"One of those students," thought Truesdale,
as he noted the smooth face and slender immaturity of her escort. "They
swarm. The town is full of them. What chance has anybody else against
them?"
Bertie showed him a little face at once surprised, startled, puzzled. She
bowed slightly and gave him a smile which seemed to him timid, shrinking,
and amusingly deferential; but she showed no disposition to pause, or
even to slacken her pace. "She doesn't know, after all," he thought; "she
is imagining some vague horror or other that is too dreadful to be true,
or even possible."
Bertie and her youth passed on through the contending sun and shade of
the path. "Can they be engaged?" thought Truesdale, upon whom certain
fine shades in posture and address were not thrown away; "he looks hardly
a junior." He presently met a senior of his acquaintance who told him he
understood they were. "Ouf!" commented Truesdale, further; "a mere
boy-and-girl affair." And he pleased himself with thinking how his
own participation in such an affair would give it a much greater maturity
and weight.
But as regarded this particular one, he definitely withdrew from all
participation whatever. He had now done enough to satisfy his
curiosity--or his interest, as he might have preferred to have it
called--and fully enough to preserve the dignity so absurdly jeoparded by
the fantastic scruples of his aunt Lydia. He presently dismissed the
whole matter, and fell to bestowing an exaggerated care upon the tips of
his brushes.
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