LITMIR.BIZ

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love——"

      Down below, Jim was leaning on the front gate. His chum, Phil Chadwick, was coming slowly up the street. The boys had not been near Jim since the funeral. Jim had become a person set apart from their boy world. No one appreciates the dignity of grief better than a boy, or underneath his awkwardness has a finer way of showing it. Phil's mother, to his unspeakable discomfort, had insisted now that he go call on Jim.

      Phil, his round face red with embarrassment, approached the gate a little sidewise.

      "Hello, Still!" he said casually.

      "Hello, Pilly!" replied Jim, blushing in sympathy.

      There was a pause, then said Phil, leaning on the gate, "Diana's got her pups. One's going to be a bulldog and two of 'em are setters. U-u-u—want to come over and see 'em and choose yours?"

      Jim's face was quivering. It was his father who had persuaded his mother that Jim ought to have one of Diana's pups. Mrs. Manning felt toward dogs much as she might have toward hyenas.

      "I—I—guess not today, Pilly!"

      Another long pause during which the lads swung the gate to and fro and looked in opposite directions. A locust shrilled from the elm tree. Finally Phil said:

      "Still, you gotta come up to the swimming hole. It'll do you good. He—he'd a wanted you to—to—to do what you could to cheer up. Come on, old skinny. Tell your mother. We'll keep away from the other kids. Come on. You gotta do something or you'll go nutty in your head."

      Jim turned and went into the house. His mother forestalled his request.

      "If Phil wants you to go swimming, dear, go on. It will do you good. Don't stay in too long."

      Jim and Phil walked up the road to the old Allen place. They climbed the stile into a field where the aftermath of the clover crop was richly green and vibrating with the song of cricket and katydid. The path that the boys followed had been used in turn by Indian and Puritan. The field still yielded an occasional hide scraper or stone axe.

      There was a pine grove at the far edge of the field. In the center of the grove was the pond that had for centuries been the swimming pool for boys, Indian and white. Ground pine and "checkerberry" grew abundantly in the grove. Both boys breathed deep of the piney fragrance and filled their mouths with pungent "checkerberry" leaves. The path, deep worn by many bare feet, circled round the great pines to the clearing where the pond lay. It was black with the shadows of the grove where it was not blue and white in mirroring the September sky. Lily pads fringed the brim. Moss and a tender, long grass grew clear to the water's edge.

      Several boys were undressing near the ancient springboard. They looked embarrassed and stopped their laughter when they saw Jim. He and Phil got into their swimming trunks quickly and followed each other in a clean dive into the pool. They swam about in silence for a time and then landed on the far side and lay in the sun on moss and pine needles.

      The beauty and sweetness of the place were subtle balm to Jim. And surely if countless generations of boy joy could leave association, the old swimming hole should have spoken very sweetly to Jim. The swimming hole was a boy sanctuary. The water was too shallow for men. Little girls were not allowed to invade the grove except in early spring for trailing arbutus. The oldest men in Exham told that their grandfathers, as boys, had sought the swimming hole as the adult seeks his club.

      Jim looked with interest at his legs. "I've got six. How many have you, Pilly?"

      Phil counted the brown bloodsuckers that clung to his fat calves. "Seven. Mean cusses, ain't they."

      Jim worked with a sharp edged stone, scraping his thin shanks. "You've got fat to spare. They've had enough off of me today."

      "I remember how crazy I was first time they got on me. Felt as if I had snakes." Phil rooted six of the suckers off his legs and paused at the seventh. "He's as skinny as you are, Still. I'll give him two minutes more to finish a square meal."

      The two boys lay staring out at the pond.

      "Have you gotta go to work, Still?" asked Phil.

      "Yes," replied Jim. "Mother says I can't, though."

      Phil waited more or less patiently. His mates had long since learned that Jim's silences were hard to break.

      "But I'm going to get a job in the quarry as soon as I can keep from getting sick at my stomach every time I see a derrick."

      "My dad says your—he—he always planned to send you through college," said Phil.

      Jim nodded. "I'll get through college. See if I don't. But I won't let my mother support me. I've got a lot of things to finish up for him."

      "What things?" asked Phil.

      "Well," Jim hesitated for words, "he worried a lot because all the real Americans are dying off or going, somehow, and he always said it was us kids' business to find out why. That's the chief job."

      "I don't see what you can do about it," said Phil. "That's a foolish thing to worry about. Why——"

      A boy screamed on the opposite side of the pond. It was so different from the shouts and laughter of the moment before that Jim and Phil jumped to their feet. Across the swimming hole a naked boy was dancing up and down, screaming hysterically,

      "Take 'em off! Take 'em off! Take 'em off!"

      "It's the new minister's kid, Charlie," laughed Phil. "The fellows have got the bloodsuckers on him. Ain't he the booby? Told me he was fifteen and he's bigger'n you are. Screams like a girl."

      Jim stood staring, his hand shielding his gray eyes from the sun. Across the pond, the boys were doubled up with laughter, watching the minister's son writhe and tear at his naked body. Suddenly, Jim shot round the edge of the pond, followed by Phil. A dozen naked boys hopped joyfully around the twisting Charlie. They were of all ages, from eight to sixteen.

      When Jim ran up to the new boy, his mates shouted: "Don't butt in, now, Jim. Don't butt in. He's a darned sissy."

      Jim did not reply. Charlie was considerably larger than he. He had a finely muscled pink and white body, liberally dotted now with wriggling brown suckers. This was a familiar form of hazing with the Exham boys. There was a horror in a first experience with the little brown pests that usually resulted in a mild form of hysteria very pleasing to the young spectators. But Charlie was in an agony of loathing, far ahead of anything the boys had seen.

      As Jim ran up, Charlie struck at him madly and the boys yelled in delight. Jim turned on them.

      "Shut up!" he shouted. "Shut up now!"

      Thin and tall, his boyish ribs showing, his damp hair tossed back from his beautiful gray eyes that were now black with anger, Jim dominated the crowd. There was immediate silence, broken only by Charlie's wild sobs.

      "Take 'em off! Take 'em off!"

      "He's going to have a fit!" exclaimed Phil.

      Charlie's lips were blue and foam flecked. Again as Jim approached him, the minister's boy planted a blow on his ribs that made Jim spin.

      "Charlie!" cried Jim. "Shut up!"

      The same peculiarly commanding note that had silenced his mates pierced through Charlie's hysteria. He paused for a moment, and in that moment Jim said, "Hold your breath and they can't draw blood. I'll have 'em off you in a second."

      "C-c-can't they?" sobbed Charlie.

      "Hold your breath and I'll show you," said Jim. "Here, Phil, take hold."

      As they stripped the squirming suckers, Jim kept a hand on Charlie's arm. "Can you fight, kid?" he asked. "You've got muscle. You'd better lick the fellow that started this on you or you'll never hear the end of it."

      The blue receded from the older boy's lips. He had a fine, sensitive face. "I can fight," he replied. "But I fight fellows and not snakes or worms."

      Jim

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