“Miss Selby!” he cried.
“I took your flowers upstairs,” she said. “I think—they’re the prettiest—the prettiest flowers—I—ever saw.”
“Miss Selby!” he exclaimed again. “See here! Please! When I thought you were ill—”
“I only had a little cold.”
“I wrote a note,” he said. “I tore it up. I—I wish I hadn’t.”
Miss Selby was looking down at her plate.
“I wish you hadn’t, too,” she agreed.
The old ladies had all finished their suppers, but not one of them left the room. They were watching Miss Selby and Mr. Anderson. Surely not a remarkable spectacle, simply a nice looking young man and a pretty young girl, sitting, quite speechless, now, at a little table.
Yet one old lady actually wiped tears from her eyes, and every one of them felt an odd and tender little stir at the heart, as if the perfume of very old memories had blown in at the opened window.
“Let’s go out on the veranda,” said Mr. Anderson to Miss Selby, and they did.