Page:Lefty o' the Bush.djvu/101

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
  • pades in which he had been concerned, along with

some others of his own particularly swift set. Nevertheless, he had his standards of deportment and qualifications essential to the gentleman, though, doubtless, it would be no easy matter to make them clear to some strait-laced, narrow-minded persons.

He was nettled by the conviction that Janet was suddenly taking altogether too much interest in the practically unknown Kingsbridge pitcher, who, following his surprising double victory of the day, was surely destined to become a popular idol in the town. He had known Janet three years, having met her at a church sociable in the days when Cyrus King was setting about in earnest, by the construction of his mills, to turn Kingsbridge from a dull, sleepy settlement into a hustling, chesty town. At first she had seemed to be an unusually pretty, vivacious little girl, with somewhat more refinement and good sense than the usual run of country maidens; but that he would ever become genuinely and deeply interested in her had not occurred to him as a remote possibility. Even after he had left college and begun work in the big sawmill, although he found her much matured and developed, and therefore still more interesting, he but slowly came to realize