-dozen
peanut butter sandwiches and a box o' strawberries--kind of girl-food,
you know--and went on back there, and we ate the stuff up. So then she
said she was afraid she'd taken me away from my dinner and made me a lot
of trouble, and so on, and she was sorry, and she told me good-night--"

"What did you say then?"

"Noth-- Oh, shut up! So then she skipped out to her Dorm, and I came on
home."

"When did you see her next, Ramsey?"

"I haven't seen her next," said Ramsey. "I haven't seen her at all--not
to speak to. I saw her on Main Street twice since then, but both times
she was with some other girls, and they were across the street, and
I couldn't tell if she was lookin' at me--I kind of thought not--so I
thought it might look sort o' nutty to bow to her if she wasn't, so I
didn't."

"And you didn't tell her you wouldn't be one of the ones to help her
with her pacifism and anti-war stuff and all that?"

"No. I started to, but-- Shut up!"

Fred sat up, giggling. "So she thinks you _will_ help her. You didn't
say anything at all, and she must think that means she converted you.
Why didn't you speak up?"

"Well, _I_ wouldn't argue with her," said Ramsey. Then, after a silence,
he seemed to be in need of sympathetic comprehension. "It _was_ kind o'
funny, though, wasn't it?" he said, appealingly.

"What was?"

"The whole business."

"What 'whole bus'--"

"Oh, get out! Her stoppin' me, and me goin' pokin' along with her, and
her--well, her crying and everything, and me being around with her while
she felt so upset, I mean. It seems--well, it does seem kind o' funny to
me."

"Why does it?" Fred inquired, preserving his gravity. "Why should it
seem funny to you?"

"I don't mean funny like something's funny you laugh at," Ramsey
explained laboriously. "I mean funny like something that's out of the
way, and you wonder how it ever happened to happen. I mean it seems
funny I'd ever be sittin' there on a bench with that ole girl I never
spoke to in my life or had anything to do with, and talkin' about the
United States goin' to war. What we were talkin' about, why, that seems
just as funny as the rest of it. Lookin' back to our class picnic, f'r
instance, second year of high school, that day I jumped in the creek
after-- Well, you know, it was when I started makin' a fool of myself
over a girl. Thank goodness, I got _that_ out o' my system; it makes me
just sick to look back on those days and think of the f