“Because, without writing there wouldn’t be any high school. I must live and buy books and clothes, you know.”

“I’d forgotten that,” she laughed. “Why weren’t you born with an income?”

“I’d rather have good health and imagination,” he answered. “I can make good on the income, but the other things have to be made good for — “ He almost said “you,” then amended his sentence to, “have to be made good for one.”

“Don’t say ‘make good,’” she cried, sweetly petulant. “It’s slang, and it’s horrid.”

He flushed, and stammered, “That’s right, and I only wish you’d correct me every time.”

“I — I’d like to,” she said haltingly. “You have so much in you that is good that I want to see you perfect.”

He was clay in her hands immediately, as passionately desirous of being moulded by her as she was desirous of shaping him into the image of her ideal of man. And when she pointed out the opportuneness of the time, that the entrance examinations to high school began on the following Monday, he promptly volunteered that he would take them.

Then she played and sang to him, while he gazed with hungry yearning at her, drinking in her loveliness and marvelling that there should not be a hundred suitors listening there and longing for her as he listened and longed.