After they had gone Agnes sat down at a desk near the door, where she had bid the last one good-bye, and looked at me curiously.
“Are you glad to see me?” I asked, not knowing what else to say.
“Yes,” she replied, with her pretty laugh, “but you don’t seem to be the same boy who came to school here a few years ago. You have grown so much that you seem like a stranger instead of an old friend.”
She laughed merrily at my look of astonishment, and pretended to be frightened when I went over and sat beside her.
“Why didn’t you say when you came in,” she asked, “‘This school is dismissed; I am a friend of the teacher’s.’ I expected you to say that, but instead you waited patiently until I should dismiss it myself. When I knew Ned Westlock he was a boy of spirit. But I am as glad to see you as I can be. This is my week at Theodore Meek’s, and you may drive me there as slowly as your horses can walk.”
I am sure I felt like dismissing the school when I came in, but I never thought of it. I never felt more at a loss in my life for something to say, and sat looking at her in a sort of blind astonishment, blushing like a child. I wanted to tell her how much pleasure the contemplation of this visit had afforded me, but I could not; and finally, tiring of being stared at, she got up and went to collecting the books and other articles she intended to take home. I could think of nothing else to do, so I went out and brought the buggy around to the door, and after helping her in as awkwardly as I had stared at her, we drove away.
In my desperation I could only confess that I had been thinking for weeks how polished and agreeable I would be in my manner on meeting her, but that her pretty face and easy way had scared it all out of me; that I came to Fairview expressly to see her, and that I hoped there would never be a misunderstanding between us with reference to our friendship.
“There never will be,” she said, in her innocent and earnest way, putting her arm through mine, and seeming reassured and pleased. “There could be no misunderstanding between you and me, and there never has been. Why should there be?”
She spoke as though I were still a boy, though I was now larger than she was, and nearly sixteen. I felt sure she would always treat me as a boy, no difference how old I became.
As we drove along slowly, I thought that if a stranger should see us he would think we were lovers, but Agnes evidently did not think of it, for she confessed her friendship for me in a hundred different ways, which I am sure she would not have done had she thought of me as her lover. She was in unusual spirits, and though I felt very proud to think that I was the cause of it, I thought that the arrival of a pretty baby of which she had once been fond would have made her as happy. I hinted gravely, once or twice, that we were “growing older,” and that we “could not always be children,” but she would only say that we were friends, and enjoyed the friendship. I think she was content with that, and did not look beyond it.