Than when I was a boy!'"
"Isn't that a rather serious deduction from the loss of a childish fancy about green leaves and sunshine?"
"I am not making any deductions. I do not know you well enough— yourself. We were speaking of children generally, I thought."
Perhaps Harvey had had enough, and did not care to pursue the subject. His next words were, "I have had to walk from the station, of course, through sending no previous notice. Curious to see old Sutton in your garden still!"
"Sutton is a fixture."
"Everything is a fixture at Westford. Even you are hardly changed— only, I suppose, older."
He had known her well, eight years earlier, with a brother-and-sister intimacy. It had not occurred to him, till now, that the young man's recollections of the child of thirteen might be more distinct than the child's recollections of the young man of twenty-four. In truth it was not so, for Marjory's mental pictures of Harvey were most vivid. Still, during his long absence she had passed from childhood to womanhood, while he had only gone on from an earlier to a more advanced stage of young manhood; and it was by no means so easy for her as for him to drop at once into the old grooves of intercourse.
"Yes, much older. I do not feel myself the same."
"And Hermione?"
"Hermione? Oh!" Marjory's whole face lighted up. "You will find Hermione everything that you could wish. She is—no, I can't describe her. There never was any one like Hermione."