“Well, I don't feel much like dinner right now,” he said. “We--we could sit here awhile on this bench, prob'ly.”
Ramsey kept very few things from Fred Mitchell, and usually his confidences were immediate upon the occasion of them; but allowed several weeks to elapse before sketching for his roommate the outlines of this adventure.
“One thing that was kind o' funny about it, Fred,” he said, “I didn't know what to call her.”
Mr. Mitchell, stretched upon the window seat in their “study,” and looking out over the town street below and the campus beyond the street, had already thought it tactful to ambush his profound amusement by turning upon his side, so that his face was toward the window and away from his companion. “What did you want to call her?” he inquired in a serious voice. “Names?”
“No. You know what I mean. I mean I had to just keep callin' her 'you'; and that gets kind of freaky when you're talkin' to anybody a good while like that. When she'd be lookin' away from me, and I'd want to start sayin' something to her, you know, why, I wouldn't know how to get started exactly, without callin' her something. A person doesn't want to be always startin' off with 'See here,' or things like that.”
“I don't see why you let it trouble you,” said Fred. “From how you've always talked about her, you had a perfectly handy way to start off with anything you wanted to say to her.”
“Why didn't you just say, 'Oh, you Teacher's Pet!' That would--”
“Get out! What I mean is, she called me 'Ramsey' without any bother; it seems funny I got stumped every time I started to say 'Dora.' Someway I couldn't land it, and it certainly would 'a' sounded crazy to call her 'Miss Yocum' after sittin' in the same room with her every day from the baby class clear on up through the end of high school. That _would_ 'a' made me out an idiot!”
“Just nothin' at all. I started to call her something or other a hundred times, I guess, and then I'd balk. I'd get all ready, and kind of make a sort of a sound, and then I'd have to quit.”
“She may have thought you had a cold,” said Fred, still keeping his back turned.
“I expect maybe she did--though I don't know; most of the time she didn't seem to notice me much, kind of.”