Belgiums! This subject was
+assigned to me to be the subject of this debate." He interrupted himself
+to gasp piteously; found breathing difficult, but faltered again: "This
+subject is the subject. It is the subject that was assigned to me on
+a postal card." Then, for a moment or so, he had a miraculous spurt of
+confidence, and continued rather rapidly: "I feel constrained to say
+that the country of Belgian--Belgium, I mean--this country has been
+constrained by the--invaded I mean--invaded by the imperial German
+Impire and my subject in this debate is whether it ought to or not, my
+being the infernative--affirmative, I mean--that I got to prove that
+Germany is mor'ly and legally justified. I wish to state that--"
+
+He paused again, lengthily, then struggled on. "I have been requested
+to state that the German Imp--Empire--that it certainly isn't right
+for those Dutch--Germans, I mean--they haven't got any more business in
+Belgium than I have myself, but I--I feel constrained to say that I had
+to accept whatever side of this debate I got on the postal card, and so
+I am constrained to take the side of the Dutch. I mean the Germans. The
+Dutch are sometimes called--I mean the Germans are sometimes called the
+Dutch in this country, but they aren't Dutch, though sometimes called
+Dutch in this country. Well, and so--so, well, the war began last August
+or about then, anyway, and the German army invaded the Belgian army.
+After they got there, the invasion began. First, they came around there
+and then they commenced invading. Well, what I feel constrained--"
+
+He came to the longest of all his pauses here, and the awful gravity of
+the audience almost suffocated him. "Well," he concluded, "it don't look
+right to me."
+
+"Four minutes!" the chairman announced, for Ramsey's pauses had worn
+away a great deal more of this terrible interval than had his eloquence.
+"Opening statement for the negative: Miss D. Yocum. Four minutes."
+
+As Dora began to speak, Ramsey experienced a little relief, but only
+a little--about the same amount of relief as that felt by a bridegroom
+when it is the bride's turn to "respond," not really relief at all, but
+merely the slight relaxation of a continuing strain. The audience now
+looked at Ramsey no more than people look at a bridegroom, but he failed
+to perceive any substantial mitigation of his frightful conspicuousness.
+He had not the remotest idea of what he had said in setting forth his
+case for Germany, and he knew that it was his duty to listen closely
+to Dora, in order to be able to refute her argument when his two-minute
+closing speech fell due but he was conscious of little more than his own
+condition. His legs had now gone wild beyond all devilry, and he had
+to keep shifting his weight from one to the other in order even to hope
+that their frenzy might escape general attention.
+
+He realized that Dora was speaking rapidly and confidently, and that
+somewhere in his ill-assembled parts lurked a familiar bit of him that
+objected to her even more than usual; but she had used half of her time,
+at least, before he was able to gather any coherent meaning from what
+she was saying. Even then he caught only a fragment, here and there,
+and for the rest--so far as Ramsey was concerned--she might as well have
+been reciting the Swedish alphabet.
+
+In spite of the rather startling feebleness of her opponent's statement,
+Dora went at her task as earnestly as if it were to confute some monster
+of casuistry. "Thus, having demonstrated that _all_ war is wrong," she
+said, approaching her conclusion, "it is scarcely necessary to point out
+that whatever the actual circumstances of the invasion, and whatever the
+status of the case in international law, or by reason of treaty, or the
+German oath to respect the neutrality of Belgium, which of course was
+grossly and dishonorably violated--all this, I say, ladies and gentlemen
+of the Lumen Society, all this is beside the point of morals. Since, as
+I have shown, _all_ war is wrong, the case may be simplified as follows:
+All war is morally wrong. _Quod erat demonstrandum_. Germany invaded
+Belgium. Invasion is war. Germany, therefore, did moral wrong. Upon
+the legal side, as I began by pointing out, Germany confessed in the
+Reichstag the violation of law. Therefore, Germany was justified in the
+invasion neither morally nor legally; but was both morally and legally
+wrong and evil. Ladies and gentlemen of the Lumen Society, I await the
+refutation of my opponent!"
+
+Her opponent appeared to be having enough trouble with his legs, without
+taking any added cares upon himself in the way of refutations. But the
+marvellous Dora had calculated the length of her statement with such
+nicety that the chairman announced "Four minutes," almost upon the
+instant of her final syllable; and all faces turned once more to
+the upholder of the affirmative. "Refutation and conclusion by the
+affirmative," said the chairman. "Mr. R. Milholland. Two minutes."
+
+Therewith, Ramsey coughed as long as he could cough, and when he felt
+that no more should be done in this way, he wiped his face--again an act
+of necessity--and quaveringly began:
+
+"Gentlemen and ladies, or ladies and gentlemen, in making the refutation
+of my opponent, I feel that--I feel that hardly anything more ought to
+be said."
+
+He paused, looked helplessly at his uncontrollable legs, and resumed:
+"I am supposed to make the reputa--the refutation of my opponent, and I
+feel that I ought to say quite a good deal more. In the first place, I
+feel that the invasion has taken place. I am supposed--anyhow I got a
+postal card that I am supposed to be here to-night. Well, in talking
+over this matter with a couple of seniors, they told me I was supposed
+to claim this invasion was mor'ly and legally all right. Well--" Here,
+by some chance, the recollection of a word of Dora's flickered into his
+chaotic mind, and he had a brighter moment. "My opponent said she proved
+all war is wrong--or something like that, anyhow. She said she proved it
+was wrong to fight, no matter what. Well, if she wasn't a girl, anybody
+that wanted to get her into a fight could prob'ly do it." He did not
+add that he would like to be the person to make the experiment (if Dora
+weren't a girl), nor did the thought enter his mind until an hour or so
+later. "Well," he added, "I suppose there is little more to be said."
+
+He was so right, in regard to his own performance, at least, that,
+thereupon drying up utterly, he proceeded to stand, a speechless
+figure in the midst of a multitudinous silence, for an eternity lasting
+forty-five seconds. He made a racking effort, and at the end of this
+epoch found words again. "In making my argument in this debate, I would
+state that--"
+
+"Two minutes!" said the chairman. "Refutation by the negative. Miss D.
+Yocum. Two minutes."
+
+"I waive them," said Dora, primly. "I submit that the affirmative has
+not refuted the argument of the negative."
+
+"Very well." With his gavel the chairman sharply tapped the desk before
+him, "The question is now before the house. 'Resolved, that Germany
+is both morally and legally justified in her invasion of Belgium.' All
+those in favour of the--"
+
+But here there was an interruption of a kind never before witnessed
+during any proceedings of the Lumen Society. It came from neither of
+the debaters, who still remained standing at their desks until the
+vote settling their comparative merits in argument should be taken. The
+interruption was from the rear row of seats along the wall, where
+sat new members of the society, freshmen not upon the program for the
+evening. A loud voice was heard from this quarter, a loud but nasal
+voice, shrill as well as nasal, and full of a strange hot passion. "Mr.
+Chairman!" it cried. "Look-a-here, Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman, I demand
+to be heard! You gotta gimme my say, Mr. Chairman! I'm a-gunna have my
+_say_! You look-a-here, Mr. Chairman!"
+
+Shocked by such a breach of order, and by the unseemly violence of the
+speaker, not only the chairman but everyone else looked there. A short,
+strong figure was on its feet, gesticulating fiercely; and the head
+belonging to it was a large one with too much curly black hair, a flat,
+swarthy face, shiny and not immaculately shaven; there was an impression
+of ill-chosen clothes, too much fat red lip, too much tooth, too much
+eyeball. Fred Mitchell, half-sorrowing, yet struggling to conceal tears
+of choked mirth over his roommate's late exhibition, recognized this
+violent interrupter as one Linski, a fellow freshman who sat next to him
+in one of his classes. "What's _that_ cuss up to?" Fred wondered, and so
+did others. Linski showed them.
+
+He pressed forward, shoving himself through the two rows in front of him
+till he emerged upon the green carpet of the open space, and as he came,
+he was cyclonic with words.
+
+"You don't put no such stuff as this over, I tell you!" he shouted in
+his hot, nasal voice. "This here's a free country, and you call yourself
+a debating society, do you? Lemme tell you _I_ belong to a debating
+society in Chicago, where I come from, and them fellas up there, they'd
+think they'd oughta be shot fer a fake like what you people are
+tryin' to put over, here, to-night. I come down here to git some more
+education, and pay fer it, too, in good hard money I've made sweatin'
+in a machine shop up there in Chicago; but if _this_ is the kind of
+education I'm a-gunna git, I better go on back there. You call this a
+square debate, do you?"
+
+He advanced toward the chairman's platform, shaking a frantic fist.
+"Well, if you do, you got another think comin', my capitalis' frien'!
+you went and give out the question whether it's right fer Choimuny to go
+through Belgium; and what do you do fer the Choimun side? You pick out
+this here big stiff"--he waved his passionate hand at the paralyzed
+Ramsey--"you pick out a boob like that for the Choimun side, a poor fish
+that gits stagefright so bad he don't know whether he's talkin' or dead;
+or else he fakes it; because he's a speaker so bum it looks more to me
+like he was faking. You get this big stiff to fake the Choimun side, and
+then you go and stick up a goil agains' him that's got brains and makes
+a pacifis' argument that wins the case agains' the Choimuns like cuttin'
+through hog lard! But you ain't a-gunna git away with it, mister!
+Lemme tell you right here and now, I may be a mix blood, but I got some
+Choimun in me with the rest what I got, and before you vote on this here
+question you gotta hear a few woids from somebody that can _talk!_ This
+whole war is a capitalis' war, Belgium as much as Choimuny, and the
+United States is sellin' its soul to the capitalis' right now, I tell
+you, takin' sides agains' Choimuny. Orders fer explosives and ammanition
+and guns and Red Cross supplies is comin' into this country by the
+millions, and the capitalis' United States is fat already on the blood
+of the workers of Europe! Yes, it is, and I'll have my _say,_ you
+boorjaw faker, and you can hammer your ole gavel to pieces at me!"
+
+He had begun to shriek; moisture fell from his brow and his mouth; the
+scandalized society was on its feet, nervously into groups. Evidently
+the meeting was about to disintegrate. "I'll have my _say_!" the
+frenzied Linski screamed. "You try to put up this capitalis' trick and
+work a fake to carry over this debate agains' Choimuny, but you can't
+work it on _me_, lemme tell you! I'll have my _say!_"
+
+The outraged chairman was wholly at a loss how to deal with the
+"unprecedented situation"--so he defined it, quite truthfully; and he
+continued to pound upon the desk, while other clamours began to rival
+Linski's; shouts of "Put him out!" "Order!" "Shut up, Freshman!" "Turn
+him over to the sophomores!"
+
+"This meeting is _adjourned!_" bellowed the chairman, and there was a
+thronging toward the doors, while the frothing Linski asseverated: "I'm
+a-gunna git my say, I tell you! I'll have my say! I'll have my _say!_"
+
+He had more than that, before the hour was over. A moment after he
+emerged from the building and came out, still hot, upon the cool, dark
+campus, he found himself the centre of a group of his own classmates
+whom he at first mistook for sophomores, such was their manner.
+
+...As this group broke up, a few minutes later, a youth running to
+join it, scenting somewhat of interest, detained one of those who were
+departing.
+
+"What's up? What was that squealing?"
+
+"Oh, nothing. We just talked to that Linski. Nobody else touched him,
+but Ramsey Milholland gave him a _peach_ of a punch on the snoot."
+
+"Whoopee!"
+
+Ramsey was laconic in response to inquiries upon this subject. When
+someone remarked: "You served him right for calling you a boob and a
+poor fish and so on before all the society, girls and all," Ramsey only
+said:
+
+"That wasn't what I hit him for."
+
+He declined to explain further.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+"The way I look at it, Ramsey," Fred Mitchell said, when they reached
+their apartment, whither the benevolent Colburn accompanied them, "the
+way I look at it, this Linski kind of paid you a compliment, after all,
+when he called you a fake. He must have thought you anyway _looked_ as
+if you could make a better speech than you did. Oh, golly!"
+
+And as Ramsey groaned, the jovial Mitchell gave himself up to the divan
+and the mirth. "Oh, oh, oh, _golly_!" he sputtered.
+
+"Never you mind, Brother Milholland," Colburn said gently. "The Lumen is
+used to nervous beginners. I've seen dozens in my time, just like you;
+and some of 'em got to be first rate before they quit. Besides, this
+crazy Linski is all that anybody'll ever remember about to-night's
+meeting, anyhow. There never was any such outbreak as that in _my_ time,
+and I guess there never was in the whole history of the society. We'll
+probably suspend him until he apologizes to the society--I'm on the
+board, and I'm in favour of it. Who is the bird, anyhow? He's in your
+class."
+
+"I never saw him before," Ramsey responded from the deep chair, where
+he had moodily thrown himself; and, returning to his brooding upon his
+oratory. "Oh, murder!" he moaned.
+
+"Well," said the senior, "you'll know him when you see him again. You
+put your mark on him where you can see it, all right!" He chuckled. "I
+suppose I really ought to have interfered in that, but I decided to do
+a little astronomical observation, about fifty feet away, for a few
+minutes. I'm 'way behind in my astronomy, anyhow. Do you know this
+Linski, Brother Mitchell?"
+
+"I've talked to him a couple o' times on the campus," said Fred. "He's
+in one of my classes. He's about the oldest in our class, I guess--a
+lot older than us, anyhow. He's kind of an anarchist or something; can't
+talk more'n five minutes any time without gettin off some bug stuff
+about 'capitalism.' He said the course in political economy was all
+'capitalism' and the prof was bought by Wall Street."
+
+"Poor old Prof. Craig!" Colburn laughed. "He gets fifteen hundred a
+year."
+
+"Yes; I'd heard that myself, and I told Linski, and he said he had an
+uncle workin' in a steel mill got twice that much; but it didn't
+make any difference, ole Craig was bought by Wall Street. He said
+'capitalism' better look out; he and the foreign-born workmen were goin'
+to _take_ this country some day, and that was one of the reasons he was
+after an education. He talked pretty strong pro-German, too--about
+the war in Europe--but I sort of thought that was more because he'd be
+pro-anything that he thought would help upset the United States than
+because he cared much about Germany."
+
+"Yes," said Colburn, "that's how he sounded to-night. I guess there's
+plenty more like him in the cities, too. That reminds me, I'd better
+arrange a debate on immigration for the Lumen. We'll put Brother
+Milholland for the negative, this time."
