"Many other useful lives have been lost, Nelly," Jack said sadly; "but it was not my time."
"And now," Nelly said changing her tone, "there are other things to talk of. Will you please take a chair, sir," and she dropped a curtsy. "Didn't I tell you, Jack," she said, laughing at the astonishment in Jack's face, "that when you congratulated me on getting my post here and called me Miss Hardy, that the time would come when I should say, Sir to you. It has come, Jack, sooner than we expected, but I knew it would come."
Then changing her tone again, as they sat looking at the fire, she went on, "You know we are glad, Jack, Harry and I, more glad than we can say, that needs no telling between us, does it?"
"None," Jack said. "We are one, we three, and no need to say we are glad at each other's success."
"We have had happy days," Nelly said, "but they will never be quite the same again. We shall always be friends, Jack, always—true and dear friends, but we cannot be all in all to each other. I know, dear Jack," she said as she saw he was about to speak vehemently, "that you will be as much our friend in one way as ever, but you cannot be our companion. It is impossible, Jack. We have trod the same path together, but your path leaves ours here. We shall be within sound of each other's voices, we shall never lose sight of each other, but we are no longer together."
"I have not thought it over yet," Jack said quietly. "It is all too new and too strange to me to see yet how things will work; but it is true, Nelly, and it is the one drawback to my good fortune, that there must be some little change between us. But in the friendship which began when you stood by me at the old shaft and helped me to save Harry, there will be no change. I have risen as I always had determined to rise; I have worked for this from the day when Mr. Pastor, my artist friend, told me it was possible I might reach it, but I never dreamed it would come so soon; and I have always hoped and thought that I should keep you both with me. How things will turn out we do not know, but, dear friends," and he held out a hand to each, "believe me, that I shall always be as I am now, and that I shall care little for my good fortune unless I can retain you both as my dearest friends."
