Runaway

dry pink flowers. They didn’t let any breeze in and they didn’t provide any shade, and the branches tried to catch his shirtsleeves.
    “Wild
roses,
” Nancy said, when he asked what in tarnation these were.
    “I suppose that’s the surprise?”
    “You’ll see.”
    He was sweltering in this tunnel, and he wished that she would slow down. He was often surprised at the time he spent hanging around this girl, who was not outstanding in any way, except perhaps in being spoiled, saucy, and egotistical. Maybe he liked to disturb her. She was just enough smarter than the general run of girls so that he could do that.
    What he could see, at a distance, was the roof of a house, with some proper trees shading it, and since there was no hope of getting any more information out of Nancy he contented himself with hoping they could sit down when they got there, in some place cool.
    “Company,” said Nancy. “Might have known.”
    A dingy Model T was sitting in the turnaround space at the end of the road.
    “Anyway it’s only one,” she said. “And let’s hope they’re nearly through.”
    But when they reached the car nobody had come out from the decent one-and-a-half-story house—built of brick that was called “white” in this part of the country and “yellow” where Ollie came from. (It was actually a grimy sort of tan.) There was no hedge—just a dragging wire fence around the yard in which the grass had not been cut. And there was no cement walk leading from the gate up to the door, only a dirt path. Not that this was unusual outside of a town—not many farmers put in a sidewalk, or owned a lawnmower.
    Perhaps there had once been flower beds—at least there were white and gold flowers standing up here and there in the long grass. These were daisies, he was pretty sure, but he could not be bothered asking Nancy and possibly listening to her derisive corrections.
    Nancy led him through to a genuine relic of more genteel or leisurely days—an unpainted but complete wooden swing, with two facing benches. The grass wasn’t trodden down anywhere near it—apparently it was not much used. It stood in the shade of a couple of the heavy-leaved trees. As soon as Nancy had sat down she sprang up again, and bracing herself between the two benches she began to move this creaky contraption to and fro.
    “This’ll let her know we’re here,” she said.
    “Let who?”
    “Tessa.”
    “Is she a friend of yours?”
    “Of course.”
    “An old-lady friend?” said Ollie, without enthusiasm. He had had plenty of chances to see how prodigal Nancy was with what might have been called—in some girls’ book she might have read and taken to heart, it probably
was
called—the sunshine of her personality. Her innocent teasing of the old fellows at the mill came to mind.
    “We went to school together, Tessa and me. Tessa and I.”
    That brought up another thought—the way she had tried to set him up with Ginny.
    “And what’s so interesting about her?”
    “You’ll see. Oh!”
    She jumped off in midswing and ran to a hand pump close to the house. A lot of vigorous pumping started. She had to pump long and hard before any water came. And even then she didn’t seem tired, she kept on pumping for a while before she filled the tin mug that had been waiting on its hook, and carried it, spilling over, to the swing. He thought from the eager look she had that she would offer it at once to him, but in fact she raised it to her own lips and gulped happily.
    “It’s not town water,” she said, handing it to him. “It’s well water. It’s delicious.”
    She was a girl who would drink untreated water from any old tin mug hanging over a well. (The calamities that had taken place in his own body had made him more aware of such risks than another young man might have been.) She was something of a show-off, of course. But she was truly, naturally reckless and full of some pure conviction that she led a charmed life.
    He wouldn’t have said that of himself. Yet he had an idea— he couldn’t have mentioned this without making a joke of it— that he was meant for something unusual, that his life would have some meaning to it. Maybe that was what drew them together. But the difference was that he would go on, he would not settle for less. As she would have to do—as she had already done—being a girl. The thought of choices wider than anything girls ever knew put him suddenly at ease, made him feel compassionate