Elsie looked at him as he stood, gravely quiet, studying her.
"Well," she said, "Appleyard is Dick's. His father was a true Johnstone, his mother a Jardine, but you make one feel that you're more at home here than he is. I can't account for it. Can you?"
"I might blame your imagination," he answered, smiling.
Elsie gave him a roguish look, which made her seem more like the little Elsie he had known two years before.
"You haven't told me how I'm looking," she said. "Perhaps you don't realize that this gown was made in Paris and was put on in your especial honor."
"You're rather wonderful," Andrew replied gravely. "But then you always were. For all that, I had a pleasant surprise when you came downstairs."
Elsie's eyes twinkled, and he thought they looked like the sea when the sun touched it in a breeze.
"A surface change," she laughed. "Munich and London account for it. I'd run wild, you know, when you saw me last. But there's no difference underneath. You're the same too, and that's what I like. I want to keep my old friend. You must promise you won't alter."
"I'll try not to," he answered. "Perhaps I'm incapable of it; I'm not progressive. Still, there are times when I feel rather old."
"Oh, I know," she said with understanding sympathy. "But after the cheerful letters you wrote from Canada, I hoped the lameness didn't trouble you very much."