"Nice—that's a poor sort of a word, little girl."
The cab stopped before the school door. The two Christmas comrades went slowly up the steps and stood for a moment in the dark doorway.
"You are surely going?"
"Yes, I'm going."
"You've been very good to me. I shall remember to-day——"
"And I." He put a hand on each of her shoulders. "I'm forty-five and I'm—a fool. You've given me a happy day, little girl, but some way or other I'm more homesick than ever. I've had a vision—and I think I shall always be homesick now. Good-by. God bless you!"
Belinda climbed the stairs to her room with a definite sense of loss in her heart.
"Still," she admitted to herself, as she put the violets in water, "he was forty-five."