"It isn't as short as the pike, but it is a prettier road."

The smile deepened, and I had it on my tongue to add, "I shall be coming this way every morning if you will ride with me." But I was afraid of that smiling mouth.

(Of course I didn't tell his Honor all this, but I add it now, together with other matters that concern me and belong here. It will help to explain what happened later.)

So that fine spring morning, when I was seventeen, I first took note of what a woman is. The rest of that year I used to drive the prim little girl back and forth between her father's farm and school. I was no scholar like her, and she never went about with the other girls to parties. She wasn't in the least free and easy with the boys. In those days most girls didn't think much of a fellow who wouldn't take his chances to kiss them when he could. Evenings, when we called, we used to pull the parlor door to and sit holding hands with the young woman of our admiration. And no harm ever came of it that I know: most of those girls made good wives when the time came, for all they were easy and tender and ready to make love in the days of their youth.

But once, when I tried to put my arm about May Rudge, as we were driving along the lonely road, she turned and looked at me out of those cold gray eyes. Her mouth rippled in that little ironical way, as if she were laughing down in her mind. She never said a word or pulled away from me, but I didn't care to go on.

May gave me ambition, and she made me want to be steady and good, though she never said anything about it. But now and then I would break away and get myself into some fool scrape. Such was the time when I came back from a Terre Haute party pretty light-headed, and went with some others to wake up the old Methodist president of the college. I don't remember what happened then, but the next morning at chapel the old boy let loose on "wine and wantoning," and called me by name. I knew that I had done for myself at Eureka, and I was pretty mad to be singled out for reprobation from all the offenders. I got up from my seat and walked out while the school stared. As I was getting my horse from the place where I kept it, May Rudge came into the yard.

"You aren't going this way?" she demanded quickly.

"I don't see as there's much use waiting for bouquets."

"You aren't going without apologizing!" she flashed out.

To tell the truth, that had never occurred to me. It seemed she cared less for the disgrace than for the way I took it. So in the end, before I left town, I drove up to the president's house, apologized, and got my dismissal in due form, and was told I should go to hell unless I was converted straightway. Then May drove down the street with me in face of the whole school, who contrived to be there to see my departure.