“There’s a real nice picture house only a little ways from here.  They got a Pauline Frederick film on.  I’m just crazy about Pauline Frederick.”

By this time they were walking sedately out of the park, not daring to look at each other.  She watched him while he bought the tickets and then a box of caramels from the candy stand inside.

“He knows what to do,” she thought proudly.  “He’s not a bit of a hick.”

“D’you go to the pictures a lot?” he asked when they were seated.

“’Most every night.  I’m just crazy about ’em.”

“I expect you’ve got steady company, then?” The question fairly jerked out of him.

She shook her head.  “No, I almost always go by myself.  My girl friend, she goes with me sometimes.”

He sighed with relief.  “They got good picture shows in Frederick.  I go ’most every Saturday night.”

“But you don’t live right in Frederick, you said.”

He seized the chance to tell her about himself.

“Oh, my, no.  I live back in the mountains.  Say, I just wish you could see my place.  It’s up high, and you can look out, ever so far—­everything kind of drops away below, and you can see the river and the woods, and it takes different colours, ’cording to the season and the weather.  Some days when I’m ploughing or disking and I get up on the ridge, it’s so high up and far away seems like I’m on top the whole world.  It’s lonesome—­it’s off the pike, you see—­but I like it.  Here in the city everything crowds on you so close.”

She had listened with the keenest interest.

“That’s so.  It must be grand to get off by yourself and have plenty room.  I get so tired of that squinched-in, narrow, stuffy shop; and the place where I board is worse.  I don’t make enough to have a room by myself.  There’s two other girls in with me, and seems like we’re always under-foot to each other.  And there isn’t any parlour, and we got only one bureau for the three of us, and you can guess what a mess that is.  And the closet’s about as big as a pocket handkerchief.”

“Ain’t you got any folks?”

The blue eyes held a sudden mist.

“Nobody but Miss Tolman, and she’s only a distant cousin.  Ma died two years ago.  She used to sew, but she wasn’t strong, and we never could get ahead.”

“My folks are all gone, too.”

How little and alone she was, but how much nearer to him her aloneness brought her.  He wanted to put his hand over hers and tell her that he would take care of her, that she need never be alone again.  But the beginning of the film choked back the words.  He poked the box of caramels at her, and she took it, opened it with a murmured “Oh, my, thank you!” Presently they both had sweetly bulging cheeks.  Where their elbows touched on the narrow chair arm made tingling thrills run all over him.  Once she gave him an unconscious nudge of excitement.

Out of the corner of his eye he studied her delicate side face as she sat, with her lips parted, intent on the film.