"How nice you look!" she said as she took my arm and led me into her playroom.
"These are my new clothes," I boasted. "They are very expensive and I have to be careful of them."
I remember not much that we said or did but I could never forget how she played for me on a great shiny piano--I had never seen one before--and made me feel very humble with music more to my liking than any I have heard since--crude and simple as it was--while her pretty fingers ran up and down the keyboard.
O magic ear of youth! I wonder how it would sound to me now--the rollicking lilt of _Barney Leave the Girls Alone_--even if a sweet maid flung its banter at me with flashing fingers and well-fashioned lips.
I behaved myself with great care at the table--I remember that--and, after dinner, we played in the dooryard and the stable, I with a great fear of tearing my new clothes. I stopped and cautioned her more than once: "Be careful! For gracious sake! be careful o' my new suit!"
As we were leaving late in the afternoon she said:
"I suppose he will sometime," said Uncle Peabody.
A new hope entered my breast, that moment, and began to grow there.
"Aren't you going to kiss her?" said Mr. Dunkelberg with a smile.
I saw the color in her cheeks deepen as she turned with a smile and walked away two or three steps while the grown people laughed, and stood with her back turned looking in at the window.
"You're looking the wrong way for the scenery," said Mr. Dunkelberg.
She turned and walked toward me with a look Of resolution in her pretty face and said:
We kissed each other and, again, that well-remembered touch of her hair upon my face! But the feel of her warm lips upon my own--that was so different and so sweet to remember in the lonely days that followed! Fast flows the river to the sea when youth is sailing on it. They had shoved me out of the quiet cove into the swift current--those dear, kindly, thoughtless people! Sally ran away into the house as their laughter continued and my uncle and I walked down the street. How happy I was!
We went to the Methodist Church where Mr. Wright was speaking but we couldn't get in. There were many standing at the door who had come too late. We could hear his voice and I remember that he seemed to be talking to the people just as I had heard him talk to my aunt and uncle, sitting by our fireside, only louder. We were tired and went down to the tavern and waited for him on its great porch. We passed a number of boys playing three-old-cat in the school yard. How I longed to be among them!