"What is it?" she called rather anxiously.
"Nothing," he replied hastily. "A hang-over laugh from my youth, that's all. This is the first chance it's had to escape."
At last the tree was completely shorn of its wealth; nothing but the tinsel, the pop-corn, and the tin candlesticks were left. In front of each child stretched a new panorama of possessions. Each little one was a person of vast and suddenly acquired wealth; arrogantly wealthy was each, at that, for no one admitted the superiority of another's acquisitions. We were all wealthy on the Christmas days of long ago.
Bosworth had the satisfaction of knowing that his own presents to the small Pembrokes were received with wild acclaim. He could not help recalling certain presents he had bestowed on former Christmases, upon more mature ladies, who received them as a matter of tribute and with hardly so much as a sigh of pleasure.
Then the children were herded into the library with their toys and their sweetmeats, pursued by anxious, colic-fearing nurses. Bosworth, very hot and very happy, retired to the pantry to remove his great coat, his whiskers, and his cotton wig (the latter the handiwork of Miss Pembroke, who, whatever else she might have been proficient in, was not a successful wig-maker).
She appeared in the swinging door, her face flushed and her eyes glowing.
"Wasn't it fun?" she cried.
He was picking cotton from his hair. He paused in this operation to stare at her, entranced.
"By Jove!" he murmured, his soul leaping to his eyes. As if fascinated, he advanced slowly, his hands extended to clasp hers. She drew back ever so slightly, confused by the look in his eyes. She gave him her hands, however,—warm, firm little hands that hesitated a long time before responding to the grip he gave them.
"Do you know," he said, irrelevant but serious to the point of perplexing her, "I believe I've never had you out of my mind during all these years? I haven't realized it before, but now I honestly believe it's true. You've been here—in my brain—all this time. That's why no one else ever really got in. Mary Pembroke, you are still the loveliest girl I've ever seen—just as you were fourteen years ago. You are just as wonderful to me now as you were then—even though you were eight and yellow-haired and lived in the cabin de luxe. It's—it's marvelous. You've been lying dormant in my memory—in my heart—all these years. Now you are suddenly revived. It's a terribly queer sensation. I—I don't believe I'll get over it."