+
+Ramsey started violently. "See here--"
+
+But the senior reassured him. "Just wanted to see you jump," he
+explained. "Don't fear; you've done your share."
+
+"I should think I have!" Ramsey groaned.
+
+"Yes, you won't be called on again this term. By the way," said Colburn,
+thoughtfully, "that was a clever girl you had against you to-night. I
+don't believe in pacificism much, myself, but she used it very niftily
+for her argument. Isn't she from your town, this Miss Yocum?"
+
+Fred nodded.
+
+"Well, she's a clever young thing," said the senior, still thoughtful.
+And he added: "Graceful girl, she is."
+
+At this, the roommates looked at him with startled attention. Ramsey was
+so roused as to forget his troubles and sit forward in his chair.
+
+"Yes," said the musing Colburn, "she's a mighty pretty girl."
+
+"What!"
+
+This exclamation was a simultaneous one; the astounded pair stared at
+him in blank incredulity.
+
+"Why, don't you think so?" Colburn mildly inquired. "She seems to me
+very unusual looking."
+
+"Well, yes," Fred assented, emphatically. "We're with you there!"
+
+"Extraordinary eyes," continued Colburn. "Lovely figure, too; altogether
+a strikingly pretty girl. Handsome, I should say, perhaps. Yes,
+'handsome' rather than 'pretty'." He looked up from a brief reverie.
+"You fellows known her long?"
+
+"You bet!" said Ramsey.
+
+"She made a splendid impression on the Lumen," Colburn went on. "I don't
+remember that I ever saw a first appearance there that quite equalled
+it. She'll probably have a brilliant career in the society, and in the
+university, too. She must be a very fine sort of person." He deliberated
+within himself a few moments longer, then, realizing that his hosts
+and Brethren did not respond with any heartiness--or with anything at
+all--to the theme, he changed it, and asked them what they thought about
+the war in Europe.
+
+They talked of the war rather drowsily for a while; it was an
+interesting but not an exciting topic: the thing they spoke of was so
+far away. It was in foreign countries where they had never been and
+had no acquaintances; and both the cause and the issue seemed to be in
+confusion, though evidently Germany had "started" the trouble. Only
+one thing emerged as absolutely clear and proved: there could be no
+disagreement about Germany's "dirty work," as Fred defined it, in
+violating Belgium. And this stirred Ramsey to declare with justice that
+"dirty work" had likewise been done upon himself by the official
+person, whoever he or she was, who had given him the German side of
+the evening's debate. After this moment of fervour, the conversation
+languished, and Brother Colburn rose to go.
+
+"Well, I'm glad you gave that Linski a fine little punch, Brother
+Milholland," he said, at the door. "It won't do you any harm in the
+'frat,' or with the Lumen either. And don't be discouraged about your
+debating. You'll learn. Anybody might have got rattled by having to
+argue against as clever and good-looking a girl as that!"
+
+The roommates gave each other a look of serious puzzlement as the door
+closed. "Well, Brother Colburn is a mighty nice fellow," Fred said.
+"He's kind of funny, though."
+
+Ramsey assented, and then, as the two prepared for bed, they entered
+into a further discussion of their senior friend. They liked him "all
+right," they said, but he certainly must be kind of queer, and they
+couldn't just see how he had "ever managed to get where he was" in the
+"frat" and the Lumen and the university.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+
+Ramsey passed the slightly disfigured Linski on the campus next day
+without betraying any embarrassment or making a sign of recognition.
+Fred Mitchell told his roommate, chuckling, that Linski had sworn
+to "get" him, and, not knowing Fred's affiliations, had made him the
+confidant of his oath. Fred had given his blessing, he said, upon the
+enterprise, and advised Linski to use a brick. "He'll hit you on the
+head with it," said the light-hearted Fred, falling back upon this old
+joke. "Then you can catch it as it bounces off and throw it back at
+him."
+
+However, Linski proved to be merely an episode, not only so far as
+Ramsey was concerned but in the Lumen and in the university as well. His
+suspension from the Lumen was for a year, and so cruel a punishment it
+proved for this born debater that he noisily declared he would found
+a debating society himself, and had a poster printed and distributed
+announcing the first meeting of "The Free Speech and Masses' Rights
+Council." Several town loafers attended the meeting, but the only
+person connected with the university who came was an oriental student,
+a Chinese youth of almost intrusive amiability. Linski made a fiery
+address, the townsmen loudly appluading his advocacy of an embargo
+on munitions and the distribution of everybody's "property," but the
+Chinaman, accustomed to see students so madly in earnest only when
+they were burlesquing, took the whole affair to be intended humour, and
+tittered politely without cessation--except at such times as he thought
+it proper to appear quite wrung with laughter. Then he would rock
+himself, clasp his mouth with both hands and splutter through his
+fingers. Linski accused him of being in the pay of "capital."
+
+Next day the orator was unable to show himself upon the campus without
+causing demonstrations; whenever he was seen a file of quickly gathering
+students marched behind him chanting repeatedly and deafeningly in
+chorus: "Down with Wall Street! Hoch der Kaiser! Who loves Linski? Who,
+who, who? Hoo Lun! Who loves Linski? Who, who, who? Hoo Lun!"
+
+Linski was disgusted, resigned from the university, and disappeared.
+
+"Well, here it isn't mid-year Exams yet, and the good ole class of
+Nineteen-Eighteen's already lost a member," said Fred Mitchell. "I guess
+we can bear the break-up!"
+
+"I guess so," Ramsey assented. "That Linski might just as well stayed
+here, though."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"He couldn't do any harm here. He'll prob'ly get more people to listen
+to him in cities where there's so many new immigrants and all such that
+don't know anything, comin' in all the time."
+
+"Oh, well," said Fred. "What do _we_ care what happens to Chicago! Come
+on, let's behave real wild, and go on over to the 'Teria and get us a
+couple egg sandwiches and sassprilly."
+
+Ramsey was willing.
+
+After the strain of the "mid-year Exams" in February, they lived a
+free-hearted life. They had settled into the ways of their world; they
+had grown used to it, and it had grown used to them; there was no
+longer any ignominy in being a freshman. They romped upon the campus
+and sometimes rioted harmlessly about the streets of the town. In the
+evenings they visited their fellows and Brethren and were visited in
+turn, and sometimes they looked so far ahead as to talk vaguely of their
+plans for professions or business--though to a freshman this concerned
+an almost unthinkably distant prospect. "I guess I'll go in with my
+father, in the wholesale drug business," said Fred. "My married brother
+already is in the firm, and I suppose they'll give me a show--send me
+out on the road a year or two first, maybe, to try me. Then I'm going to
+marry some little cutie and settle down. What you goin' to do, Ramsey?
+Go to Law School, and then come back and go in your father's office?"
+
+"I don't know. Guess so."
+
+It was always Fred who did most of the talking; Ramsey was quiet. Fred
+told the "frat seniors" that Ramsey was "developing a whole lot these
+days"; and he told Ramsey himself that he could see a "big change" in
+him, adding that the improvement was probably due to Ramsey's having
+passed through "terrible trials like that debate."
+
+Ramsey kept to their rooms more than his comrade did, one reason for
+this domesticity being that he "had to study longer than Fred did, to
+keep up"; and another reason may have been a greater shyness than Fred
+possessed--if, indeed, Fred possessed any shyness at all. For Fred was
+a cheery spirit difficult to abash, and by the coming of spring knew all
+of the best-looking girl students in the place--knew them well enough,
+it appeared, to speak of them not merely by their first names but by
+abbreviations of these. He had become fashion's sprig, a "fusser" and
+butterfly, and he reproached his roommate for shunning the ladies.
+
+"Well, the truth is, Fred," said Ramsey one day, responding
+darkly;--"well, you see the truth is, Fred, I've had a--a--I've had an
+experience--"
+
+So, only, did he refer to Milla.
+
+Fred said no more; and it was comprehended between them that the past
+need never be definitely referred to again, but that it stood between
+Ramsey and any entertainment to be obtained of the gentler but less
+trustworthy sex. And when other Brethren of the "frat" would have
+pressed Ramsey to join them in various frivolous enterprises concerning
+"co-eds," or to be shared by "co-eds," Fred thought it better to explain
+to them privately (all being sacred among Brethren) how Ramsey's life,
+so far as Girls went, had been toyed with by one now a Married Woman.
+
+This created a great deal of respect for Ramsey. It became understood
+everywhere that he was a woman-hater.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV
+
+That early spring of 1915 the two boys and their friends and Brethren
+talked more of the war than they had in the autumn, though the subject
+was not an all at absorbing one; for the trenches in Flanders and France
+were still of the immense, remote distance. By no stretch of imagination
+could these wet trenches be thought greatly to concern the "frat," the
+Lumen, or the university. Really important matters were the doings of
+the "Track Team," now training in the "Gym" and on the 'Varsity Field,
+and, more vital still, the prospects of the Nine. But in May there came
+a shock which changed things for a time.
+
+The _Lusitania_ brought to every American a revelation of what had lain
+so deep in his own heart that often he had not realized it was there.
+When the Germans hid in the sea and sent down the great merchant ship,
+with American babies and their mothers, and gallantly dying American
+gentlemen, there came a change even to girls and boys and professors,
+until then so preoccupied with their own little aloof world thousands of
+miles from the murder.
+
+Fred Mitchell, ever volatile and generous, was one of those who went
+quite wild. No orator, he nevertheless made a frantic speech at the
+week's "frat meetings," cursing the Germans in the simple old English
+words that their performance had demonstrated to be applicable, and
+going on to demand that the fraternity prepare for its own share in the
+action of the country. "I don't care _how_ insignificant we few fellows
+here to-night may seem," he cried; "we can do our little, and if
+everybody in this country's ready to do their own little, why, that'll
+be plenty! Brothers, don't you realize that all _over_ the United States
+to-night the people are feeling just the way we are here? Millions and
+millions and millions of them! Wherever there's an American he's _with_
+us--and you bet your bottom dollar there are just a few more Americans
+in this country of ours than there are big-mouthed lobsters like that
+fellow Linski! I tell you, if Congress only gives the word, there could
+be an army of five million men in this country to-morrow, and those
+dirty baby-killin' dachshunds would hear a word or two from your Uncle
+Samuel! Brothers, I demand that something be done right here and now,
+and by us! I move we telegraph the Secretary of War to-night and offer
+him a regiment from this university to go over and help _hang_ their
+damn Kaiser."
+
+The motion was hotly seconded and instantly carried. Then followed
+a much flustered discussion of the form and phrasing of the proposed
+telegram, but, after everything seemed to have been settled, someone
+ascertained by telephone that the telegraph company would not accept
+messages containing words customarily defined as profane; so the
+telegram had to be rewritten. This led to further amendment, and it was
+finally decided to address the senators from that state, instead of the
+Secretary of War, and thus in a somewhat modified form the message was
+finally despatched.
+
+Next day, news of what the "frat" had done made a great stir in the
+university; other "frats" sent telegrams, so did the "Barbarians,"
+haters of the "frats" but joining them in this; while a small band of
+"German-American" students found it their duty to go before the faculty
+and report these "breaches of neutrality." They protested heavily,
+demanding the expulsion of the "breachers" as disloyal citizens,
+therefore unfit students, but suffered a disappointment; for the faculty
+itself had been sending telegrams of similar spirit, addressing not
+only the senators and congressmen of the state but the President of the
+United States. Flabbergasted, the "German-Americans" retired; they were
+confused and disgusted by this higher-up outbreak of unneutrality--it
+overwhelmed them that citizens of the United States should not remain
+neutral in the dispute between the United States and Germany. All day
+the campus was in ferment.
+
+At twilight, Ramsey was walking meditatively on his way to dinner at
+the "frat house," across the campus from his apartment at Mrs. Meig's.
+Everybody was quiet now, both town and gown; the students were at their
+dinners and so were the burghers. Ramsey was late but did not quicken
+his thoughtful steps, which were those of one lost in reverie. He had
+forgotten that spring-time was all about him, and, with his head down,
+walked unregardful of the new gayeties flung forth upon the air by great
+clusters of flowering shrubs, just come into white blossom and lavender.
+
+He was unconscious that somebody behind him, going the same way,
+came hastening to overtake him and called his name, "Ramsey! Ramsey
+Milholland!" Not until he had been called three times did he realize
+that he was being hailed--and in a girl's voice! By that time, the girl
+herself was beside him, and Ramsey halted, quite taken aback. The girl
+was Dora Yocum.
+
+She was pale, a little breathless, and her eyes were bright and severe.
+"I want to speak to you," she said, quickly. "I want to ask you about
+something. Mr. Colburn and Fred Mitchell are the only people I know in
+your 'frat' except you, and I haven't seen either of them to-day, or I'd
+have asked one of them."
+
+Most uncomfortably astonished, Ramsey took his hands out of his pockets,
+picked a leaf from a lilac bush beside the path, and put the stem of the
+leaf seriously into a corner of his mouth, before finding anything to
+say. "Well--well, all right," he finally responded. "I'll tell you--if
+it's anything I know about."
+
+"You know about it," said Dora. "That is, you certainly do if you were
+at your 'frat' meeting last night. Were you?"
+
+"Yes, I was there," Ramsey answered, wondering what in the world she
+wanted to know, though he supposed vaguely that it must be something
+about Colburn, whom he had several times seen walking with her. "Of
+course I couldn't tell you much," he added, with an afterthought. "You
+see, a good deal that goes on at a 'frat' meeting isn't supposed to be
+talked about."
+
+"Yes," she said, smiling faintly, though with a satire that missed him.
+"I've been a member of a sorority since September, and I think I have an
+idea of what could be told or not told. Suppose we walk on, if you don't
+mind. My question needn't embarrass you."
+
+Nevertheless, as they slowly went on together, Ramsey was embarrassed.
+He felt "queer." They had known each other so long; in a way had shared
+so much, sitting daily for years near each other and undergoing the same
+outward experiences; they had almost "grown up together," yet this was
+the first time they had ever talked together or walked together.
+
+"Well--" he said. "If you want to ask anything it's all right for me to
+tell you--well, I just as soon, I guess."
+
+"It has nothing to do with the secret proceedings of your 'frat'," said
+Dora, primly. "What I want to ask about has been talked of all over the
+place to-day. Everyone has been saying it was _your_ 'frat' that sent
+the first telegram to members of the Government offering support in case
+of war with Germany. They say you didn't even wait until to-day, but
+sent off a message last night. What I wanted to ask you was whether this
+story is true or not?"
