“Oh, didn’t you know? She took ill very soon after you went away, and then they thought she was all right again; but they could not quite get rid of the cough, and it got bad in the winter, and all through the spring it was worse.”
“And so she died in the summer.”
“So she did.”
“Oh, Christ! but what times we had.”
And then, in reminiscences fast growing gay—the mere triumph of memory, the being able to add each to the other’s store, was a satisfaction—they told the story of a pretty country girl whom they had quarrelled over until she grew too proud for both; how heavy was her hair; how she could run, and nobody was like her for finding a wasps’-nest. Her boldness and carelessness filled them with envy still.
“I reckon we old ones would call her a tomboy now,” said the sailor.
“I should say we would.”
“Now, I wonder what sort of a wife she would have made?”
“Hum, I don’t know....”
“Do you remember that day her and you and me got lost in the forest?”