I never tried to hurry anything all summer. Not in the porch swing, or in the pine woods, or on the float at night when we swam out, or in the roadster. Everything that happened came to happen as simply and as naturally and as gradually as a season coming on or a plant unrolling a leaf or a kitten waking up. And there was a kind of luxuriousness in not rushing things, in not driving toward the hot grip and awkward tussle and the leer for the boys back in the dormitory when you got in, a new sensuality in waiting for the massive current to take you where you belonged and would go in the end. She was young — she seemed younger to me then than she did later on looking back for that summer I was so sure that I was old and jaded — and she was timid and sensitive and shy, but it wasn't any squealing, squawking, pullet-squawking, teasing, twitching, oh-that's-not-nice-and-I-never-let-anyone-do-that-before-oh kind of shyness. Perhaps shyness is the wrong word for it, after all. Certainly it is wrong if back behind that word there is any implication or color of shame or fear or desire to be "nice." For in one way, she seemed to be detached from her very slender, compactly made, tight-muscled, soft-fleshed, golden-shouldered body, as though it were an elaborate and cunning mechanism in which she and I shared ownership, which had suddenly dropped to us out of the blue, and which, in our ignorance, we had to study with the greatest patience and most reverent attention lest we miss some minute, scholarly detail without knowledge of which everything would be wasted. So it was a period of the most delicate discrimination and subtle investigations, with her seriousness mixed with a graceful gaiety, ... a gaiety to which the words didn't mean much but the tune meant everything, a tune which seemed to come from the very air as though it were full of invisible strings and she simply reached out at random in the dark to pluck them with an idle familiar finger.

...

We went quite a long way, that summer, and there were times when I was perfectly sure I could have gone farther. When I could have gone the limit. For that fine, slender, compactly made, tight-muscled, soft-fleshed, golden-shouldered mechanism which fascinated Anne Stanton and me, which had dropped to us out of the blue, was a very sensitive and beautifully tuned-up contraption. But maybe I was wrong in that surmise, and maybe I could not have hurried the massive deliberation of that current in which we were caught and suspended, or hurried Anne Stanton's pensive and scholarly assimilation of each minute variation which had to be slowly absorbed into the body of our experience before another could be permitted. It was as though she was aware of a rhythm, a tune, a compulsion, outside of herself, and devoutly followed it in its subtle and winding progression. But wrong or not, I did not put my surmise to the test, for if I myself was not truly aware of that rhythm and compulsion which bemused her, I was aware of her devotion to it, and could find every moment with her full enough. Paradoxically enough, it was when I was away from her, when I was withdrawn from her context, back in my room at night or in the hot early afternoon, after lunch, that I was savagely impatient of the delays and discriminations. This would be especially true at those times when she wouldn't see me for a day, the times which seemed to mark, I came to understand, some stage, some milepost, we had passed. She would simply withdraw herself from me, as she had done that night after we first kissed, and leave me, at first, confused and guilty, but later, as I came to grasp the pattern of things, merely impatient for the next day when she would appear at the court, swinging her racket, her face so smooth, young, healthy and apparently disinterested, though comradely, that I could not equate it with the face I remembered with the eyelids drooping and the damp, starlight-or-moonlight-glistening lips parted for the quick, shallow breath or the unashamed sigh.

There were a good many folks in the store, men in overalls lined up along the soda fountain, and women hanging around the counters where the junk and glory was, and kids hanging on skirts with one hand and clutching ice-cream cones with the other and staring out over their own wet noses at the world of men from eyes which resembled painted china marbles. The Boss just stood modestly back of the gang of customers at the soda fountain, with his hat in this hand and the damp hair hanging down over his forehead. He stood that way a minute maybe, and then one of the girls ladling up ice cream happened to see him, and got a look on her face as though her garter belt had busted in church, and dropped her ice-cream scoop, and headed for the back of the store with her hips pumping hell-for-leather (*) under the lettuce-green smock.

   I took the card out of my pocket and gave it to him. He looked at the card for a minute, holding it off near arm's length as though he were afraid it would spit in his eye, then he turned it over and looked at the back side a minute till he was dead sure it was blank. Then he laid the hand with the card in it back down on his stomach, where it belonged, and looked at me. "You done come a piece," he said.
   "That's right," I said.
   "What you come fer?"
   "To see what's going on about the schoolhouse," I said.
   "You come a piece," he said, "to stick yore nose in somebody else's bizness."
   "That's right," I agreed cheerfully, "but my boss on the paper can't see it that way."
   "It ain't any of his bizness either."
   "No," I said, "but what's the ruckas about, now I've come all that piece?"
   "It ain't any of my bizness. I'm the Sheriff."
   "Well, Sherriff," I said, "whose business is it?"
   "Them as is tending to it. If folks would quit messen and let 'em."

Hell for leather is a statement that is often confused with "Hell bent for leather". Hell for leather, in American vernacular, refers to an arduous walk that may have been strewn with difficulties and was a strain on footwear. A long and difficult walk, such as over rough terrain, might be referred to as hell for leather because of the abuse the leather footwear sustained during the walk.

"Hell bent for leather" has many uses and the most popular american use goes back to the 19th century american west when a particular livestock animal, such as a cow, bull or horse would be particularly difficult to handle. One of these troublesome creatures would cause their handler so much trouble that the owner or handler considered slaughter of the animal and turning the carcass into leather. When a horse or cattle became difficult to handle they were called "Hell bent for leather" meaning that the animal was hell bent to become a leather good.
source : phrases.org.uk