+
+"Why, yes," said Ramsey, mildly. "That's what we did."
+
+She uttered an exclamation, a sound of grief and of suspicion confirmed.
+"Ah! I was afraid so!"
+
+"'Afraid so'? What's the matter?" he asked, and because she seemed
+excited and troubled, he found himself not quite so embarrassed as he
+had been at first; for some reason her agitation made him feel easier.
+"What was wrong about that?"
+
+"Oh, it's all so shocking and wicked and mistaken!" she cried. "Even the
+faculty has been doing it, and half the other 'frats' and sororities!
+And it was yours that started it."
+
+"Yes, we did," he said, throughly puzzled. "We're the oldest 'frat'
+here, and of course"--he chuckled modestly--"of course we think we're
+the best. Do you mean you believe we ought to've sat back and let
+somebody else start it?"
+
+"Oh, _no_!" she answered, vehemently. "Nobody ought to have started it!
+That's the trouble; don't you see? If nobody had started it none of it
+might have happened. The rest mightn't have caught it. It mightn't have
+got into their heads. A war thought is the most contagious thought in
+the world; but if it can be kept from starting, it can be kept from
+being contagious. It's just when people have got into an emotional
+state, or a state of smouldering rage, that everybody ought to be so
+terribly careful not to think war thoughts or make war speeches--or send
+war telegrams! I thought--oh, I was so sure I'd convinced Mr. Colburn of
+all this, the last time we talked of it! He seemed to understand, and I
+was sure he agreed with me." She bit her lip. "He was only pretending--I
+see that now!"
+
+"I guess he must 'a' been," said Ramsey, with admirable simplicity. "He
+didn't talk about anything like that last night. He was as much for it
+as anybody."
+
+"I've no doubt!"
+
+Ramsey made bold to look at her out of the side of his eye, and as she
+was gazing tensely forward he continued his observation for some time.
+She was obviously controlling agitation, almost controlling tears, which
+seemed to threaten her very wide-open eyes; for those now fully
+grown and noticeable eyewinkers of hers were subject to fluctuations
+indicating such a threat. She looked "hurt," and Ramsey was touched;
+there was something human about her, then, after all. And if he had put
+his feeling into words at the moment, he would have said that he guessed
+maybe he could stand this ole girl, for a few minutes sometimes, better
+than he'd always thought he could.
+
+"Well," he said, "Colburn prob'ly wouldn't want to hurt your feelings or
+anything. Colburn--"
+
+"He? He didn't! I haven't the faintest personal interest in what he
+did."
+
+"Oh!" said Ramsey. "Well, excuse me; I thought prob'ly you were sore
+because he'd jollied you about this pacifist stuff, and then--"
+
+"No!" she said, sharply. "I'm not thinking of his having agreed with
+_me_ and fooling _me_ about it. He just wanted to make a pleasant
+impression on a girl, and said anything he thought would please her. I
+don't care whether he does things like that or not. What I care about
+is that the _principle_ didn't reach him and that he mocked it! I don't
+care about a petty treachery to me, personally, but I--"
+
+Fraternal loyalty could not quite brook this. "Brother Colburn is a
+perfectly honor'ble man," said Ramsey, solemnly. "He is one of the most
+honor'ble men in this--"
+
+"Of course!" she cried. "Oh, can't I make you understand that I'm not
+condemning him for a little flattery to me? I don't care two straws
+for his showing that _I_ didn't influence him. He doesn't interest me,
+please understand."
+
+Ramsey was altogether perplexed. "Well, I don't see what makes you go
+for him so hard, then."
+
+"I don't."
+
+"But you said he was treach--"
+
+"I don't _condemn_ him for it," she insisted, despairingly. "Don't you
+see the difference? I'm not condemning anybody; I'm only lamenting.
+
+"What about?
+
+"About all of you that want _war_!"
+
+"My golly!" Ramsey exclaimed. "You don't think those Dutchmen were right
+to drown babies and--"
+
+"No! I think they were ghastly murderers! I think they were detestable
+and fiendish and monstrous and--"
+
+"Well, then, my goodness! What do you want?"
+
+"I don't want war!"
+
+"You don't?"
+
+"I want Christianity!" she cried. "I can't think of the Germans without
+hating them, and so to-day, when all the world is hating them, I keep
+myself from thinking of them as much as I can. Already half the world is
+full of war; you want to go to war to make things right, but it won't;
+it will only make more war!"
+
+"Well, I--"
+
+"Don't you see what you've done, you boys?" she said. "Don't you see
+what you've done with your absurd telegram? That started the rest; they
+thought they _all_ had to send telegrams like that."
+
+"Well, the faculty--"
+
+"Even they mightn't have thought of it if it hadn't been for the first
+one. Vengeance is the most terrible thought; once you put it into
+people's minds that they ought to have it, it runs away with them."
+
+"Well, it isn't mostly vengeance we're after, at all. There's a lot more
+to it than just getting even with--"
+
+She did not heed him. "You're all blind! You don't see what you're
+doing; you don't even see what you've done to this peaceful place here.
+You've filled it full of thoughts of fury and killing and massacre--"
+
+"Why, no," said Ramsey. "It was those Dutch did that to us; and,
+besides, there's more to it than you--"
+
+"No, there isn't," she interrupted. "It's just the old brutal spirit
+that nations inherit from the time they were only tribes; it's the tribe
+spirit, and an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It's those things
+and the love of fighting--men have always loved to fight. Civilization
+hasn't taken it out of them; men still have the brute in them that loves
+to fight!"
+
+"I don't think so," said Ramsey. "Americans don't love to fight; I don't
+know about other countries, but we don't. Of course, here and there,
+there's some fellow that likes to hunt around for scrapes, but I never
+saw more than three or four in my life that acted that way. Of course a
+football team often has a scrapper or two on it, but that's different."
+
+"No," she said. "I think you all really love to fight."
+
+Ramsey was roused to become argumentative. "I don't see where you get
+the idea. Colburn isn't that way, and back at school there wasn't a
+single boy that was anything like that."
+
+"What!" She stopped, and turned suddenly to face him.
+
+"What's the matter?" he said, stopping, too. Something he said had
+startled her, evidently.
+
+"How can you say such a thing?" she cried. "_You_ love to fight!"
+
+"Me?"
+
+"You do! You love fighting. You always have loved fighting."
+
+He was dumbfounded. "Why, I never had a fight in my life!"
+
+She cried out in protest of such prevarication.
+
+"Well, I never did," he insisted, mildly.
+
+"Why, you had a fight about _me_!"
+
+"No, I didn't."
+
+"With Wesley Bender!"
+
+Ramsey chuckled. "_That_ wasn't a fight!"
+
+"It wasn't?"
+
+"Nothing like one. We were just guyin' him about--about gettin' slicked
+up, kind of, because he sat in front of you; and he hit me with his book
+strap and I chased him off. Gracious, no; _that_ wasn't a fight!"
+
+"But you fought Linski only last fall."
+
+Ramsey chuckled again. "That wasn't even as much like a fight as the one
+with Wesley. I just told this Linski I was goin' to give him a punch in
+the sn-- I just told him to look out because I was goin' to hit him, and
+then I did it, and waited to see if he wanted to do anything about it,
+and he didn't. That's all there was to it, and it wasn't any more like
+fighting than--than feeding chickens is."
+
+She laughed dolefully. "It seems to me rather more like it than that!"
+
+"Well, it wasn't."
+
+They had begun to walk on again, and Ramsey was aware that they had
+passed the "frat house," where his dinner was probably growing cold. He
+was aware of this, but not sharply or insistently. Curiously enough, he
+did not think about it. He had begun to find something pleasant in the
+odd interview, and in walking beside a girl, even though the girl was
+Dora Yocum. He made no attempt to account to himself for anything so
+peculiar.
+
+For a while they went slowly together, not speaking, and without
+destination, though Ramsey vaguely took it for granted that Dora was
+going somewhere. But she wasn't. They emerged from the part of the
+small town closely built about the university and came out upon a bit
+of parked land overlooking the river; and here Dora's steps slowed to an
+indeterminate halt near a bench beneath a maple tree.
+
+"I think I'll stay here a while," she said; and as he made no response,
+she asked, "Hadn't you better be going back to your 'frat house' for
+your dinner? I didn't mean for you to come out of your way with me; I
+only wanted to get an answer to my question. You'd better be running
+back."
+
+"Well--"
+
+He stood irresolute, not sure that he wanted his dinner just then. It
+would have amazed him to face the fact deliberately that perhaps he
+preferred being with Dora Yocum to eating. However, he faced no such
+fact, nor any fact, but lingered.
+
+"Well--" he said again.
+
+"You'd better go."
+
+"I guess I can get my dinner pretty near any time. I don't--" He had a
+thought. "Did you--"
+
+"Did I what?"
+
+"Did you have your dinner before I met you?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Well, aren't you--"
+
+She shook her head. "I don't want any."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"I don't think people have very much appetite to-day and yesterday," she
+said, with the hint of a sad laugh, "all over America."
+
+"No; I guess that's so."
+
+"It's too terrible!" she said. "I can't sit and eat when I think of the
+_Lusitania_--of all those poor, poor people strangling in the water--"
+
+"No; I guess nobody can eat much, if they think about that."
+
+"And of what it's going to bring, if we let it," she went on. "As if
+this killing weren't enough, we want to add _our_ killing! Oh, that's
+the most terrible thing of all--the thing it makes within us! Don't you
+understand?"
+
+She turned to him appealingly, and he felt queerer than ever. Dusk had
+fallen. Where they stood, under the young-leaved maple tree, there
+was but a faint lingering of afterglow, and in this mystery her face
+glimmered wan and sweet; so that Ramsey, just then, was like one who
+discovers an old pan, used in the kitchen, to be made of chased silver.
+
+"Well, I don't feel much like dinner right now," he said. "We--we could
+sit here awhile on this bench, prob'ly."
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV
+
+Ramsey kept very few things from Fred Mitchell, and usually his
+confidences were immediate upon the occasion of them; but allowed
+several weeks to elapse before sketching for his roommate the outlines
+of this adventure.
+
+"One thing that was kind o' funny about it, Fred," he said, "I didn't
+know what to call her."
+
+Mr. Mitchell, stretched upon the window seat in their "study," and
+looking out over the town street below and the campus beyond the street,
+had already thought it tactful to ambush his profound amusement by
+turning upon his side, so that his face was toward the window and away
+from his companion. "What did you want to call her?" he inquired in a
+serious voice. "Names?"
+
+"No. You know what I mean. I mean I had to just keep callin' her 'you';
+and that gets kind of freaky when you're talkin' to anybody a good while
+like that. When she'd be lookin' away from me, and I'd want to start
+sayin' something to her, you know, why, I wouldn't know how to get
+started exactly, without callin' her something. A person doesn't want to
+be always startin' off with 'See here,' or things like that."
+
+"I don't see why you let it trouble you," said Fred. "From how you've
+always talked about her, you had a perfectly handy way to start off with
+anything you wanted to say to her."
+
+"What with?"
+
+"Why didn't you just say, 'Oh, you Teacher's Pet!' That would--"
+
+"Get out! What I mean is, she called me 'Ramsey' without any bother; it
+seems funny I got stumped every time I started to say 'Dora.' Someway I
+couldn't land it, and it certainly would 'a' sounded crazy to call her
+'Miss Yocum' after sittin' in the same room with her every day from the
+baby class clear on up through the end of high school. That _would_ 'a'
+made me out an idiot!"
+
+"What did you call her?" Fred asked.
+
+"Just nothin' at all. I started to call her something or other a hundred
+times, I guess, and then I'd balk. I'd get all ready, and kind of make a
+sort of a sound, and then I'd have to quit."
+
+"She may have thought you had a cold," said Fred, still keeping his back
+turned.
+
+"I expect maybe she did--though I don't know; most of the time she
+didn't seem to notice me much, kind of."
+
+"She didn't?"
+
+"No. She was too upset, I guess, by what she was thinkin' about."
+
+"But if it hadn't been for that," Fred suggested, "you mean she'd have
+certainly paid more attention to who was sitting on the bench with her?"
+
+"Get out! You know how it was. Everybody those few days thought we were
+goin' to have war, and she was just sure of it, and it upset her. Of
+course most people were a lot more upset by what those Dutchmen did
+to the _Lusitania_ than by the idea of war; and she seemed to feel as
+broken up as anybody could be about the _Lusitania_, but what got her
+the worst was the notion of her country wantin' to fight, she said. She
+really was upset, too, Fred; there wasn't any puttin' on about it. I
+guess that ole girl certainly must have a good deal of feeling, because,
+doggoned, after we'd been sittin' there a while if she didn't have to
+get out her handkerchief! She kept her face turned away from me--just
+the same as you're doin' now to keep from laughin'--but honestly, she
+cried like somebody at a funeral. I felt like the darndest fool!"
+
+"I'm not laughing," said Fred, but he did not prove it by turning so
+that his face could be seen. "What did she say?"
+
+"Oh, she didn't say such an awful lot. She said one kind o' funny thing
+though: she said she was sorry she couldn't quite control herself, but
+if anybody had to see her cry she minded it less because it was an old
+schoolmate. What struck me so kind o' funny about that is--why, it looks
+as if she never knew the way I always hated her so."
+
+"Yes," said Fred. "It wasn't flattering!"
+
+"Well, sir, it _isn't_, kind of," Ramsey agreed, musingly. "It certainly
+isn't when you look at it that way."
+
+"What did you say when she said that?" Fred asked.
+
+"Nothin'. I started to, but I sort of balked again. Well, we kept on
+sitting there, and afterwhile she began to talk again and got kind of
+excited about how no war could do anything or anybody any good, and all
+war was wicked, no matter what it was about, and nothin' could be good
+that was founded on fear and hate, and every war that ever was fought
+was always founded on fear and hate. She said if the Germans wanted to
+fight us we ought to go to meet them and tell them we wouldn't fight."
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"Nothin'. I kind o' started to--but what's the use? She's got that
+in her head. Besides, how are you goin' to argue about a thing with
+a person that's crying about it? I tell you, Fred, I guess we got to
+admit, after all, that ole girl certainly must have a lots of heart
+about her, anyway. There may not be much _fun_ to her--though of course
+I wouldn't know hardly any way to tell about that--but there couldn't be
+hardly any doubt she's got a lot of feeling. Well, and then she went on
+and said old men made wars, but didn't fight; they left the fighting to
+the boys, and the suffering to the boy's mothers."
