"I am glad to hear it--I am glad to hear it," said good Adam Gray. "But by your leave, ma'am, I will take a chair. I have come here as an old friend, Mrs. More; do you not recollect me? Do you not recollect Adam Gray?"
The old woman looked in his face with some surprise--"And are you Mr. Gray, the butler?" she asked. "Why, your hair used to be as black as jet, and you seemed to me taller by a couple of inches."
"Ay," answered old Adam, "'tis very true, good dame--'tis very true indeed; but time, you know, will whiten the hair and bow the body, and I do not stand near so tall as I once did. Good lack! when I look in the looking-glass, I can scarcely recollect what I was like twenty years ago. You are much changed, too, Dame More, though not so much as I am, I think. You were a buxom woman in those days, and we were all sorry when you left the village, though some said it was for your own good; but others shook the head, you know, Dame More."
"Well they might," said the old woman, in a low, sad tone, fixing her eyes upon the fire--"well they might, indeed!"
Adam Gray and his old acquaintance sat silent for several minutes, evidently engaged in meditations over the past; and the younger woman; feeling, perhaps, that their thoughts were busy about things which were not familiar to her own mind, laid hold of the arm of her little boy, who was staring inquisitively in the face of the stranger, saying--"Come, Dick, it is time for you to go to bed, boy, and rest your young limbs."
The child went away willingly enough, and the old man and woman were left alone.
"Well, Mrs. More," said Adam Gray, "I am glad that we have met once again in life, though I suppose you will be as silent about all the stories of those days as you were when last I saw you."
"I don't know that," answered the old woman, musing; "times have changed, Mr. Gray, and I may not care to talk about things now that I did not choose to talk about then. Sir Morley Ernstein has been kind to me, too--"
"And I am sure so was his father," said the butler.
"Yes," replied she, "so he was; but, as I have said, times have changed, and those who were then befriending me and mine, may now be persecuting us. However, I shall say nothing till I see what comes of it."