“Hail, old friends! Well met!”
“Hey? What? Ruther think you’ve got the better of me, stranger,” said the pioneer, awkwardly extending his own hardened palm.
“Probably the years since we met have made a greater change in me than in you. You both look exactly as you did that last day I saw you at the harvesting.”
“Hey? Which? When? I can’t place you, no how. I ain’t acquainted with ary sailor, so far forth as I remember.”
“But Gaspar, Father Abel? Surely, you and Mercy remember Gaspar Keith, whom you sheltered for so many years, and who treated you so badly at the end?”
“Glory! It ain’t! My soul, my soul! Why, Gaspar—Gaspar! If it’s you, I’m an old man. Why, you was only a stripling, and now——”
“Now, I’m a man, too. That’s all. We all have to grow up and mature. I feel older than you look. And Mercy, the years have certainly used you well. It is good, indeed, to see your faces here, where I looked for strangers only.”
“Them’s us, lad. Them’s us. We’re the strangers in these parts. Just struck Chicago this very day. Got stuck in the mud, and had to be fished out like a couple of clams. And who do you think done the fishing? Though, if you hadn’t spoke that odd way just now, I’d have thought you would have known first off. Who do you suppose?”
“Oh, he’ll never guess. A man is always so slow,” interrupted Mercy, eagerly. “Well, ’twas nobody but our own little Kit! The Sun Maid, and looking more like a child of the sunshine even than when you run off with her so long ago.”