Smiling and dimpling, she put up her hand
and patted his cheek--precisely as if he had been a child.
The boy shrunk as if the caress had been a touch of fire. He broke away
and strode off up the hillside with his longest, manliest stride. This
humiliation was past bearing or forgiving. He could have forgiven being
called a dreamer--a useless drone--among the men of clear heads and
strong hands who had already wrested a great state from the wilderness,
and who, through this conquest, were destined to become the immortal
founders of the Empire of the West. He could have overlooked being
spoken to like a child by a girl who might be younger than himself for
all he or she knew to the contrary--though this would have been harder.
He might even have forgiven that pat on his cheek which was downy with
beard, had he been either younger or older. But as it was--well, the
matter may safely be left to the sympathy of the man who remembers the
most sensitive time of his own youth; that trying period when he feels
himself to be no longer a boy and nobody else considers him a man.
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