By the sparkle in her brown eyes it amused her. She said:
"Why, you've never known it, Mr. Clemens, because you've never seen me before."
"Why, that is true, now that I come to think; it certainly is true, and it must be one of the reasons why I have forgotten your name. But I remember it now perfectly—it's Mary."
She was amused again; amused beyond smiling; amused to a chuckle, and she said:
"Oh no, it isn't; it's Margaret."
I feigned to be ashamed of my mistake and said:
"Ah, well, I couldn't have made that mistake a few years ago; but I am old, and one of age's earliest infirmities is a damaged memory; but I am clearer now—clearer-headed—it all comes back to me just as if it were yesterday. It's Margaret Holcomb."
She was surprised into a laugh this time, the rippling laugh that a happy brook makes when it breaks out of the shade into the sunshine, and she said:
"Oh, you are wrong again; you don't get anything right. It isn't
Holcomb, it's Blackmer."
I was ashamed again, and confessed it; then: