“Don’t say ‘make good,’” she cried, sweetly petulant.  “It’s slang, and it’s horrid.”

He flushed, and stammered, “That’s right, and I only wish you’d correct me every time.”

“I—­I’d like to,” she said haltingly.  “You have so much in you that is good that I want to see you perfect.”

He was clay in her hands immediately, as passionately desirous of being moulded by her as she was desirous of shaping him into the image of her ideal of man.  And when she pointed out the opportuneness of the time, that the entrance examinations to high school began on the following Monday, he promptly volunteered that he would take them.

Then she played and sang to him, while he gazed with hungry yearning at her, drinking in her loveliness and marvelling that there should not be a hundred suitors listening there and longing for her as he listened and longed.

CHAPTER X

He stopped to dinner that evening, and, much to Ruth’s satisfaction, made a favorable impression on her father.  They talked about the sea as a career, a subject which Martin had at his finger-ends, and Mr. Morse remarked afterward that he seemed a very clear-headed young man.  In his avoidance of slang and his search after right words, Martin was compelled to talk slowly, which enabled him to find the best thoughts that were in him.  He was more at ease than that first night at dinner, nearly a year before, and his shyness and modesty even commended him to Mrs. Morse, who was pleased at his manifest improvement.

“He is the first man that ever drew passing notice from Ruth,” she told her husband.  “She has been so singularly backward where men are concerned that I have been worried greatly.”

Mr. Morse looked at his wife curiously.

“You mean to use this young sailor to wake her up?” he questioned.

“I mean that she is not to die an old maid if I can help it,” was the answer.  “If this young Eden can arouse her interest in mankind in general, it will be a good thing.”

“A very good thing,” he commented.  “But suppose,—­and we must suppose, sometimes, my dear,—­suppose he arouses her interest too particularly in him?”

“Impossible,” Mrs. Morse laughed.  “She is three years older than he, and, besides, it is impossible.  Nothing will ever come of it.  Trust that to me.”

And so Martin’s role was arranged for him, while he, led on by Arthur and Norman, was meditating an extravagance.  They were going out for a ride into the hills Sunday morning on their wheels, which did not interest Martin until he learned that Ruth, too, rode a wheel and was going along.  He did not ride, nor own a wheel, but if Ruth rode, it was up to him to begin, was his decision; and when he said good night, he stopped in at a cyclery on his way home and spent forty dollars for a wheel.  It was more than a month’s hard-earned wages,