ow do you know I
want to go out with you," she said sulkily. "What makes
you so sure?"

George Willard did not answer. In silence the two
stood in the darkness with the fence between them. "You
go on along," she said. "Pa's in there. I'll come
along. You wait by Williams' barn."

The young newspaper reporter had received a letter from
Louise Trunnion. It had come that morning to the office
of the Winesburg Eagle. The letter was brief. "I'm
yours if you want me," it said. He thought it annoying
that in the darkness by the fence she had pretended
there was nothing between them. "She has a nerve! Well,
gracious sakes, she has a nerve," he muttered as he
went along the street and passed a row of vacant lots
where corn grew. The corn was shoulder high and had
been planted right down to the sidewalk.

When Louise Trunnion came out of the front door of her
house she still wore the gingham dress in which she had
been washing dishes. There was no hat on her head. The
boy could see her standing with the doorknob in her
hand talking to someone within, no doubt to old Jake
Trunnion, her father. Old Jake was half deaf and she
shouted. The door closed and everything was dark and
silent in the little side street. George Willard
trembled more violently than ever.

In the shadows by Williams' barn George and Louise
stood, not daring to talk. She was not particularly
comely and there was a black smudge on the side of her
nose. George thought she must have rubbed her nose with
her finger after she had been handling some of the
kitchen pots.

The young man began to laugh nervously. "It's warm,"
he said. He wanted to touch her with his hand. "I'm not
very bold," he thought. Just to touch the folds of the
soiled gingham dress would, he decided, be an exquisite
pleasure. She began to quibble. "You think you're
better than I am. Don't tell me, I guess I know," she
said drawing closer to him.

A flood of words burst from George Willard. He
remembered the look that had lurked in the girl's eyes
when they had met on the streets and thought of the
note she had written. Doubt left him. The whispered
tales concerning her that had gone about town gave him
confidence. He became wholly the male, bold and
aggressive. In his heart there was no sympathy for her.
"Ah, come on, it'll be all right. There won't be anyone
know anything. How can they know?" he urged.

They began to walk along a narrow brick sidewalk
between the cracks of whic