“It is keen,” he replied. “I have always thought of you as a little princess who only lived in my dreams, but, hereafter, you are not only in my past dreams, but I hope, in my future.”
“When we come back––”
“Will you be gone long?” he asked wistfully. “Is your father––”
“Father can’t go, but he may join us.”
After a moment’s hesitation she continued, with a slight blush:
“Fletcher is going with us.”
“Oh,” he said, wondering at his tinge of disappointment.
“Carey,” he said wistfully, as he was leaving, “don’t you think when a man dedicates a book 207 to a girl, and they both have a joint claim on a territory known as the Land of Dreams, that she might call him, as she did when they were boy and girl, by his first name?”
“Yes, David,” she replied with a light little laugh.
The music of the soft “a” rang entrancingly in his ears as he walked back to the hotel. 208