body found one of 'em! Golly! She wrote to him that she was just living till their next meeting—trying to bother him and distract his attention when he had a man's work to do. She mooned up at him with her foolish soft mushy eyes all through his sermons—absolutely spoiled his style. She was wearing him out, and he'd have to get rid of her.
Hated to do it. Always had been nice to girls—to everybody. But it was for her sake just as much as his—
He'd have to be mean to her and make her sore.
They were alone in the Schoenheim church after morning meeting. She had whispered to him at the door, "I've got something I have to tell you."
He was frightened; he grumbled, "Well, we oughtn't to be seen together so much but— lip back when the other folks are gone."
He was sitting in the front pew in the deserted church, reading hymns for want of better, when she crept behind him and kissed his ear. He jumped.
"Good Lord, don't go startling people like that!" he snarled. "Well, what's all this you have to tell me?"
She was faltering, near to tears. "I thought you'd like it! I just wanted to creep close and say I loved you!"
"Well, good heavens, you needn't of acted as though you were pregnant or something!"
"Elmer!" Too hurt in her gay affection, too shocked in her rustic sense of propriety, for resentment.
"Well, that's just about how you acted! Making me wait here when I've got to be back in town—important meeting—and me having to pump that hand-car all alone! I do wish you wouldn't act like a ten-year-old kid all the time!"
"Elmer!"
"Oh, Elmer, Elmer, Elmer! That's all very well. I like to play around and be foolish jus' well's anybody, but all this—all this— All the time!"
She fled round to the front of the pew and knelt by him, her childish hand on his knee, prattling in an imitation of baby-talk which infuriated him:
