ce and patience. Not he!
He proposed to disappear, like the moon on a dark night, and as he was,
at present, something that Mr. Perkins would by no means have in the
family nor Mrs. Perkins allow in the house, he would neither return to
Riverboro nor ask any favors of them until he had something to offer.
Yes, sir. He was going to be crammed to the eyebrows with learning for
one thing,--useless kinds and all,--going to have good clothes, and a
good income. Everything that was in his power should be right, because
there would always be lurking in the background the things he never
could help--the mother and the poorhouse.

So he went away, and, although at Squire Bean's invitation he came back
the first year for two brief visits at Christmas and Easter, he was
little seen in Riverboro, for Mr. Ladd finally found him a place where
he could make his vacations profitable and learn bookkeeping at the same
time.

The visits in Riverboro were tantalizing rather than pleasant. He
was invited to two parties, but he was all the time conscious of his
shirt-collar, and he was sure that his "pants" were not the proper
thing, for by this time his ideals of dress had attained an almost
unrealizable height. As for his shoes, he felt that he walked on carpets
as if they were furrows and he were propelling a plow or a harrow before
him. They played Drop the Handkerchief and Copenhagen at the parties,
but he had not had the audacity to kiss Emma Jane, which was bad enough,
but Jimmy had and did, which was infinitely worse! The sight of James
Watson's unworthy and over-ambitious lips on Emma Jane's pink cheek
almost destroyed his faith in an overruling Providence.

After the parties were over he went back to his old room in Squire
Bean's shed chamber. As he lay in bed his thoughts fluttered about
Emma Jane as swallows circle around the eaves. The terrible sickness of
hopeless handicapped love kept him awake. Once he crawled out of bed in
the night, lighted the lamp, and looked for his mustache, remembering
that he had seen a suspicion of down on his rival's upper lip. He rose
again half an hour later, again lighted the lamp, put a few drops of oil
on his hair, and brushed it violently for several minutes. Then he went
back to bed, and after making up his mind that he would buy a dulcimer
and learn to play on it so that he would be more attractive at parties,
and outshine his rival in society as he had aforetime in athletics, he
finally