+
+"Yes!" Fred exclaimed, and upon that he turned free of mirth for the
+moment. "That's the woman of it, I guess. Send the old men to do the
+fighting! For the matter of that, I guess my father'd about a thousand
+times go himself than see me and my brothers go; but Father's so fat he
+can't stoop! You got to be able to stoop to dig a trench, I guess! Well,
+suppose we sent our old men up against those Dutchmen; the Dutchmen
+would just kill the old men, and then come after the boys anyway, and
+the boys wouldn't be ready, and they'd get killed, too; and then there
+wouldn't be anybody but the Dutchmen left, and that'd be one fine world,
+wouldn't it?"
+
+"Yes," said Ramsey. "Course I thought of that."
+
+"Did you tell her?"
+
+"No."
+
+"What did you say?"
+
+"Nothin'. I couldn't get started anyway, but, besides, what was the use?
+But she didn't want the old men to go; she didn't want anybody to go."
+
+"What did she want the country to do?" Fred asked, impatiently.
+
+"Just what it has been doin', I suppose. Just let things simmer down,
+and poke along, and let them do what they like to us."
+
+"I guess so!" said Fred. "Then, afterwhile, when they get some free time
+on their hands, they'll come over and make it _really_ interesting for
+us, because they know we won't do anything but talk. Yes, I guess the
+way things are settling down ought to suit Dora. There isn't goin' to be
+any war."
+
+"She was pretty sure there was, though," Ramsey said, thoughtfully.
+
+"Oh, of course she was then. We all thought so those few days."
+
+"No. She said she thought it prob'ly wouldn't come right away, but now
+it was almost sure to come sometime. She said our telegrams and all the
+talk and so much feeling and everything showed her that the war thought
+that was always _in_ people somewhere had been stirred up so it would
+go on and on. She said she knew from the way she felt herself about the
+_Lusitania_ that a feeling like that in her would never be absolutely
+wiped out as long as she lived. But she said her other feeling about the
+horribleness of war taught her to keep the first feeling from breaking
+out, but with other people it wouldn't; and even if war didn't break
+out right then, it would always be ready to, all over the country, and
+sometime it would, though she was goin' to do her share to fight it,
+herself, as long as she could stand. She asked me wouldn't I be one of
+the ones to help her."
+
+He paused, and after a moment Fred asked, "Well? What did you say to
+that?"
+
+"Nothin'. I started to, but--"
+
+Again Fred thought it tactful to turn and look out the window, while the
+agitation of his shoulders betrayed him.
+
+"Go on and laugh! Well, so we stayed there quite a while, but before we
+left she got kind of more like everyday, you know, the way people do. It
+was half-past nine when we walked back in town, and I was commencin'
+to feel kind of hungry, so I asked her if she wasn't, and she sort of
+laughed and seemed to be ashamed of it, as if it were a disgrace or
+something, but she said she guessed she was; so I left her by that hedge
+of lilacs near the observatory and went on over to the 'Teria and the
+fruit store, and got some stuffed eggs and olives and half-a-dozen
+peanut butter sandwiches and a box o' strawberries--kind of girl-food,
+you know--and went on back there, and we ate the stuff up. So then she
+said she was afraid she'd taken me away from my dinner and made me a lot
+of trouble, and so on, and she was sorry, and she told me good-night--"
+
+"What did you say then?"
+
+"Noth-- Oh, shut up! So then she skipped out to her Dorm, and I came on
+home."
+
+"When did you see her next, Ramsey?"
+
+"I haven't seen her next," said Ramsey. "I haven't seen her at all--not
+to speak to. I saw her on Main Street twice since then, but both times
+she was with some other girls, and they were across the street, and
+I couldn't tell if she was lookin' at me--I kind of thought not--so I
+thought it might look sort o' nutty to bow to her if she wasn't, so I
+didn't."
+
+"And you didn't tell her you wouldn't be one of the ones to help her
+with her pacifism and anti-war stuff and all that?"
+
+"No. I started to, but-- Shut up!"
+
+Fred sat up, giggling. "So she thinks you _will_ help her. You didn't
+say anything at all, and she must think that means she converted you.
+Why didn't you speak up?"
+
+"Well, _I_ wouldn't argue with her," said Ramsey. Then, after a silence,
+he seemed to be in need of sympathetic comprehension. "It _was_ kind o'
+funny, though, wasn't it?" he said, appealingly.
+
+"What was?"
+
+"The whole business."
+
+"What 'whole bus'--"
+
+"Oh, get out! Her stoppin' me, and me goin' pokin' along with her, and
+her--well, her crying and everything, and me being around with her while
+she felt so upset, I mean. It seems--well, it does seem kind o' funny to
+me."
+
+"Why does it?" Fred inquired, preserving his gravity. "Why should it
+seem funny to you?"
+
+"I don't mean funny like something's funny you laugh at," Ramsey
+explained laboriously. "I mean funny like something that's out of the
+way, and you wonder how it ever happened to happen. I mean it seems
+funny I'd ever be sittin' there on a bench with that ole girl I never
+spoke to in my life or had anything to do with, and talkin' about the
+United States goin' to war. What we were talkin' about, why, that seems
+just as funny as the rest of it. Lookin' back to our class picnic, f'r
+instance, second year of high school, that day I jumped in the creek
+after-- Well, you know, it was when I started makin' a fool of myself
+over a girl. Thank goodness, I got _that_ out o' my system; it makes me
+just sick to look back on those days and think of the fool things I did,
+and all I thought about that girl. Why, she-- Well, I've got old enough
+to see now she was just about as ordinary a girl as there ever was, and
+if I saw her now I wouldn't even think she was pretty; I'd prob'ly think
+she was sort of loud-lookin'. Well, what's passed is past, and it isn't
+either here nor there. What I started to say was this: that the way it
+begins to look to me, it looks as if nobody can tell in this life a darn
+thing about what's goin' to happen, and the things that do happen are
+the very ones you'd swear were the last that could. I mean--you look
+back to that day of the picnic--my! but I was a rube then--well, I mean
+you look back to that day, and what do you suppose I'd have thought then
+if somebody'd told me the time would ever come when I'd be 'way off here
+at college sittin' on a bench with Dora Yocum--with _Dora Yocum_, in
+the first place--and her crying, and both of us talking about the United
+States goin' to war with Germany! Don't it seem pretty funny to you,
+Fred, too?"
+
+"But as near as I can make out," Fred said, "that isn't what happened."
+
+"Why isn't it?"
+
+"You say 'and both us talking' and so on. As near as I can make out,
+_you_ didn't say anything at all."
+
+"Well, I didn't--much," Ramsey admitted, and returned to his point with
+almost pathetic persistence. "But doesn't it seem kind o' funny to you,
+Fred?"
+
+"Well, I don't know."
+
+"It does to me," Ramsey insisted. "It certainly does to me."
+
+"Yes," said Fred cruelly. "I've noticed you said so, but it don't look
+any funnier than you do when you say it."
+
+Suddenly he sent forth a startling shout. "_Wow!_ You're as red as a
+blushing beet."
+
+"I am not!"
+
+"Y'are!" shouted Fred. "Wow! The ole woman-hater's got the flushes! Oh,
+look at the pretty posy!"
+
+And, jumping down from the window seat, he began to dance round his much
+perturbed comrade, bellowing. Ramsey bore with him for a moment, then
+sprang upon him; they wrestled vigorously, broke a chair, and went to
+the floor with a crash that gave the chandelier in Mrs. Meig's parlour,
+below, an attack of jingles.
+
+"You let me up!" Fred gasped.
+
+"You take your solemn oath to shut up? You goin' to swear it?"
+
+"All right. I give my solemn oath," said Fred; and they rose, arranging
+their tousled attire.
+
+"Well," said Fred, "when you goin' to call on her?"
+
+"You look here!" Ramsey approached him dangerously. "You just gave me
+your sol--"
+
+"I beg!" Fred cried, retreating. "I mean, aside from all that, why, I
+just thought maybe after such an evening you'd feel as a gentleman you
+ought to go and ask about her health."
+
+"Now, see here--"
+
+"No, I mean it; you ought to," Fred insisted, earnestly, and as
+his roommate glared at him with complete suspicion, he added, in
+explanation. "You ought to go next Caller's Night, and send in your
+card, and say you felt you ought to ask if she'd suffered any from the
+night air. Even if you couldn't manage to say that, you ought to start
+to say it, anyhow, because you-- Keep off o' me! I'm only tryin' to do
+you a good turn, ain't I?"
+
+"You save your good turns for yourself," Ramsey growled, still advancing
+upon him.
+
+But the insidious Mitchell, evading him, fled to the other end of the
+room, picked up his cap, and changed his manner. "Come on, ole bag o'
+beans, let's be on our way to the 'frat house'; it's time. We'll call
+this all off."
+
+"You better!" Ramsey warned him; and they trotted out together.
+
+But as they went along, Fred took Ramsey's arm confidentially, and said,
+"Now, honestly, Ram, ole man, when _are_ you goin' to--"
+
+Ramsey was still red. "You look here! Just say one more word--"
+
+"Oh, _no_," Fred expostulated. "I mean _seriously_, Ramsey. Honestly, I
+mean seriously. Aren't you seriously goin' to call on her some Caller's
+Night?"
+
+"No, I'm not!"
+
+"But why not?"
+
+"Because I don't want to."
+
+"Well, seriously, Ramsey, there's only one Caller's Night before
+vacation, and so I suppose it hardly will be worth while; but I expect
+you'll see quite a little of her at home this summer?"
+
+"No, I won't. I won't see her at all. She isn't goin' to be home this
+summer, and I wouldn't see anything of her if she was."
+
+"Where's she goin' to be."
+
+"In Chicago."
+
+"She is?" said Fred, slyly. "When'd she tell you?"
+
+Ramsey turned on him. "You look out! She didn't tell me. I just happened
+to see in the _Bulletin_ she's signed up with some other girls to go and
+do settlement work in Chicago. Anybody could see it. It was printed out
+plain. You could have seen it just as well as I could, if you'd read the
+_Bulletin_."
+
+"Oh," said Fred.
+
+"Now look here--"
+
+"Good heavens! Can't I even say 'oh'?"
+
+"It depends on the way you say it."
+
+"I'll be careful," Fred assured him, earnestly. "I really and honestly
+don't mean to get you excited about all this, Ramsey. I can see myself
+you haven't changed from your old opinion of Dora Yocum a bit. I was
+only tryin' to get a little rise out of you for a minute, because of
+course, seriously, why, I can see you hate her just the same as you
+always did."
+
+"Yes," said Ramsey, disarmed and guileless in the face of diplomacy. "I
+only told you about all this, Fred, because it seemed--well, it seemed
+so kind o' funny to me."
+
+Fred affected not to hear. "What did you say, Ramsey?"
+
+Ramsey looked vaguely disturbed. "I said--why, I said it all seemed kind
+o'--" He paused, then repeated plaintively: "Well, to me, it all seemed
+kind o'--kind o' funny."
+
+"What did?" Fred inquired, but as he glanced in seeming naivete at his
+companion, something he saw in the latter's eye warned him, and suddenly
+Fred thought it would be better to run.
+
+Ramsey chased him all the way to the "frat house."
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI
+
+Ramsey was not quite athlete enough for any of the 'varsity teams;
+neither was he an antagonist safely encountered, whether in play or
+in earnest, and during the next few days he taught Fred Mitchell to be
+cautious. The chaffer learned that his own agility could not save him
+from Ramsey, and so found it wiser to contain an effervescence which
+sometimes threatened to burst him. Ramsey as a victim was a continuous
+temptation, he was so good-natured and yet so furious.
+
+After Commencement, when the roommates had gone home, Mr. Mitchell's
+caution extended over the long sunshiny months of summer vacation; he
+broke it but once and then in well-advised safety, for the occasion was
+semi-public. The two were out for a stroll on a July Sunday afternoon;
+and up and down the street young couples lolled along, young families
+and baby carriages straggled to and from the houses of older relatives,
+and the rest of the world of that growing city was rocking and fanning
+itself on its front veranda.
+
+"Here's a right pretty place, isn't it, Ramsey? don't you think?" Fred
+remarked innocently, as they were passing a lawn of short-clipped,
+bright green grass before a genial-looking house, fresh in white paint
+and cool in green-and-white awnings. A broad veranda, well populated
+just now, crossed the front of the house; fine trees helped the awnings
+to give comfort against the sun; and Fred's remark was warranted.
+Nevertheless, he fell under the suspicion of his companion, who had
+begun to evince some nervousness before Fred spoke.
+
+"What place do you mean?"
+
+"The Yocum place," said Mr. Mitchell. "I hear the old gentleman's mighty
+prosperous these days. They keep things up to the mark, don't they,
+Ramsey?"
+
+"I don't know whether they do or whether they don't," Ramsey returned
+shortly.
+
+Fred appeared to muse regretfully. "It looks kind of _empty_ now,
+though," he said, "with only Mr. and Mrs. Yocum and their three married
+daughters, and eight or nine children on the front porch!"
+
+"You wait till I get you where they can't see us!" Ramsey warned him,
+fiercely.
+
+"You can't do it!" said Fred, manifesting triumph. "We'll both stop
+right here in plain sight of the whole Yocum family connection till you
+promise not to touch me."
+
+And he halted, leaning back implacably against the Yocum's iron fence.
+Ramsey was scandalized.
+
+"Come on!" he said, hoarsely. "Don't stop _here_!"
+
+"I will, and if you go on alone I'll yell at you. You got to stand right
+here with all of 'em lookin' at you until--"
+
+"I promise! My heavens, come _on_!"
+
+Fred consented to end the moment of agony; and for the rest of the
+summer found it impossible to persuade Ramsey to pass that house in his
+company. "I won't do it!" Ramsey told him. "Your word of honour means
+nothin' to me; you're liable to do anything that comes into your head,
+and I'm gettin' old enough to not get a reputation for bein' seen with
+people that act the idiot on the public streets. No, sir; we'll walk
+around the block--at least, we will if you're goin' with _me_!"
+
+And to Fred's delight, though he concealed it, they would make this
+detour.
