Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/56

 Your boy of fifteen, I think, is the only perfect lover—giving all, demanding nothing, save, indeed, the right to his secret cherishings.

Tremors, born within me that day when old gray, bristling Leggett, our Principal, opened the schoolroom door upon Lucy Tait, are as poignant, as sweetly terrible, now as in that far time when the light of her wondrous presence first fell upon me.

An instant she hesitated timidly in the sombre frame of the doorway, looking far over our heads. Then old Leggett came in front of her. There was a word of presentation to Miss Berham, our teacher, the vision was escorted to a seat at my left front, and I was bade to continue the reading lesson if I ever expected to learn anything. As a matter of truth I did not expect to learn anything more. I thought I must suddenly have learned all there is to know. The page of the ancient reader over which I then mumbled is now before me. "A Good Investment" was the title of the day's lesson, and I had been called upon to render the first paragraph. With lightness, unrecking the great moment so perilously at hand, I had begun: "'Will you lend me two thousand dollars to establish myself in a small retail business?' inquired a young man, not yet out of his teens of a middle-aged gentleman who was poring over his ledger in the counting room of one of the largest establishments in Boston."

The iron latch rattled, the door swung fatefully back, our heads were raised, our eyes bored her through and through.