“Show me the crayfish and the butterflies,” she said.
They walked down to the lake and sat on the sand with a warm wind blowing softly about them. He sat a few yards back from her while they ate the ham and pickle sandwiches and drank the orange pop solemnly.
“Gee, this is swell,” he said. “This is the swellest time ever in my life.”
“I didn’t think I would ever come on a picnic like this,” she said.
“With some kid,” he said.
“I’m comfortable, however,” she said.
“That’s good news.”
They said little else during the afternoon.
“This is all wrong,” he said later. “And I can’t figure why it should be. Just walking along and catching old butterflies and crayfish and eating sandwiches. But Mom and Dad’d rib the heck out of me if they knew, and the kids would too. And the other teachers, I suppose, would laugh at you, wouldn’t they?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“I guess we better not do any more butterfly-catching, then.”
“I don’t exactly understand how I came here at all,” she said.
And the day was over.
THAT WAS about all there was to the meeting of Ann Taylor and Bob Markham. Two or three monarch butterflies, a copy of Dickens, a dozen crayfish, four sandwiches, and two bottles of orange pop. The next Monday, though he waited a long time, Bob did not see Miss Taylor come out to walk to school. He discovered later she had left earlier and was already there. Also, Monday afternoon she left early and another teacher finished her last class. He walked by her boarding-house and did not see her anywhere, but he was afraid to ring the bell and inquire.
On Tuesday night after school they both were in the silent room again, he sponging the board contentedly as if this time might go on forever, and she seated working on her papers as if she, too, would be in this room and this particular peace and happiness forever, when suddenly the court-house clock struck. It was a block away and its great bronze boom shuddered one’s body, making you seem older by the minute. Stunned by that clock, you could not but sense the crashing flow of time, and as the clock said five o’clock Miss Taylor looked up at it for a long time. Then she put down her pen.
“Bob,” she said.
He turned, startled. Neither of them had spoken in the peaceful hour before.
“Will you come here?” she asked.
He put down the sponge slowly.
“Yes,” he said.
“Bob, I want you to sit down.”
“Yes’m.”
She looked at him intently for a moment until he looked away. “Bob, I wonder if you know what I’m going to talk to you about? Do you know?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you should tell me first.”
“About us.” he said at last.
“How old are you, Bob?”
“Going on fifteen.”
“You’re fourteen years old.”
He winced. “Yes’m.”