She laughed up at him. "But I don't want you."
"You wanted me bad enough a year ago."
"That was a year ago."
Running hurriedly down the steps, he stood talking to her beside the bed of scarlet geraniums, while I felt a burning embarrassment pervade my body to the very palms of my hands.
"Where's the other fellow, George?" called the General, suddenly. "What's become of him?"
As he turned his head in my direction, I left the hall, and came out upon the porch, acutely conscious, all the time, that there was too much of me, that my hands and feet got in my way, that I ought to have put on a different shirt in the afternoon.
Sally was stooping over to snip off the head of a geranium, and when she looked up the next instant, with her hair blown back from her forehead, her starry, expectant gaze rested full on my own.
"Why, it's the boy I used to know," she exclaimed, moving toward me. "Boy, how do you do?" She put out her hand, and as I took it in mine, I saw for the first time that she was a large girl for her age, and would be a large woman. Her figure was already ripening under her thin white gown, but her hands and feet were still those of a child, and moulded, I saw, with that peculiar delicacy, which, I had learned from the doctor, was the distinguishing characteristic of the Virginian aristocracy.
"It is a long time since—since I saw you," she remarked in a cordial voice.
"It's been eight years," I answered. "I wonder that you remember me."