Raymond Bonner was waiting to walk home with her. Raymond often walked home with her and Missy was usually pleased with his devotion; he was the handsomest and most popular boy in the class. But, to-day, even Raymond jarred on her. He kept talking, talking, and it was difficult for her preoccupied mind to find the right answer in the right place. He was talking about the celebrity who was to give the “Lyceum Course” lecture that evening. The lecturer's name was Dobson. Oh uninspiring name!--Ridgeley Holman Dobson. He was a celebrity because he'd done something-or-other heroic in the Spanish war. Missy didn't know just what it was, not being particularly interested in newspapers and current events, and remote things that didn't matter. But Raymond evidently knew something about Dobson aside from his being just prominent.
“I only hope he kisses old Miss Lightner!” he said, chortling.
“Kisses her?” repeated Missy, roused from her reveries. Why on earth should a lecturer kiss anybody, above all Miss Lightner, who was an old maid and not attractive despite local gossip about her being “man-crazy”? “Why would he kiss Miss Lightner?”
“Why, he's always in the papers! Everywhere he goes, women knock each other down to kiss him! The papers are full of it--don't say you've never heard of it!”
But Missy shook her head again, an expression of distaste on her face. A man that let women knock each other down to kiss him! Missy had ideals about kissing. She had never been kissed by any one but her immediate relatives and some of her girl friends, but she had her dreams of kisses--kisses such as the poets wrote about. Kissing was something fine, beautiful, sacred! As sacred as getting married. But there was nothing sacred about kissing whole bunches of people who knocked each other down--people you didn't even know. Missy felt a surge of revulsion against this Dobson who could so profane a holy thing.
At the unexpected harshness of her tone Raymond glanced at her in some surprise.
“And they call him a hero!” she went on scathingly. “Oh, I guess he's all right,” replied Raymond, who was secretly much impressed by the dash of Dobson. “It's just that women make fools of themselves over him.”