第38章 CHAPTER XVIII(2)

"You'll have to do like I did,"he said finally."I got these by getting them.You'll have to get one the same way."And he initiated me.It must be remembered that Louis and I were hard situated.We really had to struggle to pay our board and maintain a decent appearance.We met each other in the evening,after the day's work,on the street corner,or in a little candy store on a side street,our sole frequenting-place.Here we bought our cigarettes,and,occasionally,a nickel's worth of "red-hots."(Oh,yes;Louis and I unblushingly ate candy--all we could get.Neither of us drank.Neither of us ever went into a saloon.)But the girl.In quite primitive fashion,as Louis advised me,Iwas to select her and make myself acquainted with her.We strolled the streets in the early evenings.The girls,like us,strolled in pairs.And strolling girls will look at strolling boys who look.(And to this day,in any town,city,or village,in which I,in my middle age,find myself,I look on with the eye trained of old experience,and watch the sweet innocent game played by the strolling boys and girls who just must stroll when the spring and summer evenings call.)The trouble was that in this Arcadian phase of my history,I,who had come through,case-hardened,from the other side of life,was timid and bashful.Again and again Louis nerved me up.But Ididn't know girls.They were strange and wonderful to me after my precocious man's life.I failed of the bold front and the necessary forwardness when the crucial moment came.

Then Louis would show me how--a certain,eloquent glance of eye,a smile,a daring,a lifted hat,a spoken word,hesitancies,giggles,coy nervousnesses--and,behold,Louis acquainted and nodding me up to be introduced.But when we paired off to stroll along boy and girl together,I noted that Louis had invariably picked the good-looker and left to me the little lame sister.

I improved,of course,after experiences too numerous to enter upon,so that there were divers girls to whom I could lift my hat and who would walk beside me in the early evenings.But girl's love did not immediately come to me.I was excited,interested,and I pursued the quest.And the thought of drink never entered my mind.Some of Louis'and my adventures have since given me serious pause when casting sociological generalisations.But it was all good and innocently youthful,and I learned one generalisation,biological rather than sociological,namely,that the "Colonel's lady and Judy O'Grady are sisters under their skins."And before long I learned girl's love,all the dear fond deliciousness of it,all the glory and the wonder.I shall call her Haydee.She was between fifteen and sixteen.Her little skirt reached her shoe-tops.We sat side by side in a Salvation Army meeting.She was not a convert,nor was her aunt who sat on the other side of her,and who,visiting from the country where at that time the Salvation Army was not,had dropped in to the meeting for half an hour out of curiosity.And Louis sat beside me and observed--I do believe he did no more than observe,because Haydee was not his style of girl.

We did not speak,but in that great half-hour we glanced shyly at each other,and shyly avoided or as shyly returned and met each other's glances more than several times.She had a slender oval face.Her brown eyes were beautiful.Her nose was a dream,as was her sweet-lipped,petulant-hinting mouth.She wore a tam-o'-shanter,and I thought her brown hair the prettiest shade of brown I had ever seen.And from that single experience of half an hour I have ever since been convinced of the reality of love at first sight.