"This is a moralising season," answered John. "When we last met, it was all holly-berries and Christmas and plum-pudding."
"How long ago that seems!" exclaimed the poor lady with a sigh.
"Ages!" echoed John, sighing in his turn, but not so much for sadness, it may be, as from relief that the great struggle was over. That time of anxiety and terrible effort seemed indeed very far removed from him, but its removal was a cause of joy rather than of sadness. He sighed like a man who, sitting over his supper, remembers the hard fought race he has won in the afternoon, feeling yet in his limbs the ability to race and win again but feeling in his heart the delicious consciousness that the question of his superiority has been decided beyond all dispute.
"And now you will stay here a long time, of course," said Mrs. Goddard presently.
"I am stopping at the Hall, just now," said John with a distinct sense of the importance of the fact, "and after a week I shall stay here a few days. Then I shall go to London to see my father."
"No one will be so glad as he to hear of your success."
"No indeed. I really think it is more for his sake that I want to be actually first," said John. "Do you know, I have so often thought how he will look when I meet him and tell him I am the senior classic."
John's voice trembled and as Mrs. Goddard looked at him, she thought she saw a moisture in his eyes. It pleased her to see it, for it showed that John Short had more heart than she had imagined.
"I can fancy that," she said, warmly. "I envy you that moment."
Presently the squire came over to where they were sitting and joined them; and then Mrs. Ambrose spoke to John, and Nellie came and asked him questions. Strange to say John felt none of that annoyance which he formerly felt when his conversations with Mrs. Goddard were interrupted, and he talked with Nellie and Mrs. Ambrose quite as readily as with her. He felt very calm and happy that night, as though he had done with the hard labour of life. In half an hour he had realised that he was no more in love with Mrs. Goddard than he was with Mrs. Ambrose, and he was trying to explain to himself how it was that he had ever believed in such a palpable absurdity. Love was doubtless blind, he thought, but he was surely not so blind as to overlook the evidences of Mrs. Goddard's age. All the dreams of that morning faded away before the sight of her face, and so deep is the turpitude of the best of human hearts that John was almost ashamed of having once thought he loved her. That was probably the best possible proof that his love had been but a boyish fancy.