Through his open window, as he lay in bed after Tempy’s tirade about the girl, he could see the stars and the tops of the budding maple-trees. A cool earth-smelling breeze lifted the white curtains, scattering the geometry papers that he had left lying on his study table. He got out of bed to pick up the papers and put them away, and stood for a moment in his pyjamas looking out of the window at the roofs of the houses and the tops of the trees under the night sky.

“I wish I had a brother,” Sandy thought as he stood there. “Maybe I could talk to him about things and I wouldn’t have to think so much. It’s no fun being the only kid in the family, and your father never home either.... When I get married, I’m gonna have a lot of children; then they won’t have to grow up by themselves.”

The next day after school he walked nearly home with Pansetta as usual, although he was still thinking of what Tempy had said, but he hadn’t decided to obey his aunt yet. At the corner of the block in which the girl lived, he gave her her books.

“I got to beat it back to the shop now. Old man Prentiss’ll have a dozen deliveries waiting for me just because I’m late.”

“All right,” said Pansetta in her sweet little voice. “I’m sorry you can’t come on down to my house awhile. Say, why don’t you work at the hotel, anyway? Wouldn’t you make more money there?”

“Guess I would,” replied the boy. “But my aunt thinks it’s better where I am.”

“Oh,” said Pansetta. “Well, I saw Jimmy Lane last night and he’s making lots of money at the hotel. He wanted to meet me around to school this afternoon, but I told him no. I said you took me home.”

“I do,” said Sandy.

“Yes,” laughed Pansetta; “but I didn’t tell him you wouldn’t ever come in.”

During the sunny spring weeks that followed, Sandy did not walk home with her any more after school. Having to go to work earlier was the excuse he gave, but at first Pansetta seemed worried and puzzled. She asked him if he was mad at her, or something, but he said he wasn’t. Then in a short time other boys were meeting her on the corner near the school, buying her cones when the ice-cream wagon passed and taking her home in the afternoons. To see other fellows buying her ice-cream and walking home with her made Sandy angry, but it was his own fault, he thought. And he felt lonesome having no one to walk with after classes.

Pansetta, in school, was just as pleasant as before, but in a kind of impersonal way, as though she hadn’t been his girl once. And now Sandy was worried, because it had been easy to drop her, but would it be easy to get her back again if he should want her? The hotel boys had money, and once or twice he saw her talking with Jimmy Lane. Gee, but she looked pretty in her thin spring dresses and her wide straw hat.