It was only a few days later that, going up from town toward the campus, he turned a corner and there was Margaret alone and moving slowly ahead of him.  Hearing his steps she turned her head to see who it was, but Chad kept his eyes on the ground and passed her without looking up.  And thus he went on, although she was close behind him, across the street and to the turnstile.  As he was passing through, a voice rose behind him: 

“You aren’t very polite, little boy.”  He turned quickly—­Margaret had not gone around the corner:  she, too, was coming through the campus and there she stood, grave and demure, though her eyes were dancing.

“My mamma says a nice little boy always lets a little girl go first.”

“I didn’t know you was comin’ through.”

“Was comin’ through!” Margaret made a little face as though to say—­“Oh, dear.”

“I said I didn’t know you were coming through this way.”

Margaret shook her head.  “No,” she said; “no, you didn’t.”

“Well, that’s what I meant to say.”  Chad was having a hard time with his English.  He had snatched his cap from his head, had stepped back outside the stile and was waiting to turn it for her.  Margaret passed through and waited where the paths forked.

“Are you going up to the college?” she asked.

“I was—­but I ain’t now—­if you’ll let me walk a piece with you.”  He was scarlet with confusion—­a tribute that Chad rarely paid his kind.  His way of talking was very funny, to be sure, but had she not heard her father say that “the poor little chap had had no chance in life;” and Harry, that some day he would be the best in his class?

“Aren’t you—­Chad?”

“Yes—­ain’t you Margaret—­Miss Margaret?”

“Yes, I’m Margaret.”  She was pleased with the hesitant title and the boy’s halting reverence.

“An’ I called you a little gal.”  Margaret’s laugh tinkled in merry remembrance.  “An’ you wouldn’t take my fish.”

“I can’t bear to touch them.”

“I know,” said Chad, remembering Melissa.

They passed a boy who knew Chad, but not Margaret.  The lad took off his hat, but Chad did not lift his; then a boy and a girl and, when only the two girls spoke, the other boy lifted his hat, though he did not speak to Margaret.  Still Chad’s hat was untouched and when Margaret looked up, Chad’s face was red with confusion again.  But it never took the boy long to learn and, thereafter, during the walk his hat came off unfailingly.  Everyone looked at the two with some surprise and Chad noticed that the little girl’s chin was being lifted higher and higher.  His intuition told him what the matter was, and when they reached the stile across the campus and Chad saw a crowd of Margaret’s friends coming down the street, he halted as if to turn back, but the little girl told him imperiously to come on.  It was a strange escort for haughty Margaret—­the country-looking boy, in coarse homespun—­but Margaret spoke cheerily to her friends and went on, looking up at Chad and talking to him as though he were the dearest friend she had on earth.