+
+The evening after their return to the university both were busy with
+their trunks and various orderings and disorderings of their apartment,
+but Fred several times expressed surprise that his roommate should
+be content to remain at home; and finally Ramsey comprehended the
+implications. Mrs. Meigs's chandelier immediately jingled with the shock
+of another crash upon the floor above.
+
+"You let me up!" Fred commanded thickly, his voice muffled by the pile
+of flannels, sweaters, underwear, and raincoats wherein his head
+was being forced to burrow. "You let me up, darn you! _I_ didn't say
+anything." And upon his release he complained that the attack was
+unprovoked. "I didn't say anything on earth to even hint you might want
+to go out and look around to see if anybody in particular had got back
+to college yet. I didn't even mention the _name_ of Dora Yo-- Keep off
+o' me! My goodness, but you are sensitive!"
+
+As a matter of fact, neither of them saw Dora until the first meeting of
+the Lumen, whither they went as sophomores to take their pleasure in the
+agony of freshmen debaters. Ramsey was now able to attend the Lumen, not
+with complacence but at least without shuddering over the recollection
+of his own spectacular first appearance there. He had made subsequent
+appearances, far from brilliant yet not disgraceful, and as a spectator,
+at least, he usually felt rather at his ease in the place. It cannot be
+asserted, however, that he appeared entirely at his ease this evening
+after he had read the "Programme" chalked upon the large easel
+blackboard beside the chairman's desk. Three "Freshmen Debates" were
+announced, and a "Sophomore Oration," this last being followed by the
+name, "D. Yocum, '18." Ramsey made immediate and conspicuous efforts
+to avoid sitting next to his roommate, but was not so adroit as to be
+successful. However, Fred was merciful: the fluctuations of his friend's
+complexion were an inspiration more to pity than to badinage.
+
+The three debates all concerned the "Causes of the War in Europe," and
+honours appeared to rest with a small and stout, stolidly "pro-German"
+girl debater, who had brought with her and translated at sight absa-loot
+proofs (so she called them), printed in German, that Germany had been
+attacked by Belgium at the low instigation of the envious English.
+Everybody knew it wasn't true; but she made an impression and
+established herself as a debater, especially as her opponent was quite
+confounded by her introduction of printed matter.
+
+When the debates and the verdicts were concluded, the orator appeared,
+and Fred's compassion extended itself so far that he even refrained from
+looking inquisitively at the boy in the seat next to his; but he made
+one side wager, mentally--that if Ramsey had consented to be thoroughly
+confidential just then, he would have confessed to feeling kind o'
+funny.
+
+Dora was charmingly dressed, and she was pale; but those notable
+eyelashes of hers were all the more notable against her pallor. And as
+she spoke with fire, it was natural that her colour should come back
+quite flamingly and that her eyes should flash in shelter of the lashes.
+"The Christian Spirit and Internationalism" was her subject, yet she
+showed no meek sample of a Christian Spirit herself when she came to
+attacking war-makers generally, as well as all those "half-developed
+tribesmen," and "victims of herd instinct" who believed that war might
+ever be justified under any circumstances of atrocity. She was eloquent
+truly, and a picture of grace and girlish dignity, even when she
+was most vigorous. Nothing could have been more militant than her
+denunciation of militancy.
+
+"She's an actual wonder," Fred said, when the two had got back to Mrs.
+Meigs's, afterward. "Don't you look at me like that: I'm talkin' about
+her as a public character, and there's nothin' personal about it. You
+let me alone."
+
+Ramsey was not clear as to his duty. "Well--"
+
+"If any person makes a public speech," Fred protested, "I got a perfect
+right to discuss 'em, no matter what you think of 'em"--and he added
+hastily--"or _don't_ think of 'em!"
+
+"Look here--"
+
+"Good heavens!" Fred exclaimed. "You aren't expecting to interfere with
+me if I say anything about that little fat Werder girl that argued for
+Germany, are you? Or any of the other speakers? I got a right to talk
+about 'em just as public speakers, haven't I? Well, what I say is:
+Dora Yocum as an orator is just an actual perfect wonder. Got any
+objections?"
+
+"N-no."
+
+"All right then." Fred settled himself upon the window seat with a pipe,
+and proceeded, "There's something about her, when she stands there, she
+stands so straight and knows just what she's up to, and everything, why,
+there's something about her makes the cold chills go down your
+spine--I mean _my_ spine, not yours particularly! You sit down--I
+mean _anybody's_ spine, doggone it!" And as Ramsey increased the
+manifestations of his suspicions, lifting a tennis racket over the
+prostrate figure, "Oh, murder," Fred said, resignedly. "All right, we'll
+change the subject. That fat little Werder cutie made out a pretty good
+case for Germany, didn't she?"
+
+Ramsey tossed the racket away, disposed himself in an easy chair with
+his feet upon the table, and presently chuckled. "You remember the time
+I had the fuss with Wesley Bender, back in the ole school days?"
+
+"Yep."
+
+"All the flubdub this Werder girl got off to-night puts me in mind of
+the way I talked that day. I can remember it as well as anything! Wesley
+kept yelpin' that whoever mentioned a lady's name in a public place was
+a pup, and of course I didn't want to hit him for that; a boy's got
+a reg'lar instinct for tryin' to make out he's on the right side in a
+scrap, and he'll always try to do something, or say something, or he'll
+get the other boy to say someting to make it look as if the other boy
+was in the wrong and began the trouble. So I told poor ole Wes that my
+father spoke my mother's name in a public place whenever he wanted
+to, and I dared him to say my father was a pup. And all so on. A boy
+startin' up a scrap, why, half the time he'll drag his father and mother
+if there's any chance to do it. He'll fix up some way so he can say,
+'Well, that's just the same as if you called my father and mother a
+fool,' or something like that. Then, afterward, he can claim he was
+scrappin' because he had to defend his father and mother, and of course
+he'll more than half believe it himself.
+
+"Well, you take a Government--it's only just some _men_, the way I see
+it, and if they're goin' to start some big trouble like this war, why,
+of course they'll play just about the same ole boy trick, because it's
+instinct to do it, just the same for a man as it is for a boy--or else
+the principle's just the same, or something. Well, anyhow, if you want
+to know who started a scrap and worked it up, you got to forget all the
+_talk_ there is about it, and all what each side _says_, and just look
+at two things: Who was fixed for it first, or thought they were, and who
+hit first? When you get the answer to those two questions everything's
+settled about all this being 'attacked' business. Both sides, just the
+same as boys, they'll both claim they _had_ to fight; but if you want to
+know which one _did_ have to, why forget all the arguing and don't take
+your eye off just what _happened_. As near as I can make out, this
+war began with Germany and Austria startin' in to wipe out two little
+countries; Austria began shootin' up Serbia, and Germany began shootin'
+up Belgium. I don't need to notice any more than that, myself--all
+the Werder girls in the country can debate their heads off, they can't
+change what happened and they can't excuse it, either."
+
+He was silent, appearing to feel that he had concluded conclusively, and
+the young gentleman on the window seat, after staring at him for several
+moments of genuine thoughtfulness, was gracious enough to observe,
+"Well, ole Ram, you may be a little slow in class, but when you think
+things out with yourself you do show signs of something pretty near like
+real horse-sense sometimes. Why don't you ever say anything like that
+to--to some of your pacifist friends?"
+
+"What do you mean? Who you talkin' about? Whose 'pacifist friends'?"
+
+"See here!" Fred exclaimed, as Ramsey seemed about to rise. "You keep
+sitting just where you are, and don't look at me out of the side of your
+eye like that--pretendin' you're a bad horse. I'm _really_ serious now,
+and you listen to me. I don't think argufying and debating like that
+little Fraulein Werder's does much harm. She's a right nifty young
+rolypoly, by the way, though you didn't notice, of course."
+
+"Why didn't I?" Ramsey demanded, sharply. "Why didn't I notice?"
+
+"Oh, nothing. But, as I was saying, I don't think that sort of talk does
+much harm: everybody knows it goes on among the pro-Germans, and it's
+all hot air, anyhow. But I think Linski's sort of talk does do harm,
+prob'ly among people that don't know much; and what's more, I think Dora
+Yocum's does some, too. Well, you hit Linski in the snoot, so what are
+you-- Sit still! My lord! You don't think I'm askin' you to go and hit
+Dora, do you? I mean: Aren't you ever goin' to talk to her about it and
+tell her what's what?"
+
+"Oh, you go on to bed!"
+
+"No, I'm in earnest," Fred urged. "Honestly, aren't you ever goin' to?"
+
+"How could I do anything like that?" Ramsey demanded explosively. "I
+never see her--to speak to, that is. I prob'ly won't happen to have
+another talk with her, or anything, all the time we're in college."
+
+"No," Fred admitted, "I suppose not. Of course, if you did, then you
+would give her quite a talking-to, just the way you did the other time,
+wouldn't you?" But upon that, another resumption of physical violence
+put an end to the conversation.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII
+
+Throughout the term Ramsey's calculation of probabilities against the
+happening of another interview with Dora seemed to be well founded, but
+at the beginning of the second "semester" he found her to be a fellow
+member of a class in biology. More than that, this class had every week
+a two-hour session in the botanical laboratory, where the structure of
+plants was studied under microscopic dissection. The students worked in
+pairs, a special family of plants being assigned to each couple; and the
+instructor selected the couples with an eye to combinations of the quick
+with the slow. D. Yocum and R. Milholland (the latter in a strange state
+of mind and complexion) were given two chairs, but only one desk and one
+microscope. Their conversation was strictly botanical.
+
+Thenceforth it became the most pressing care of Ramsey's life to prevent
+his roommate from learning that there was any conversation at all, even
+botanical. Fortunately, Fred was not taking the biological courses,
+though he appeared to be taking the sentimental ones with an astonishing
+thoroughness; and sometimes, to Fred's hilarious delight, Ramsey
+attempted to turn the tables and rally him upon whatever last affair
+seemed to be engaging his fancy. The old Victorian and pre-Victorian
+_blague_ word "petticoat" had been revived in Fred's vocabulary, and in
+others, as "skirt." The lightsome sprig was hourly to be seen, even
+when university rulings forbade, dilly-dallying giddily along the campus
+paths or the town sidewalks with some new and pretty Skirt. And when
+Ramsey tried to fluster him about such a matter Fred would profess his
+ardent love for the new lady in shouts and impromptu song. Nothing
+could be done to him, and Ramsey, utterly unable to defend his own
+sensibilities in like manner, had always to retire in bafflement.
+Sometimes he would ponder upon the question thus suggested: Why couldn't
+he do this sort of thing, since Fred could? But he never discovered a
+satisfying answer.
+
+Ramsey's watchfulness was so careful (lest he make some impulsive
+admission in regard to the botanical laboratory, for instance) that
+Mr. Mitchell's curiosity gradually became almost quiescent; but
+there arrived a day in February when it was piqued into the liveliest
+activity. It was Sunday, and Fred, dressing with a fastidiousness
+ever his daily habit, noticed that Ramsey was exhibiting an unusual
+perplexity about neckties.
+
+"Keep the black one on," Fred said, volunteering the suggestion, as
+Ramsey muttered fiercely at a mirror. "It's in better taste for church,
+anyhow. You're going to church, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes. Are you?"
+
+"No. I've got a luncheon engagement."
+
+"Well, you could go to church first, couldn't you? You better; you've
+got a lot of church absences against you."
+
+"Then one more won't hurt. No church in mine this morning, thanks! G'by,
+ole sox; see you at the 'frat house' for dinner."
+
+He went forth, whistling syncopations, and began a brisk trudge into the
+open country. There was a professor's daughter who also was not going to
+church that morning; and she lived a little more than three miles
+beyond the outskirts of the town. Unfortunately, as the weather was
+threatening, all others of her family abandoned the idea of church that
+day, and Fred found her before a cozy fire, but surrounded by parents,
+little brothers, and big sisters. The professor was talkative; Fred's
+mind might have been greatly improved, but with a window in range he
+preferred a melancholy contemplation of the snow, which had begun
+to fall in quantity. The professor talked until luncheon, throughout
+luncheon, and was well under way to fill the whole afternoon with talk,
+when Fred, repenting all the errors of his life, got up to go.
+
+Heartily urged to remain, for there was now something just under a
+blizzard developing, he said No; he had a great deal of "cirriculum
+work" to get done before the morrow, and passed from the sound of
+the professor's hospitable voice and into the storm. He had a tedious
+struggle against the wind and thickening snow, but finally came in
+sight of the town, not long before dark. Here the road led down into a
+depression, and, lifting his head as he began the slight ascent on the
+other side, Fred was aware of two figures outlined upon the low ridge
+before him. They were dimmed by the driving snow and their backs were
+toward him, but he recognized them with perfect assurance. They were
+Dora Yocum and Ramsey Milholland.
+
+They were walking so slowly that their advance was almost imperceptible,
+but it could be seen that Dora was talking with great animation; and
+she was a graceful thing, thus gesticulating, in her long, slim fur coat
+with the white snow frosting her brown fur cap. Ramsey had his hands
+deep in his overcoat pockets and his manner was wholly that of an
+audience.
+
+Fred murmured to himself, "'What did you say to her?' 'Nothin'. I
+started to, but'--" Then he put on a burst of speed and passed them,
+sweeping off his hat with operatic deference, yet hurrying by as if
+fearful of being thought a killjoy if he lingered. He went to the
+"frat house," found no one downstairs, and established himself in a red
+leather chair to smoke and ruminate merrily by a great fire in the hall.
+
+Half an hour later Ramsey entered, stamped off the snow, hung up his hat
+and coat, and sat himself down defiantly in the red leather chair on the
+other side of the fireplace.
+
+"Well, go on," he said. "Commence!"
+
+"Not at all!" Fred returned, amiably. "Fine spring weather to-day.
+Lovely to see all the flowers and the birds as we go a-strolling by. The
+little bobolinks--"
+
+"You look here! That's the only walk I ever took with her in my life. I
+mean by--by asking her and her saying she would and so forth. That other
+time just sort of happened, and you know it. Well, the weather wasn't
+just the best in the world, maybe, but she's an awful conscientious girl
+and once she makes an engagement--"
+
+"Why, of course," Fred finished for him, "She'd be too pious to break
+it just on account of a mere little blizzard or anything. Wonder how the
+weather will be next Sunday?"
+
+"I don't know and I don't care," said Ramsey. "You don't suppose I asked
+her to go _again_, do you?"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Well, for one thing, you don't suppose I want her to think I'm a
+perfect fool, do you?"
