I thought of Jusserand’s English Wayfaring Life in the Middle Ages.  If the Canterbury Pilgrims, led by jolly Harry Bailey, their host, had burst out from the woods, on horseback, singing and jesting, I should not have considered their appearance an anachronism....

A tousle-headed girl-child in rompers which she was too big for, pointed me Baxter’s house, the largest in the community.

There seemed to be no one home when I dropped my suitcase on the front porch....

I knocked vigorously.  No one came.  I waited a long while.

“A hell of a way to welcome me!” I meditated, my egotism hurt.

Again I knocked.

“Come in! do come in!” a gentle voice bade—­it was Mrs. Baxter’s.

I pushed the door open and stepped in.  I set down my heavy suitcase with a thump, on the bare, hardwood floor of the large room in which I found myself—­a room sparsely furnished, its walls lined with books.  It had one large window, under and along which was built in, a long, wide shelf made into a sort of divan, promiscuous with cushions.

Propped up with a disordered heap of these cushions sat Mrs. Hildreth Baxter, in blouse and bloomers; she was reading.

“Why, Johnnie Gregory!” she cried, swinging her graceful, slim legs down, and rising, coming toward me, extending her hand in greeting....

“Why, Johnnie Gregory—­YOU here!”

“Yes, didn’t you!—­”

“I knew I was right ...  Penton maintained it was to-morrow you were due—­Darrie sided with him—­Darrie is a friend of mine who is visiting us, from Virginia—­but Ruth, Mubby’s secretary,” she finished, relapsing into her intimate petting name for her husband, (Mubby is short for “My hubby")—­“Ruth sided with me, though we had quite an argument about it.”

“And you and Ruth were right!”

“Yes, I was right,” she assented, leaving “Ruth” out, with naive egoism.

“Sit down in the morris chair ... you look dusty and heated ...  I’ll entertain you ...  I’m all alone ...  Penton is dictating an article to Ruth.  Darrie’s washing her hair.  I’m the only member of the Leisure Class.  I’m lazing here, reading Gorky’s latest novel.”

What an engaging, pretty, naive, little woman this was!  I commented inwardly.  A sweet aroma of feminine health breathed from her body, bosom, hair—­a tumbly black mass—­as perfume breathes from a wild flower.

Strangely enough, I felt calm and happy in her presence; at home, as I had never been with any woman or girl before.

Up to this moment, when alone with a woman, timidity had touched me to ice, while inwardly I had trembled with suppressed passion and fright.

Set in the midst of a group of women, I shone.  As at the university, when I used to visit whole sorority chapters at once, and, with from five to ten girls seated about me in the parlour, talk brilliantly and easily and poetically with all of them.  Left alone with any one, my mouth dried like sand, my tongue clove to my palate, I shook all over as with a palsy.