“Why, Bertie!” she exclaimed.
“I’m the luckiest beggar in the world,” he said, laughingly, as he wrung her hand in his own ridiculously small one. “Do you know I was going up to the Grange; but I just stepped into the wood to see if I could find an anemone or two—I know you like them—and I saw the dogs. Now, fancy my meeting you, and having you all to myself to walk up to the Grange with! But perhaps you weren’t going back? If not, let me come with you, will you?”
“I’m not going anywhere in particular,” said Olivia, still smiling at the fair, girlishly boyish face. “I’ll go back. Why, what a time it is since I saw you!”
“Isn’t it! Isn’t it!” he responded, letting go her hand reluctantly, and taking his hat off his forehead, which was the only part of his face untanned. “I am so glad to come back. Yes, two years; seems like twenty. Have I got very gray? Now, be candid, Olivia—I mean Miss Vanley,” he corrected himself, with a blush.
“Why Miss Vanley?” said Olivia, blushing too, but looking at him with her frank eyes in a sisterly way that was inexpressibly sweet.
“Well,” he said, raising his eyes to her face, “you—you have altered so, you know.”
“Is that a polite way of informing me that I am gray?” said Olivia, archly.
“You—you have grown such a woman,” he said, his blue eyes all aglow with admiring wonder. “You were quite a girl when I left; at least, I seem to remember. And now”—the pause was as significant as any verbal finale could be—“I suppose I must mind my manners, and call you Miss Vanley?”
“Better keep to the old name,” said Olivia. “Why, it seems only the other day we used to play cricket together.”
“Yes,” he said, wistfully. “I suppose you’d rather die than play now?”