+
+Fred mused a moment or two, looking at the fire. "What was the lecture?"
+he asked, mildly.
+
+"What lecture?"
+
+"She seemed to me to be--"
+
+"That wasn't lecturing; she was just--"
+
+"Just what?"
+
+"Well; she thinks war for the United States is coming closer and
+closer--"
+
+"But it isn't."
+
+"Well, she thinks so, anyhow," said Ramsey, "and she's all broken up
+about it. Of course she thinks we oughtn't to fight and she's trying to
+get everybody else she can to keep working against it. She isn't goin'
+home again next summer, she's goin' back to that settlement work in
+Chicago and work there among those people against our goin' to war; and
+here in college she wants to get everybody she can to talk against it,
+and--"
+
+"What did you say?" Fred asked, and himself supplied the reply:
+"Nothin'. I started to, but--"
+
+Ramsey got up. "Now look here! You know the 'frat' passed a rule that if
+we broke any more furniture in this house with our scrappin' we'd both
+be fined the cost of repairs and five dollars apiece. Well, I can afford
+five dollars this month better than you can, and--"
+
+"I take it back!" Fred interposed, hastily. "But you just listen to me;
+you look out--letting her think you're on her side like that."
+
+"I don't--"
+
+"You _don't?_"
+
+Ramsey looked dogged. "I'm not goin' around always arguin' about
+everything when arguin' would just hurt people's feelings about
+something they're all excited about, and wouldn't do a bit o' good
+in the world--and you know yourself just _talk_ hardly ever settles
+anything--so I don't--"
+
+"Aha!" Fred cried. "I thought so! Now you listen to me--"
+
+"I won't. I--"
+
+But at this moment they were interrupted. Someone slyly opened the door,
+and a snowball deftly thrown from without caught Ramsey upon the back
+of the neck and head, where it flattened and displayed itself as an
+ornamental star. Shouting fiercely, both boys sprang up, ran to the
+door, were caught there in a barrage of snowballs, ducked through it in
+spite of all damage, charged upon a dozen besweatered figures awaiting
+them and began a mad battle in the blizzard. Some of their opponents
+treacherously joined them, and turned upon the ambushers.
+
+In the dusk the merry conflict waged up and down the snow-covered
+lawn, and the combatants threw and threw, or surged back and forth, or
+clenched and toppled over into snow banks, yet all coming to chant an
+extemporized battle-cry in chorus, even as they fought the most wildly.
+
+"Who? Who? Who?" they chanted. "Who? Who? _Who_ says there ain't goin'
+to be no war?"
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII
+
+So everywhere over the country, that winter of 1916, there were
+light-hearted boys skylarking--at college, or on the farms; and in the
+towns the young machinists snowballed one another as they came from the
+shops; while on this Sunday of the "frat" snow fight probably several
+hundreds of thousands of youthful bachelors, between the two oceans,
+went walking, like Ramsey, each with a girl who could forget the
+weather. Yet boys of nineteen and in the twenties were not light-hearted
+all the time that winter and that spring and that summer. Most of them
+knew long, thoughtful moments, as Ramsey did, when they seemed to be
+thinking not of girls or work or play--nor of anything around them,
+but of some more vital matter or prospect. And at such times they were
+grave, but not ungentle.
+
+For the long strain was on the country; underneath all its outward
+seeming of things going on as usual there shook a deep vibration, like
+the air trembling to vast organ pipes in diapasons too profound to reach
+the ear as sound: one felt, not heard, thunder in the ground under
+one's feet. The succession of diplomatic Notes came to an end after the
+torpedoing of the _Sussex_; and at last the tricky ruling Germans in
+Berlin gave their word to murder no more, and people said, "This means
+peace for America, and all is well for us," but everybody knew in his
+heart that nothing was well for us, that there was no peace.
+
+They said "All is well," while that thunder in the ground never
+ceased--it grew deeper and heavier till all America shook with it and it
+became slowly audible as the voice of the old American soil wherein lay
+those who had defended it aforetime, a soil that bred those who would
+defend it again, for it was theirs; and the meaning of it--Life,
+Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness--was theirs, and theirs to defend.
+And they knew they would defend it, and that more than the glory of a
+Nation was at stake. The Freedom of Man was at stake. So, gradually,
+the sacred thunder reached the ears of the young men and gave them those
+deep moments that came to them whether they sat in the classroom or
+the counting-room, or walked with the plow, or stood to the machine, or
+behind the ribbon counter. Thus the thunder shook them and tried them
+and slowly came into their lives and changed everything for them.
+
+Hate of the Germans was not bred; but a contempt for what Germany had
+shown in lieu of a national heart; a contempt as mighty and profound as
+the resolve that the German way and the German will should prevail in
+America, nor in any country of the world that would be free. And when
+the German Kaiser laid his command upon America, that no American should
+take his ship upon the free seas, death being the penalty for any who
+disobeyed, then the German Kaiser got his answer, not only to this
+new law he had made for us, but to many other thoughts of his. Yet the
+answer was for some time delayed.
+
+There was a bitter Sunday, and its bitterness went everywhere, to
+every place in the whole world that held high and generous hearts. Its
+bitterness came to the special meeting in the "Frat hall," where there
+were hearts, indeed, of that right sort, and one of them became vocal
+in its bitterness. This was the heart of Fred Mitchell, who was now an
+authority, being president of the Junior Class, chairman of the Prom
+Committee, and other things pleasant to be and to live for at his age.
+
+"For me, Brothers," he said, "I'd think I'd a great deal rather have
+been shot through the head than heard the news from Washington to-day! I
+tell you, I've spent the meanest afternoon I ever did in my life, and I
+guess it's been pretty much the same with all of us. The worst of it
+is, it looks as though there isn't a thing in the world we can do. The
+country's been betrayed by a few blatherskites and boneheads that had
+the power to do it, and all we can do we've just got to stand it. But
+there's some Americans that aren't just standing it, and I want to tell
+you a lot of 'em are men from the universities, just like us. They're
+_over there_ right now; they haven't said much--they just packed up and
+went. They're flying for France and for England and for Canada; they're
+fighting under every flag on the right side of the Western Front; and
+they're driving ambulances at Verdun and ammunition trucks at the Somme.
+Well, there's going to be a lot more American boys on all these jobs
+mighty soon, on account of what those men did in Congress to-day. If
+they won't give us a chance to do something under our own flag, then
+we'll have to go and do it under some other flag; and I want to tell you
+I'm one that's going to _go!_ I'll stick it out in college up to Easter,
+and then if there's still no chance to go under the Stars and Stripes
+I'll maybe have to go under the flag my great-great-grandfather fought
+against in 1776, but, anyhow, I'll _go!_"
+
+It was in speaking to Ramsey of this declaration that Dora said Fred was
+a "dangerous firebrand." They were taking another February walk, but the
+February was February, 1917; and the day was dry and sunny. "It's just
+about a year ago," she said.
+
+"What is?" Ramsey asked.
+
+"That first time we went walking. Don't you remember?"
+
+"Oh, _that_ day? Yes, I remember it was snowing."
+
+"And so cold and blowy!" she added. "It seems a long time ago. I like
+walking with you, Ramsey. You're so quiet and solid--I've always felt
+I could talk to you just anyhow I pleased, and you wouldn't mind. I'll
+miss these walks with you when we're out of college."
+
+He chuckled. "That's funny!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because we've only taken four besides this: two last year, and another
+week before last, and another last week. This is only the fifth."
+
+"Good gracious! Is that all? It seemed to me we'd gone ever so often!"
+She laughed. "I'm afraid you won't think that seems much as if I'd liked
+going, but I really have. And, by the way, you've never called on me at
+all. Perhaps it's because I've forgotten to ask you."
+
+"Oh, no," Ramsey said, and scuffed his shoes on the path, presently
+explaining rather huskily that he "never _was_ much of a caller"; and he
+added, "or anything."
+
+"Well, you must come if you ever care to," she said, with a big-sister
+graciousness. "The Dorm chaperon sits there, of course, but ours is
+a jolly one and you'd like her. You've probably met her--Mrs.
+Hustings?--when you've called on other girls at our old shop."
+
+"No," said Ramsey. "I never was much of a--" He paused, fearing that he
+might be repeating himself, and too hastily amended his intention. "I
+never liked any girl enough to go and call on her."
+
+"Ramsey Milholland!" she cried. "Why, when we were in school half the
+room used to be talking about how you and that pretty Milla--"
+
+"No, no!" Ramsey protested, again too hurriedly. "I never called on her.
+We just went walking."
+
+A moment later his colour suddenly became fiery. "I don't mean--I
+mean--" he stammered. "It was walking, of course--I mean we did go out
+walking but it wasn't walking like--like this." He concluded with a fit
+of coughing which seemed to rack him.
+
+Dora threw back her head and laughed delightfully. "Don't you
+apologize!" she said. "_I_ didn't when I said it seemed to me that we've
+gone walking so often, when in reality it's only four or five times
+altogether. I think I can explain, though: I think it came partly from
+a feeling I have that I can rely on you--that you're a good, solid,
+reliable sort of person. I remember from the time we were little
+children, you always had a sort of worried, honest look in school;
+and you used to make a dent in your forehead--you meant it for a
+frown--whenever I caught your eye. You hated me so honestly, and you
+were so honestly afraid I wouldn't see it!"
+
+"Oh, no--no--"
+
+"Oh, yes--yes!" she laughed, then grew serious. "My feeling about
+you--that you were a person to be relied on, I mean--I think it began
+that evening in our freshman year, after the _Lusitania_, when I stopped
+you on campus and you went with me, and I couldn't help crying, and you
+were so nice and quiet. I hardly realized then that it was the first
+time we'd ever really talked together--of course _I_ did all the
+talking!--and yet we'd known each other so many years. I thought of it
+afterward. But what gave me such a different view of you, I'd always
+thought you were one of that truculent sort of boys, always just
+bursting for a fight; but you showed me you'd really never had a fight
+in your life and hated fighting, and that you sympathized with my
+feeling about war." She stopped speaking to draw in her breath with a
+sharp sigh. "Ah, don't you remember what I've told you all along? How
+it keeps coming closer and closer--and now it's almost here! Isn't it
+_unthinkable?_ And what can we do to stop it, we poor few who feel that
+we _must_ stop it?"
+
+"Well--" Ramsey began uncomfortably. "Of course I--I--"
+
+"You can't do much," she said. "I know. None of us can. What can any
+little group do? There are so few of us among the undergraduates--and
+only one in the whole faculty. All the rest are for war. But we mustn't
+give up; we must never feel afterward that we left anything undone; we
+must fight to the last breath!"
+
+"'Fight'?" he repeated wonderingly, then chuckled.
+
+"Oh, as a figure of speech," she said, impatiently. "Our language
+is full of barbaric figures left over from the dark ages. But, oh,
+Ramsey!"--she touched his sleeve--"I've heard that Fred Mitchell is
+saying that he's going to Canada after Easter, to try to get into the
+Canadian aviation corps. If it's true, he's a dangerous firebrand, I
+think. Is it true?"
+
+"I guess so. He's been talking that way some."
+
+"But why do you _let_ him talk that way?" she cried. "He's your
+roommate; surely you have more influence with him than anybody else has.
+Couldn't you--"
+
+He shook his head slowly, while upon his face the faintly indicated
+modellings of a grin hinted of an inner laughter at some surreptitious
+thought. "Well, you know, Fred says himself sometimes, I don't seem to
+be much of a talker exactly!"
+
+"I know. But don't you see? That sort of thing is contagious. Others
+will think they ought to go if he does; he's popular and quite a leader.
+Can't you do anything with him?"
+
+She waited for him to answer. "Can't you?" she insisted.
+
+The grin had disappeared, and Ramsey grew red again. He seemed to wish
+to speak, to heave with speech that declined to be spoken and would not
+rouse up from his inwards. Finally he uttered words.
+
+"I--I--well, I--"
+
+"Oh, I know," she said. "A man--or a boy!--always hates to be intruding
+his own convictions upon other men, especially in a case like this,
+where he might be afraid of some idiot's thinking him unmanlike. But
+Ramsey--" Suddenly she broke off and looked at him attentively; his
+discomfort had become so obvious that suspicion struck her. She spoke
+sharply. "Ramsey _you_ aren't dreaming of doing such a thing, are you?"
+
+"What such a thing?"
+
+"Fred hasn't influenced _you_, has he? You aren't planning to go with
+him, are you?"
+
+"Where?"
+
+"To join the Canadian aviation."
+
+"No; I hadn't thought of doing it."
+
+She sighed again, relieved. "I had a queer feeling about you just
+then--that you _were_ thinking of doing some such thing. You looked so
+odd--and you're always so quiet, anybody might not really know what you
+do think. But I'm not wrong about you, am I, Ramsey?"
+
+They had come to the foot of the steps that led up to the entrance of
+her dormitory, and their walk was at an end. As they stopped and
+faced each other, she looked at him earnestly; but he did not meet the
+scrutiny, his eyelids fell.
+
+"I'm not wrong, am I, Ramsey?"
+
+"About what?" he murmured, uncomfortably.
+
+"You are my friend, aren't you?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then it's all right," she said. "That relieves me and makes me happier
+than I was just now, for of course if you're my friend you wouldn't let
+me make any mistake about you. I believe you, and now, just before I go
+in and we won't see much of each other for a week--if you still want me
+to go with you again next Sunday--"
+
+"Yes--won't you, please?"
+
+"Yes, if you like. But I want to tell you now that I count on you in all
+this, even though you don't 'talk much,' as you say; I count on you
+more than I do on anybody else, and I trust you when you say you're my
+friend, and it makes me happy. And I think perhaps you're right about
+Fred Mitchell. Talk isn't everything, nobody knows that better than
+I, who talk so much! and I think that, instead of talking to Fred, a
+steady, quiet influence like yours would do more good than any amount of
+arguing. So I trust you, you see? And I'm sorry I had that queer doubt
+of you." She held out her hand. "Unless I happen to see you on the
+campus for a minute, in the meantime, it's good-bye until a week from
+to-day. So--well, so, good-bye until then!"
+
+"Wait," said Ramsey.
+
+"What is it?"
+
+He made a great struggle. "I'm not influencing Fred not to go," he said.
+"I--don't want you to trust me to do anything like that."
+
+"What?"
+
+"I think it's all right for him to go, if he wants to," Ramsey said,
+miserably.
