“I guess he didn’t hear us,” said Jane, when he had disappeared into the interior.  “He acks awful funny!” she added, thoughtfully.  “First when he was in love of Miss Pratt, he’d be mad about somep’m almost every minute he was home.  Couldn’t anybody say ANYthing to him but he’d just behave as if it was frightful, an’ then if you’d see him out walkin’ with Miss Pratt, well, he’d look like—­like—­” Jane paused; her eye fell upon Clematis and by a happy inspiration she was able to complete her simile with remarkable accuracy.  “He’d look like the way Clematis looks at people!  That’s just exactly the way he’d look, Genesis, when he was walkin’ with Miss Pratt; an’ then when he was home he got so quiet he couldn’t answer questions an’ wouldn’t hear what anybody said to him at table or anywhere, an’ papa ’d nearly almost bust.  Mamma ‘n’ papa ’d talk an’ talk about it, an’”—­she lowered her voice—­“an’ I knew what they were talkin’ about.  Well, an’ then he’d hardly ever get mad any more; he’d just sit in his room, an’ sometimes he’d sit in there without any light, or he’d sit out in the yard all by himself all evening, maybe; an’ th’other evening after I was in bed I heard ’em, an’ papa said—­well, this is what papa told mamma.”  And again lowering her voice, she proffered the quotation from her father in atone somewhat awe-struck:  “Papa said, by Gosh! if he ever ‘a’ thought a son of his could make such a Word idiot of himself he almost wished we’d both been girls!”

Having completed this report in a violent whisper, Jane nodded repeatedly, for emphasis, and Genesis shook his head to show that he was as deeply impressed as she wished him to be.  “I guess,” she added, after a pause “I guess Willie didn’t hear anything you an’ I talked about him, or clo’es, or anything.”

She was mistaken in part.  William had caught no reference to himself, but he had overheard something and he was now alone in his room, thinking about it almost feverishly.  “A secon’-han’ sto’ ovuh on the avynoo, where they got swaller-tail suits all way f’um sevum dolluhs to nineteem dolluhs an’ ninety-eight cents.”

...  Civilization is responsible for certain longings in the breast of man—­artificial longings, but sometimes as poignant as hunger and thirst.  Of these the strongest are those of the maid for the bridal veil, of the lad for long trousers, and of the youth for a tailed coat of state.  To the gratification of this last, only a few of the early joys in life are comparable.  Indulged youths, too rich, can know, to the unctuous full, neither the longing nor the gratification; but one such as William, in “moderate circumstances,” is privileged to pant for his first evening clothes as the hart panteth after the water-brook—­and sometimes, to pant in vain.  Also, this was a crisis in William’s life:  in addition to his yearning for such apparel, he was racked by a passionate urgency.

As Jane had so precociously understood, unless he should somehow manage to obtain the proper draperies he could not go to the farewell dance for Miss Pratt.  Other unequipped boys could go in their ordinary “best clothes,” but William could not; for, alack! he had dressed too well too soon!