George Allan England

“ The fights stopped, and the marble-playing with subsequent muddy knees; the barn-stormings and the rude, unmannerly games were no more. Instead of rushing out through the subway-like exit of the school, hollering and screaming with the other boys like a crazy demon in a fit, you took unto yourself the habit of marching forth sedately and crossing over to stand in front of Heath’s drug store where you could see Blanche pass or mayhap enter. ”

“ Have the cellar-digging vandals destroyed them all, with the growth of the town, or do they still lie there in darkness, dreaming of that long-dead June and of all the things which might have been, but were not? The box and the paper have probably long since reverted to their elements, but somewhere in this world the agate still bears the kiss of Blanche and you. Calf-love! ... and now you are such very tough old beef! Calf-love, that made her a princess, her father a king, and the old brick drug store a crystal palace, at the very least! Calf-love! ”

“ The Hindu seeing his clay Buddha crushed under Tommy Atkin’s heel, the good Orthodox confronted with a complete set of Ingersoll is less mangled in all that the soul holds dear and sacred than were you, standing there by the bed-room door in your canton flannel nighty, hearing the choicest outpourings of your love guffawed and haw-hawed over by a parcel of coarse-grained, ghoulish vandals. ”

“ On the morrow the gift changed hands, and the news spread over the school that “Phil Brown is stuck on Blanche Heath.” Very shortly this information began to crop out in scraggly chalk letters on blank walls and the sides of barns. Initials also appeared, woven with hearts. In Man’s Land such announcements bring pride, joy, congratulations; in Boy’s Land they mean disgrace and shame and bloody noses. Is not this atavism, the boy-code? Do not the primal fighting instincts of our race assert themselves at the age when men and women are only calves and little blue-eyed heifers? ”

“ She grew up to marry a man named Smith—and this is gospel truth—thereby losing her identity and acquiring a family. You have also acquired certain olive branches, plus taxes, plus rotundity; yet somehow when the spring is stirring and the sky is the color of robins’ eggs, you wonder what of that tin box, what of the screed and marble buried beside the big rock down at the end of Ashford Street. ”

“ You stand rooted to the spot (you tell yourself) with terrible joy; suddenly Mark Rogers hails you from across the street, and you, with Indian whoops and bounds, rejoin him and make off to a barn-storming, the first in many weeks. The sun of human happiness rises to no higher zenith than at that glad moment and all the rest of the ineffable day. “Your strength is as the strength of ten;” ”

“ The lynching of a nun would have been less ghoulish than the slaughter of that blameless passion. Heaven and earth shall pass away but the bitterness of that crude killing shall be never quite forgotten. ”

“ Those little pinfeathery wings would be great in winter, too—better than ear caps! But when it was pie-time, well, the advantages of cherub-hood looked rather doubtful. No matter—the cherubs were pure and fair and not of earth, earthy. So you called them in to serve you and to bear your message to Blanche, that creature of light and beauty. And you brought home your school box of crayons, also a five-cent pad, purchased with delicate tact at the Heath drug store. ”

“ Your heart falls; you even feel a moisture on your forehead which you hope is cold perspiration and which might be were it not very warm, the day being a hot one in May. All hope is lost; she has not spoken! ”

“ Ain't we engaged?”
Your greatest comfort was the drug store, for here at least you had something definite and tangible to lay hold on. You never really and truly believed it was a drug store at all, like other stores, though the stout man who claimed to be her father was visibly to be seen within, mixing drugs and rolling pills—claimed to be her father, I say, because you knew he really and truly couldn’t be ”