+
+"You do? For him to go to _fight?_"
+
+He swallowed. "Yes."
+
+"_Oh!_" she cried, turned even redder than he, and ran up the stone
+steps. But before the storm doors closed upon her she looked down to
+where he stood, with his eyes still lowered, a lonely-seeming figure,
+upon the pavement below. Her voice caught upon a sob as she spoke.
+
+"If you feel like that, you might as well go and enlist, yourself," she
+said, bitterly. "I can't--I couldn't--speak to you again after this!"
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX
+
+It was easy enough for him to evade Fred Mitchell's rallyings these
+days; the sprig's mood was truculent, not toward his roommate but toward
+Congress, which was less in fiery haste than he to be definitely at war
+with Germany. All through the university the change had come: athletics,
+in other years spotlighted at the centre of the stage, languished
+suddenly, threatened with abandonment; students working for senior
+honours forgot them; everything was forgotten except that growing
+thunder in the soil. Several weeks elapsed after Dora's bitter dismissal
+of Ramsey before she was mentioned between the comrades. Then, one
+evening, Fred asked, as he restlessly paced their study floor:
+
+"Have you seen your pacifist friend lately?"
+
+"No. Not exactly. Why?"
+
+"Well, for my part, I think she ought to be locked up," Fred said,
+angrily. "Have you heard what she did this afternoon?"
+
+"No."
+
+"It's all over college. She got up in the class in jurisprudence and
+made a speech. It's a big class, you know, over two hundred, under Dean
+Burney. He's a great lecturer, but he's a pacifist--the only one on the
+faculty--and a friend of Dora's. They say he encouraged her to make this
+break and led the subject around so she could do it, and then called on
+her for an opinion, as the highest-stand student in the class. She got up
+and claimed there wasn't any such thing as a legitimate cause for war,
+either legally or morally, and said it was a sign of weakness in a
+nation for it to believe that it did have cause for war.
+
+"Well, it was too much for that little, spunky Joe Stansbury, and he
+jumped up and argued with her. He made her admit all the Germans have
+done to us, the sea murders and the land murders, the blowing up of the
+factories, the propaganda, the strikes, trying to turn the United States
+into a German settlement, trying to get Japan and Mexico to make war on
+us, and all the rest. He even made her admit there was proof they mean
+to conquer us when they get through with the others, and that they've
+set out to rule the world for their own benefit, and make whoever else
+they kindly allow to live, to work for them.
+
+"She said it might be true, but since nothing at all could be a right
+cause for war, than all this couldn't be a cause of war. Of course she
+had her regular pacifist 'logic' working; she said that since war is
+the worst thing there is, why, all other evils were lesser, and a lesser
+evil can't be a just cause for a greater. She got terribly excited,
+they say, but kept right on, anyway. She said war was murder and there
+couldn't be any other way to look at it; and she'd heard there was
+already talk in the university of students thinking about enlisting,
+and whoever did such a thing was virtually enlisting to return murder for
+murder. Then Joe Stansbury asked her if she meant that she'd feel toward
+any student that enlisted the way she would toward a murderer, and she
+said, yes, she'd have a horror of any student that enlisted.
+
+"Well, that broke up the class; Joe turned from her to the platform and
+told old Burney that he was responsible for allowing such talk in his
+lecture-room, and Joe said so far as _he_ was concerned, he resigned
+from Burney's classes right there. That started it, and practically the
+whole class got up and walked out with Joe. They said Burney streaked
+off home, and Dora was left alone in there, with her head down on her
+desk--and I guess she certainly deserves it. A good many have already
+stopped speaking to her."
+
+Ramsey fidgeted with a pen on the table by which he sat. "Well, I don't
+know," he said, slowly; "I don't know if they ought to do that exactly."
+
+"Why oughtn't they?" Fred demanded, sharply.
+
+"Well, it looks to me as if she was only fightin' for her principles.
+She believes in 'em. The more it costs a person to stick to their
+principles, why, the more I believe the person must have something
+pretty fine about 'em likely."
+
+"Yes!" said the hot-headed Fred. "That may be in ordinary times, but not
+when a person's principles are liable to betray their country! We won't
+stand that kind of principles, I tell you, and we oughtn't to. Dora
+Yocum's finding that out, all right. She had the biggest position of
+any girl in this place, or any boy either, up to the last few weeks, and
+there wasn't any student or hardly even a member of the faculty that had
+the influence or was more admired and looked up to. She had the whole
+show! But now, since she's just the same as called any student a
+murderer if he enlists to fight for his country and his flag--well, now
+she hasn't got anything at all, and if she keeps on she'll have even
+less!"
+
+He paused in his walking to and fro and came to a halt behind his
+friend's chair, looking down compassionately upon the back of Ramsey's
+motionless head. His tone changed. "I guess it isn't just the ticket--me
+to be talking this way to you, is it?" he said, with a trace of
+huskiness.
+
+"Oh--it's all right," Ramsey murmured, not altering his position.
+
+"I can't help blowing up," Fred went on. "I want to say, though, I know
+I'm not very considerate to blow up about her to you this way. I've been
+playing horse with you about her ever since freshman year, but--well,
+you must have understood, Ram, I never meant anything that would really
+bother you much, and I thought--well, I _really_ thought it was a good
+thing, you--your--well, I mean about her, you know. I'm on, all right. I
+know it's pretty serious with you." He paused.
+
+Ramsey did not move, except that his right hand still fidgeted with the
+pen upon the table.
+
+"Oh--well--" he said.
+
+"It's--it's kind of tough luck!" his friend contrived to say; and he
+began to pace the floor again.
+
+"Oh--well--"
+
+"See here, ole stick-in-the-mud," Fred broke out abruptly. "After her
+saying what she did-- Well, it's none o' my business, but--but--"
+
+"Well, what?" Ramsey murmured. "I don't care what you say, if you want
+to say anything."
+
+"Well, I _got_ to say it," Fred half groaned and half blurted. "After
+she said _that_--and she meant it--why, if I were in your place I'd be
+darned if I'd be seen out walking with her again."
+
+"I'm not going to be," Ramsey said, quietly.
+
+"By George!" And now Fred halted in front of him, both being huskily
+solemn. "I think I understand a little of what that means to you, old
+Ramsey; I think I do. I think I know something of what it costs you to
+make that resolution for your country's sake." Impulsively he extended
+his hand. "It's a pretty big thing for you to do. Will you shake hands?"
+
+But Ramsey shook his head. "I didn't do it. I wouldn't ever have done
+anything just on account of her talkin' that way. She shut the door on
+me--it was a good while ago."
+
+"She did! What for?"
+
+"Well, I'm not much of a talker, you know, Fred," said Ramsey, staring
+at the pen he played with. "I'm not much of anything, for that matter,
+prob'ly, but I--well--I--"
+
+"You what?"
+
+"Well, I had to tell her I didn't feel about things the way she did.
+She'd thought I had, all along, I guess. Anyway, it made her hate me
+or something, I guess; and she called it all off. I expect there wasn't
+much to call off, so far as she was concerned, anyhow." He laughed
+feebly. "She told me I better go and enlist."
+
+"Pleasant of her!" Fred muttered. "Especially as we know what she thinks
+enlisting means." He raised his voice cheerfully. "Well, that's settled;
+and, thank God, old Mr. Bernstorff's on his way to his sweet little
+vine-clad cottage home! They're getting guns on the ships, and the big
+show's liable to commence any day. We can hold up our heads now, and
+we're going to see some great times, old Ramsey boy! It's hard on the
+home folks--Gosh! I don't like to think of that! And I guess it's going
+to be hard on a lot of boys that haven't understood what it's all about,
+and hard on some that their family affairs, and business, and so on,
+have got 'em tied up so it's hard to go--and of course there's plenty
+that just can't, and some that aren't husky enough--but the rest of
+us are going to have the big time in our lives. We got an awful lot to
+learn; it scares me to think of what I don't know about being any
+sort of a rear-rank private. Why, it's a regular _profession_, like
+practising law, or selling for a drug house on the road. Golly! Do you
+remember how we talked about that, 'way back in freshman year, what
+we were going to do when we got out of college? You were going to
+be practising law, for instance, and I--well, f'r instance, remember
+Colburn; he was going to be a doctor, and he did go to some medical
+school for one year. Now he's in the Red Cross, somewhere in _Persia_.
+Golly!"
+
+He paused to digest this impossibility, then chattered briskly on.
+"Well, there's _one_ good old boy was with our class for a while, back
+in freshman year; I bet we won't see him in any good old army! Old
+rough-neck Linski that you put the knob on his nose for. Tommie Hopper
+says he saw him last summer in Chicago soapboxin', yellin' his head off
+cussin' every government under the sun, but mostly ours and the Allies',
+you bet, and going to run the earth by revolution and representatives
+of unskilled labour immigrants, nobody that can read or write allowed
+to vote, except Linski. Tommie Hopper says he knows all about Linski;
+he never did a day's work in his life--too busy trying to get the
+workingmen stirred up against the people that exploit 'em! Tommie says
+he had a big crowd to hear him, though, and took up quite a little money
+for a 'cause' or something. Well, let him holler! I guess we can attend
+to him when we get back from over yonder. By George, old Ram, I'm
+gettin' kind of floppy in the gills!" He administered a resounding slap
+to his comrade's shoulder. "It certainly looks as if our big days were
+walking toward us!"
+
+
+He was right. The portentous days came on apace, and each one brought a
+new and greater portent. The faces of men lost a driven look besetting
+them in the days of badgered waiting, and instead of that heavy
+apprehension one saw the look men's faces must have worn in 1776 and
+1861, and the history of the old days grew clearer in the new. The
+President went to the Congress, and the true indictment he made there
+reached scoffing Potsdam with an unspoken prophecy somewhat chilling even
+to Potsdam, one guesses--and then through an April night went almost
+quietly the steady work: we were at war with Germany.
+
+The bugles sounded across the continent; drums and fifes played up and
+down the city streets and in town and village squares and through the
+countrysides. Faintly in all ears there was multitudinous noise like
+distant, hoarse cheering... and a sound like that was what Dora Yocum
+heard, one night, as she sat lonely in her room. The bugles and fifes
+and drums had been heard about the streets of the college town, that
+day, and she thought she must die of them, they hurt her so, and now to
+be haunted by this imaginary cheering--
+
+She started. Was it imaginary?
+
+She went downstairs and stood upon the steps of the dormitory in the
+open air. No; the cheering was real and loud. It came from the direction
+of the railway station, and the night air surged and beat with it.
+
+Below her stood the aged janitor of the building, listening. "What's the
+cheering for?" she asked, remembering grimly that the janitor was one of
+her acquaintances who had not yet stopped "speaking" to her. "What's the
+matter?"
+
+"It's a good matter," the old man answered. "I guess there must be a
+big crowd of 'em down there. One of our students enlisted to-day, and
+they're givin' him a send-off. Listen to 'em, how they _do_ cheer. He's
+the first one to go."
+
+She went back to her room, shivering, and spent the next day in bed with
+an aching head. She rose in the evening, however--a handbill had been
+slid under her door at five o'clock, calling a "Mass Meeting" of the
+university at eight, and she felt it her duty to go; but when she got to
+the great hall she found a seat in the dimmest corner, farthest from the
+rostrum.
+
+The president of the university addressed the tumultuous many hundreds
+before him, for tumultuous they were until he quieted them. He talked to
+them soberly of patriotism, and called upon them for "deliberation and
+a little patience." There was danger of a stampede, he said, and he and
+the rest of the faculty were in a measure responsible to their fathers
+and mothers for them.
+
+"You must keep your heads," he said. "God knows, I do not seek to judge
+your duty in this gravest moment of your lives, nor assume to tell you
+what you must or must not do. But by hurrying into service now, without
+careful thought or consideration, you may impair the extent of your
+possible usefulness to the very cause you are so anxious to serve.
+Hundreds of you are taking technical courses which should be
+completed--at least to the end of the term in June. Instructors from the
+United States Army are already on the way here, and military training
+will be begun at once for all who are physically eligible and of
+acceptable age. A special course will be given in preparation for
+flying, and those who wish to become aviators may enroll themselves for
+the course at once.
+
+"I speak to you in a crisis of the university's life, as well as that of
+the nation, and the warning I utter has been made necessary by what took
+place yesterday and to-day. Yesterday morning, a student in the junior
+class enlisted as a private in the United States Regular Army. Far be it
+from me to deplore his course in so doing; he spoke to me about it, and
+in such a way that I felt I had no right to dissuade him. I told him
+that it would be preferable for college men to wait until they could
+go as officers, and, aside from the fact of a greater prestige, I urged
+that men of education could perhaps be more useful in that capacity. He
+replied that if he were useful enough as a private a commission might in
+time come his way, and, as I say, I did not feel at liberty to attempt
+dissuasion. He left to join a regiment to which he had been assigned,
+and many of you were at the station to bid him farewell.
+
+"But enthusiasm may be too contagious; even a great and inspiring motive
+may work for harm, and the university must not become a desert. In the
+twenty-four hours since that young man went to join the army last night,
+one hundred and eleven of our young men students have left our walls;
+eighty-four of them went off together at three o'clock to catch an
+east-bound train at the junction and enlist for the Navy at Newport. We
+are, I say, in danger of a stampede."
+
+He spoke on, but Dora was not listening; she had become obsessed by the
+idea which seemed to be carrying her to the border of tragedy. When the
+crowd poured forth from the building she went with it mechanically, and
+paused in the dark outside. She spoke to a girl whom she did not know.
+
+"I beg your pardon--"
+
+"Yes?"
+
+"I wanted to ask: Do you know who was the student Doctor Corvis spoke
+of? I mean the one that was the first to enlist, and that they were
+cheering last night when he went away to be a private in the United
+States Army. Did you happen to hear his name?"
+
+"Yes, he was a junior."
+
+"Who was it?"
+
+"Ramsey Milholland."
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX
+
+Fred Mitchell, crossing the campus one morning, ten days later, saw Dora
+standing near the entrance of her dormitory, where he would pass her
+unless he altered his course; and as he drew nearer her and the details
+of her face grew into distinctness, he was indignant with himself
+for feeling less and less indignation toward her in proportion to the
+closeness of his approach. The pity that came over him was mingled with
+an unruly admiration, causing him to wonder what unpatriotic stuff
+he could be made of. She was marked, but not whipped; she still held
+herself straight under all the hammering and cutting which, to his
+knowledge, she had been getting.
