In his 10:20 physics class, Steve nearly dozed off several times. He would like to have called the whole thing off and gone back to bed. The soreness in his eyes had reached the point that when he closed his eyes it would creep forward and escape through his eyelids, but when he opened them it screwed itself slowly further back into his head. He knew from experience that the more deeply it entrenched itself in his head, the more difficult it would be to rout. If only he could come by a couple of hours of sleep right now, he would have a normal day.
Somehow he managed to stay awake through Dr. Brockhaus’ class. Fragments of the formulae and segments of the lines of reasoning which had absorbed him the previous night kept floating through his mind, drifting round and round in lazy spirals. They kept swarming around him like yellow jackets at a garbage pit—which was a pretty good description of what he was feeling like. Their monotonous buzzing drilled itself into his brain. Normally he enjoyed this kind of stuff, but when your eyes and head feel like they are about to pop, a fellow can’t even enjoy what he usually enjoys the most.
Now hold it a minute! It was Cecilia that he “enjoyed” the most, and he could enjoy her anytime.
I wonder, though, if my angel Cecilia were sitting beside me right now, he asked himself, how much would I be able to actually enjoy her through this lousy headache and these aching eyes? They say England lost America because of someone’s gout.
Lunchtime gave him a chance to move around a little. Distractions pulled his mind away from Pascal’s theorems and his own throbbing headache, especially the distraction of Cecilia. He thought she had never looked so lovely as she looked as she was coming down the walk in front of the dormitory to meet him for lunch. There was an almost unreal airiness about her.
“Good morning, my love!” she exclaimed. “Isn’t it a beautiful day?”
Squinting fiercely he scanned the bright sky, inhaled the fragrant air, and pressed her hand in his.
“Yes,” he said. “It sure is.”
And maybe it would be, after all.
After lunch they stepped out onto the veranda of the cafeteria. It was deserted. Beneath them lay a sweeping view of the countryside to the south.
Suddenly Cecilia lit up!
“Why don’t we go for a motorcycle ride this afternoon? It’s so warm and sunny. We could take a picnic and ride over to that hill way over there and have an early supper outdoors right under those trees and be back before dark.”
She was pointing to a wooded bluff just a few miles away where they had gone once before in the fall.
“This afternoon?”
“Why not?” There was that sparkle in her voice again that he hadn’t heard for a several days.
“Well, for one thing, we’d get plenty wet going and coming.”
“We could dress for it. We could take some spare socks and build a fire when we get there. Wouldn’t you love to do that? It’d be a real adventure.”
“That it would,” Steve agreed.
“And for another thing?” she teased.
“For another thing…,” he began hesitantly.
He looked into her eager eyes.
“You’re right. Let’s go!”