d suddenly to face him.

"What's the matter?" he said, stopping, too. Something he said had
startled her, evidently.

"How can you say such a thing?" she cried. "_You_ love to fight!"

"Me?"

"You do! You love fighting. You always have loved fighting."

He was dumbfounded. "Why, I never had a fight in my life!"

She cried out in protest of such prevarication.

"Well, I never did," he insisted, mildly.

"Why, you had a fight about _me_!"

"No, I didn't."

"With Wesley Bender!"

Ramsey chuckled. "_That_ wasn't a fight!"

"It wasn't?"

"Nothing like one. We were just guyin' him about--about gettin' slicked
up, kind of, because he at in front of you; and he hit me with his book
strap and I chased him off. Gracious, no; _that_ wasn't a fight!"

"But you fought Linski only last fall."

Ramsey chuckled again. "That wasn't even as much like a fight as the one
with Wesley. I just told this Linski I was goin' to give him a punch in
the sn-- I just told him to look out because I was goin' to hit him, and
then I did it, and waited to see if he wanted to do anything about it,
and he didn't. That's all there was to it, and it wasn't any more like
fighting than--than feeding chickens is."

She laughed dolefully. "It seems to me rather more like it than that!"

"Well, it wasn't."

They had begun to walk on again, and Ramsey was aware that they had
passed the "frat house," where his dinner was probably growing cold. He
was aware of this, but not sharply or insistently. Curiously enough, he
did not think about it. He had begun to find something pleasant in the
odd interview, and in walking beside a girl, even though the girl was
Dora Yocum. He made no attempt to account to himself for anything so
peculiar.

For a while they went slowly together, not speaking, and without
destination, though Ramsey vaguely took it for granted that Dora was
going somewhere. But she wasn't. They emerged from the part of the
small town closely built about the university and came out upon a bit
of parked land overlooking the river; and here Dora's steps slowed to an
indeterminate halt near a bench beneath a maple tree.

"I think I'll stay here a while," she said; and as he made no response,
she asked, "Hadn't you better be going back to your 'frat house' for
your dinner? I didn't mean for you to come out of your way with me; I
only wanted to get an answer to my question. You'd better be running
back."

"Well--"

He stood irresolu