In Chapter III, Tom starts to try to impress a girl that he just stumbled upon walking down the road. He tried to woo her by staying at her house until nightfall, but he ended up acknowledging that he wouldn’t be able to get her, so he decided to head on home, but his desire for her still remained: 

He had been months winning her; she had confessed hardly a week ago; he had been the happiest and the proudest boy in the world only seven short days, and here in one instant of time she had gone out of his heart like a casual stranger whose visit is done. He worshipped this new angel with furtive eye, till he saw that she had discovered him; then he pretended he did not know she was present, and began to ‘show off’ in all sorts of absurd boyish ways.

 

     Here Tom tries to get this girl to notice him by standing outside her house to see if she would even look at him. However when she does he doesn’t acknowledge her at all, and pretends he doesn’t see her. Tom begins to develop more as a human and is persistent to win this girl over, but in the end he fails. This is an important part of the book because it shows that Tom is human, and that that he grows the same way the most of us do, and you will never become man without being a boy (good writers borrow, great ones steal). In the book, Tom continues to chase around Becky (literally, and figuratively), and this will probably be a theme in the rest of the book, and including other ways to show him grow as a character.