+
+She stopped him, "for only a moment," she said, adding with a wan
+profoundness: "That is, if you're not one of those who feel that I
+shouldn't be 'spoken to'?"
+
+"No," said Fred, stiffly. "I may share their point of view, perhaps, but
+I don't feel called upon to obtrude it on you in that manner."
+
+"I see," she said, nodding. "I've wanted to speak with you about
+Ramsey."
+
+"All right."
+
+She bit her lip, then asked, abruptly: "What made him do it?"
+
+"Enlist as a private with the regulars?"
+
+"No. What made him enlist at all?"
+
+"Only because he's that sort," Fred returned briskly. "He may be
+inexplicable to people who believe that his going out to fight for his
+country is the same thing as going out to commit a mur--"
+
+She lifted her hand. "Couldn't you--"
+
+"I beg your pardon," Fred said at once. "I'm sorry, but I don't know
+just how to explain him to you."
+
+"Why?"
+
+He laughed, apologetically. "Well, you see, as I understand it, you
+don't think it's possible for a person to have something within him that
+makes him care so much about his country that he--"
+
+"Wait!" she cried. "Don't you think I'm willing to suffer a little
+rather than to see my country in the wrong? Don't you think I'm doing
+it?"
+
+"Well, I don't want to be rude; but, of course, it seems to me that
+you're suffering because you think you know more about what's right and
+wrong than anybody else does."
+
+"Oh, no. But I--"
+
+"We wouldn't get anywhere, probably, by arguing it," Fred said. "You
+asked me."
+
+"I asked you to tell my why he enlisted."
+
+"The trouble is, I don't think I _can_ tell that to anybody who needs
+an answer. He just went, of course. There isn't any question about it. I
+always thought he'd be the first to go."
+
+"Oh, no!" she said.
+
+"Yes, I always thought so."
+
+"I think you were mistaken," she said, decidedly. "It was a special
+reason--to make him act so cruelly."
+
+"Cruelly!" Fred cried.
+
+"It _was!_"
+
+"Cruel to whom?"
+
+"Oh, to his mother--to his family. To have him go off that way, without
+a word--"
+
+"Oh, no' he'd been home," Fred corrected her. "He went home the Saturday
+before he enlisted, and settled it with them. They're all broken up, of
+course; but when they saw he'd made up his mind, they quit opposing him,
+and I think they're proud of him about it, maybe, in spite of feeling
+anxious. You see, his father was an artilleryman in the war with
+Spain, and his grandfather was a Colonel at the end of the War of the
+Rebellion, though he went into it as a private, like Ramsey. He died
+when Ramsey was about twelve; but Ramsey remembers him; he was talking
+of him a little the night before he enlisted."
+
+Dora made a gesture of despairing protest. "You don't understand!"
+
+"What is it I don't understand?"
+
+"Ramsey! _I_ know why he went--and it's just killing me!"
+
+Fred looked at her gravely. "I don't think you need worry about it," he
+said. "There's nothing about his going that you are responsible for."
+
+She repeated her despairing gesture. "You don't understand. But it's no
+use. It doesn't help any to try to talk of it, though I thought maybe
+it would, somehow." She went a little nearer the dormitory entrance,
+leaving him where he was, then turned. "I suppose you won't see him?"
+
+"I don't know. Most probably not till we meet-if we should--in France.
+I don't know where he's stationed; and I'm going with the aviation--if
+it's ever ready! And he's with the regulars; he'll probably be among the
+first to go over."
+
+"I see." She turned sharply away, calling back over her shoulder in a
+choked voice. "Thank you. Good-bye!"
+
+But Fred's heart had melted; gazing after her, he saw that her
+proud young head had lowered now, and that her shoulders were moving
+convulsively; he ran after her and caught her as she began slowly to
+ascend the dormitory steps.
+
+"See here," he cried. "Don't--"
+
+She lifted a wet face. "No, no! He went in bitterness because I told him
+to, in my own bitterness! I've killed him! Long ago, when he wasn't much
+more than a child, I heard he'd said that some day he'd 'show' me, and
+now he's done it!"
+
+Fred whistled low and long when she had disappeared. "Girls!" he
+murmured to himself. "Some girls, anyhow--they will be girls! You can't
+tell 'em what's what, and you can't change 'em, either!"
+
+Then, as more urgent matters again occupied his attention, he went on at
+an ardent and lively gait to attend his class in map-making.
+
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI
+
+That thunder in the soil, at first too deep within it to be audible, had
+come to the surface now and gradually became heard as the thunder of
+a million feet upon the training grounds. The bugles rang sharper; the
+drums and fifes of town and village and countryside were the drums and
+fifes of a war that came closer and closer to every hearth between the
+two oceans.
+
+All the old symbols became symbols bright and new, as if no one had ever
+seen them before. "America" was like a new word, and the song "America"
+was like a new song. All the dusty blatancies of orating candidates,
+seeking to rouse bored auditors with "the old flag"; all the mechanical
+patriotics of school and church and club; all these time-worn flaccid
+things leaped suddenly into living colour. The flag became brilliant and
+strange to see--strange with a meaning that seemed new, a meaning long
+known, yet never known till now.
+
+And so hearts that thought they knew themselves came upon ambushes of
+emotion and hidden indwellings of spirit not guessed before. Dora Yocum,
+listening to the "Star Spangled Banner," sung by children of immigrants
+to an out-of-tune old piano in a mission clubroom, in Chicago, found
+herself crying with a soul-shaking heartiness in a way different from
+other ways that she had cried. Among the many things she thought of then
+was this: That the banner the children were singing about was in danger.
+The great country, almost a continent, had always seemed so untouchable,
+so safe and sure; she had never been able to conceive of a hostile
+power mighty enough to shake or even jar it. And since so great and
+fundamental a thing could not be injured, a war for its defence had
+appeared to be, in her eyes, not only wicked but ridiculous. At last,
+less and less vaguely, she had come to comprehend something of the
+colossal German threat, and the shadow that touched this bright banner
+of which the immigrants' children piped so briskly in the mission
+club-room.
+
+She had begun to understand, though she could not have told just why,
+or how, or at what moment understanding reached her. She began to
+understand that her country, threatened to the life, had flung its line
+those thousands of miles across the sea to stand and hold Hindenburg and
+Ludendorff and all their Kaisers, Kings, Dukes, and Crown Princes, their
+Krupp and Skoda monstrous engines, and their monstrous other engines of
+men made into armies. Through the long haze of misted sea-miles and the
+smoke of land-miles she perceived that brown line of ours, and knew it
+stood there that Freedom, and the Nation itself, might not perish from
+the earth.
+
+And so, a week later, she went home, and came nervously to Ramsey's
+mother and found how to direct the letter she wanted to write. He was in
+France.
+
+As the old phrase went, she poured out her heart. It seems to apply to
+her letter.
+
+She wrote:
+
+Don't misunderstand me. I felt that my bitter speech to you had driven
+you to take the step you did. I felt that I had sent you to be killed,
+and that I ought to be killed for doing it, but I knew that you had
+other motives, too. I knew, of course, that you thought of the country
+more than you did of me, or of any mad thing I would say--but I thought
+that what I said might have been the prompting thing, the word that
+threw you into it so hastily and before you were ready, perhaps. I
+dreaded to bear that terrible responsibility. I hope you understand.
+
+My great mistake has been--I thought I sas so "logical"--it's been in
+my starting everything with a thought I'd never proven; that war is the
+worst thing, and all other evils were lesser. I was wrong. I was wrong,
+because war isn't the worst evil. Slavery is the worse evil, and now
+I want to tell you I have come to see that you are making war on those
+that make slavery. Yes, you are fighting those that make both war and
+slavery, and you are right, and I humbly reverence and honour all of
+you who are in this right war. I have come home to work in the Red Cross
+here; I work there all day, and all day I keep saying to myself--but I
+really mean to _you_--it's what I pray, and oh, how I pray it: "God be
+with you and grant you the victory!" For you must win and you will win.
+
+Forgive me, oh, please--and if you will, could you write to me? I know
+you have things to do more important than "girls"--but oh, couldn't you,
+please?
+
+This letter, which she had taken care not to dampen, as she wrote, went
+in slow course to the "American Expeditionary Forces in France," and
+finally found him whom it patiently sought. He delayed not long to
+answer, and in time she held in a shaking hand the pencilled missive he
+had sent her.
+
+You forget all that comic talk about me enlisting because of your
+telling me to. I'd written my father I was going at the first chance a
+month and a half before that day when you said it. My mind was made up
+at the first time there was any talk of war, and you had about as much
+responsibility for my going as some little sparrow or something. Of
+course I don't mean I didn't pay any attention to the different things
+you said, because I always did, and I used to worry over it because I
+was afraid some day it would get you in trouble, and I'm mighty glad
+you've cut it out. That's right; you be a regular girl now. You always
+were one, and I knew it all right. I'm not as scared to write to you as
+I was to talk to you, so I guess you know I was mighty tickled to get
+your letter. It sounded blue, but I was glad to get it. You _bet_ I'll
+write to you! I don't suppose you could have any idea how glad I was to
+get your letter. I could sit here and write to you all day if they'd let
+me, but I'm a corporal now. When you answer this, I wish you'd say how
+the old town looks and if the grass in the front yards is as green as it
+usually is, and everything. And tell me some more about everything you
+think of when you are working down at the Red Cross like you said.
+I guess I've read your letter five million times, and that part ten
+million. I mean where you underlined that "_you_" and what you said
+to yourself at the Red Cross. Oh, murder, but I was glad to read that!
+Don't forget about writing anything else you think of like that.
+
+Well, I was interrupted then and this is the next day. Of course, I
+can't tell you where we are, because that darned censor will read this
+letter, but I guess he will let this much by. Who do you think I ran
+across in a village yesterday? Two boys from the old school days, and
+we certainly did shake hands a few times! It was the old foolish Dutch
+Krusemeyer and Albert Paxton, both of them lieutenants. I heard Fred
+Mitchell is still training in the States and about crazy because they
+won't send him over yet.
+
+If you had any idea how glad I was to get your letter, you wouldn't lose
+any time answering this one. Anyhow, I'm going to write to you again
+every few days if I get the chance, because maybe you'll answer more
+than one of 'em.
+
+But see here, cut out that "sent you to be killed" stuff. You've got the
+wrong idea altogether. We've got the big job of our lives, we know that,
+but we're going to do it. There'll be mistakes and bad times, but we
+won't fall down. Now you'll excuse me for saying it this way, Dora, but
+I don't know just how to express myself except saying of course we know
+everybody isn't going to get back home--but listen, we didn't come
+over here to get killed particularly, we came over here to give these
+Dutchmen h--l!
+
+Perhaps you can excuse language if I write it with a blank like that,
+but before we get back we're going to do what we came for. They may not
+all of them be as bad as some of them--it's a good thing you don't know
+what we do, because some of it would make you sick. As I say, there may
+be quite a lot of good ones among them; but we know what they've done to
+this country, and we know what they mean to do to ours. So we're going
+to attend to them. Of course that's why I'm here. It wasn't you.
+
+Don't forget to write pretty soon, Dora. You say in your letter--I
+certainly was glad to get that letter--well, you say I have things to do
+more important than "girls." Dora, I think you probably know without my
+saying so that of course while I have got important things to do, just
+as every man over here has, and everybody at home, for that matter,
+well, the thing that is most important in the world to me, next to
+helping win this war, it's reading the next letter from you.
+
+Don't forget how glad I'll be to get it, and don't forget you didn't
+have anything to do with my being over here. That was--it was something
+else. And you bet, whatever happens I'm glad I came! Don't ever forget
+_that_!
+
+Dora knew it was "something else." Her memory went back to her first
+recollection of him in school: from that time on he had been just an
+ordinary, everyday boy, floundering somehow through his lessons in
+school and through his sweethearting with Milla, as the millions of
+other boys floundered along with their own lessons and their own
+Millas. She saw him swinging his books and romping homeward from the
+schoolhouse, or going whistling by her father's front yard, rattling
+a stick on the fence as he went, care-free and masterful, but shy as a
+deer if strangers looked at him, and always "not much of a talker."
+
+She had always felt so superior to him, she shuddered as she thought of
+it. His quiet had been so much better than her talk. His intelligence
+was proven now, when it came to the great test, to be of a stronger sort
+than hers. He was wise and good and gentle--and a fighting man! "We know
+what they've done to this country and what they mean to do to ours. So
+we're going to attend to them." She read this over, and she knew that
+Ramsey, wise and gentle and good, would fight like an unchained devil,
+and that he and his comrades would indeed and indeed do what they "came
+for."
+
+"It wasn't you," he said. She nodded gently, agreeing, and knew what it
+was that sent him. Yet Ramsey had his own secret there, and did not tell
+it. Sometimes there rose, faint in his memory, a whimsical picture, yet
+one that had always meant much to him. He would see an old man sitting
+with a little boy upon a rustic bench under a walnut tree to watch the
+"Decoration Day Parade" go by--and Ramsey would see a shoot of sunshine
+that had somehow got through the walnut tree and made a bedazzlement of
+glinting fine lines over a spot about the size of a saucer, upon the old
+man's thick white hair. And in Ramsey's memory, the little boy, sitting
+beside the veteran, would half close his eyes, drowsily, playing that
+this sunshine spot was a white bird's-nest, until he had a momentary
+dream of a glittering little bird that dwelt there and wore a blue
+soldier cap on its head. And Ramsey would bring out of his memory
+thoughts that the old man had got into the child's head that day. "We
+knew that armies fighting for the Freedom of Man _had_ to win, in the
+long run.... We were on the side of God's Plan.... Long ago we began to
+see hints of His Plan.... Man has to win his freedom from himself--men
+in the light have to fight against men in the dark.... That light is the
+answer.... We had the light that made us never doubt."
+
+
+A long while Dora sat with the letter in her hand before she answered it
+and took it upon her heart to wear. That was the place for it, since it
+was already within her heart, where he would find it when he came home
+again. And she beheld the revelation sent to her. This ordinary life of
+Ramsey's was but the outward glinting of a high and splendid spirit, as
+high and splendid as earth can show. And yet it was only the life of an
+everyday American boy. The streets of the town were full, now, of boys
+like Ramsey.
+
+At first they were just boys in uniform; then one saw that they were
+boys no more.
+
+They were soldiers.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Ramsey Milholland, by Booth Tarkington
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