But that interest was very much increased by the opportunities it gave him of seeing and talking to sweet Mary Bartley.
Not that he was forward or indiscreet.

She was not yet sixteen, and he tried to remember she was a child.
Unfortunately for that theory she looked a ripe woman, and this very Walter made her more and more womanly.

Whenever Walter was near she had new timidity, new blushes, fewer gushes, less impetuosity, more reserve.
Sweet innocent! She was set by Nature to catch the man by the surest way, though she had no such design.
Oh, it was a pretty, subtle piece of nature, and each sex played its part.

Bold advances of the man, with internal fear to offend, mock retreats of the girl, with internal throbs of complacency, and life invested with a new and growing charm to both.

Leaving this pretty little pastime to glide along the flowery path that beautifies young lives to its inevitable climax, we go to a matter more prosaic, yet one that proved a source of strange and stormy events.
Hope had hardly started the farm when Bartley sent him off to Belgium--TO STUDY COAL MINES..