“My name’s Wesley Dean, and I got a farm in the mountains back of Frederick.  Say—­I don’t want you to think I’m fresh, but—­but—­say, would you go to the movies with me to-night?”

It had come to him in a flash that he could disregard the seat in the four-o’clock bus and go back to-morrow morning.  Sweat stood out on his forehead and on his curving, clean-shaven upper lip.  His boy’s eyes hung on hers, pleading.  All the happiness of his life, he felt, waited for this girl’s answer, this little yellow-haired girl whom he had never seen until a quarter of an hour before.

“We-ell,” she hesitated, “I—­I don’t like to have you think I’d pick up like this with any fellow that come along——­”

“I don’t think so!” he broke in fiercely.  “If I thought so I’d never’ve asked you.”

There was a strange breathless moment in the tiny cluttered shop, a moment such as some men and women are lucky enough to feel once in a lifetime.  It is the moment when the heart’s wireless sends its clear message, “This is my woman” and “This is my man.”  The flaxen-haired girl and the dark boy were caught in the golden magic of it and, half scared, half ecstatic, were thrown into confusion.

“I’ll go,” she whispered breathlessly.  “There’s a little park a block down the street.  I’ll be there at seven o’clock, by the statue.”

“I’ll be there, waiting for you,” he replied, and because he could not bear the strange sweet pain that filled him he plunged out of the shop, jerking the door so that the little bell squealed with surprise.  He had forgotten his packages.

Also, as he remembered presently, he did not know her name.

He was at the feet of the statue in the park by half-past six, and spent a restless half hour there in the cool spring twilight.  Perhaps she would not come!  Perhaps he had frightened her, even as he had frightened himself, by this inexplicable boldness.  Other girls passed by, and some of them glanced with a coquettish challenge at the handsome tall youth with his frowning brow.  But he did not see them.  Presently—­and it was just on the stroke of seven—­he saw her coming, hesitantly, and with an air of complete and proper primness.  She had on a plain little shabby suit and hat, but round her throat was a string of beads of a blue to match her eyes, an enticing, naive harmony.

She carried the forgotten aprons, and handed them to him gravely.

“You left these,” she said; and then, to regularize the situation, “My name’s Anita Smithers.  I ought’ve told you this afternoon, but—­I guess I was kind of forgetful, too.”

That made them both smile, and the smile left them less shy.  He stuffed the forgotten aprons into his overcoat pocket.

“I was so afraid you wouldn’t come.  Where can we go?  I don’t know anything much about the city.  I’d like to take you to a nice picture show, the best there is.”

She flushed with the glory of it.