Free Winter Wheat by Mildred Walker Page B

I looked up and saw Gilbert watching me. I always remembered that meeting him was mixed in with my writing my biography, as though I must have known how deeply he was to be part of my life. He met my eyes and smiled. I smiled a little in return. He picked up his book and came over to my table and I saw again how slender and tall he was. He took the chair next to me.
    “I’ve seen you here for two months. It’s time we knew each other. How about calling it a day and going over to Pop’s Place for a coke?”
    I hesitated, then I put my pencil down. “Okay,” I said. We went down the marble stairs together.
    “My name’s Gilbert Borden—Gil. I’ve been trying to find out what yours is.”
    “Ellen,” I told him. “Ellen Webb.”
    “I like that. It fits you. Where do you come from, Ellen Webb? You must be a freshman, because I’d have seen you if you’d been around here.”
    “I came this fall from Montana.”
    “It would be some place far away and unusual.”
    I remember laughing at that. I remember how we laughed at all kinds of things. Everything we told each other seemed exciting. He was a senior in the school of architecture.
    “Any other year I’d have been working for the Paris fellowship. If I got it this year, I’d have to take it in Cincinnati or Cleveland or some place. Anyway, I’ll probably go into the Army in June.”
    That, too, gave a deeper color to everything he said. We had a booth in Pop’s, the last one. Gil kept punching out “Tomorrow Is a Lovely Day” on the jukebox. He played it over again three times. I felt as though I’d known him for years.
    We walked back across campus and sat on the steps of the auditorium. The lights along the mall seemed to lie at our feet. We sat against one of the pillars, so we weren’t cold.
    “No kidding, I’ve watched you in the library ever since the first week in October. You came in and sat down there at the end of that same table and the sun on your hair made it shine like silver.”
    “I’ve seen you, too,” I said.
    “You didn’t take much time from your work to look my way!”
    “I can’t. I have a job at the cafeteria and it takes quite a lot of time. Don’t you ever go there?”
    “I will now. But that’s no job for you.”
    “I hope to get a job in the library next year if I can.”
    “Maybe Dad can help you. He teaches history.”
    “You live here, then?”
    “Oh, I live at the fraternity during school.”
    He walked back with me to the rooming house. I ran up the stairs that night not feeling that they were narrow or that the upper floor was stifling. I looked at the biography, but all that had happened to me before seemed unimportant beside the future. I wrote that at the end and copied the whole thing neatly before I went to bed. Mom and Dad’s story seemed less important than my own.

6
    WHEN I got that biography back, Mr. Echols had written across the top “C. Disappointing, stereotyped. You write with more feeling about objects than about people. Characterization poor.”
    I would have minded more if it hadn’t been for Gilbert. But by now my days were measured off by seeing him. I was in love. Once in a while the marvel of it struck me, when I’d stop in to see Vera down the hall, or when I would see some of the very stunning girls on the campus, but most of the time it only seemed natural. Gil said that was the way it was with him, too.
    We were different, but we were excited about the same things. Nothing was dull when we did it together, even studying in the library. I hadn’t meant to fall in love so soon, but there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s like planning to seed in April and then having it come off so warm in March that the earth is ready. The spring doesn’t wait.
    Gil came to the cafeteria for lunch when he could have eaten at his fraternity house. He looked so funny carrying his tray I loved him all the more. He chose the craziest, most unbalanced food and there were so many things he