Page:Czecho-Slovak Student Life, Volume 18.djvu/81

MPRIMIS, they were both young. Then, theirs was that lyrical, boy-and-girl, Lorenzo-and-Jessica love that your older and wiser folk call poppy-love, laugh at. . . . and sing songs about.

Just then, however, the older folk meant nothing to Jimmy Hanus. He knew only that for the few short months he had been home from college, his native town, Middleboro, had been a paradise. And Janey Maresh seemed to think so too.

“Will you love me in December—” she had whispered, half-laughing; the night, the moonlight, the river-noises, and the cherry blossoms seemed a dim, sweet dream, all music and fragrance.

Jimmy had answered in the only way possible, stopping her query short with a kiss.

From that night on he was happy with that delirious happiness which comes to man only once. . . when he is a boy in love.

During the day he laughed and sang and whistled at his work so much that old Mr. Deemer, the only other employee at Middleboro’s post-office, frowned beneath his green visor and, apparently exasperated at so much good-humor, daily ejaculated, “Say, you ought t’go on the stage. Mail-clerkin’ is no job for you”. Whereat Jimmy, bending over his work, would run his fingers thru his fair hair and laugh the more.

At night, after spending the evening with Janey, he would dream of his future “Down-state” in New York, where he was to begin working the coming winter.

Perhaps it was too good to last. At any rate, he called on Janey one evening, only to have Mrs. Maresh explain to him, while she wiped her wet hands on her apron, that her daughter had “gone out with a Mr. Durand”. So he returned home to spend a miserable evening.

Next day, however, Janey came to the post-office to explain. She said she was sorry that she had no time to inform him.

“The girls just brought him over”, she continued airily, “and of course I couldn’t refuse to make up the party. They had two other boys with them. He’s the most charming man, from New York,—and an artist”, she finished almost breathlessly.

Jim, who thought he did not deserve so much, was so profuse with his “I don’t mind-s” that she felt a little regret at apologizing.

“Oh well, if you don’t mind— — —!” she pouted.

“Now, Janey— — —”, and Jim began to explain rather ackwardly, and thought of the wolf in their fold, as he put it to himself.

Only, Jim discovered a few nights later, Durand did not look like a wolf. On the other hand, with his unconsciously Byronic air and his mature ease, (he must have been well past thirty) the man was decidedly handsome. Too handsome, Jim thought.

Here, then, was the time when Jimmy should have used strategy. But in the love of a boy for a girl