"No," said John. "I cannot say I do. I have done the thing I meant to do, or I have good reason to believe that I have; but I have not realised my dream. I shall never write any more odes, Mrs. Goddard."
"Why not? Oh, you mean to me, Mr. Short?" she added with something of her old manner. "Well, you know, it is much better that you should not."
"Perhaps so," answered John rather sadly. "I don't know. Frankly, Mrs.
Goddard, did not you sometimes think I was very foolish last Christmas?"
"Very," she said, smiling at him kindly. "But I think you have changed. I think you are more of a man, now—you have something more serious—"
"I used to think I was very serious, and so I was," said John, with the air of a man who refers to the follies of his long past youth. "Do you remember how angry I was when you wanted me to skate with Miss Nellie?"
"Oh, I only said that to teaze you," Mrs. Goddard answered. "I daresay you would be angry now, if I suggested the same thing."
"No," said John quietly. "I do not believe I should be. As you say, I feel very much older now than I did then."
"The older we grow the more we like youth," said Mary Goddard, unconsciously uttering one of the fundamental truths of human nature, and at the same time so precisely striking the current of John's thoughts that he started. He was wondering within himself why it was that she now seemed too old for him, whereas a few short months ago she had seemed to be of his own age.
"How true that is!" he exclaimed. Mrs. Goddard laughed faintly.
"You are not old enough to have reached that point yet, Mr. Short," she said. "Really, here we are moralising like a couple of old philosophers!"