“I don't believe it,” answered Henry. “In fact, if we were entirely true to nature next Wednesday, it would spoil the fun, for we probably should not, if actually of the age we pretend, think of our youth once a year, much less meet to talk it over.”
“Oh, I don't think so,” protested Nellie. “I 'm sure all the story-books and poetry say that old folks are much given to reviewing their youth in a pensive, regretful sort of way.”
“That's all very pretty, but it 's all gammon in my opinion,” responded Henry. “The poets are young people who know nothing of how old folks feel, and argue only from their theory of the romantic fitness of things. I believe that reminiscence takes up a very small part of old persons' time. It would furnish them little excitement, for they have lost the feelings by which their memories would have to be interpreted to become vivid. Remembering is dull business at best. I notice that most persons, even of eventful lives, prefer a good novel to the pleasures of recollection. It is really easier to sympathize with the people in a novel or drama than with our past selves. We lose a great source of recreation just because we can't recall the past more vividly.”
“How shockingly Henry contradicts to-night,” was the only reply Nellie deigned to this long speech.
“What shall we call each other next Wednesday?” asked Mary. “By our first names, as now?”
“Not if we are going to be prophetically accurate,” said Henry. “Fifty years hence, in all probability, we shall, most of us, have altogether forgotten our present intimacies and formed others, quite inconceivable now. I can imagine Frank over there, scratching his bald head with his spectacle tips, and trying to recall me. 'Hen. Long, Hen. Long,—let me think; name sounds familiar, and yet I can't quite place him. Did n't I know him at C———, or was it at college? Bless me, how forgetful I 'm growing!'”
They all laughed at Henry's bit of acting. Perhaps it was only sparkles of mirth, but it might have been glances of tender confidence that shot between certain pairs of eyes betokening something that feared not time. This is in no sort a love story, but such things can't be wholly prevented.
The girls, however, protested that this talk about growing so utterly away from each other was too dismal for anything, and they would n't believe it anyhow. The old-fashioned notions about eternal constancy were ever so much nicer. It gave them the cold shivers to hear Henry's ante-mortem dissection of their friendship, and that young man was finally forced to admit that the members of the club would probably prove exceptions to the general rule in such matters. It was agreed, therefore, that they should appear to know each other at the old folks' party.
“All you girls must, of course, be called 'Mrs.' instead of 'Miss,'” suggested Frank, “though you will have to keep your own names, that is, unless you prefer to disclose any designs you may have upon other people's; “for which piece of impertinence Nellie, who sat next him, boxed his ears,—for the reader must know that these young people were on a footing of entire familiarity and long intimacy.
“Do you know what time it is?” asked Mary, who, by virtue of the sweet sedateness of her disposition, was rather the monitress of the company.