Off to Heidelberg and Bonn and Berlin! Student days! Heigh-ho! Ten years is a long time. I might still have been an alien, an exile, but for my uncle's death and that the lonely aunt wanted a man about. (Not that I was much of a man to have about.) In all these ten years I had not once visited my native land, scandalous as it may seem; but I had always celebrated the Fourth of July in my garden, celebrated it religiously, too, and followed the general elections.
All these people (or nearly all of them) I had known in my youth; and now not one of them recognized me. There was a pang in this knowledge. No one likes to be completely forgotten, save the absconding bank-clerk and the defeated candidate. I had made no effort to recall myself to those I met. My hostess thoughtlessly supposed that I should take upon myself the labor of renewing acquaintance; but I found this rather impossible. Everything was changed, the people and the city; the one had added to its height and the other to its girth. So I simply wandered about the familiar rooms summoning up the pleasant ghosts of bygone days. Then came the slipper episode—and Nancy!
Home again! No more should the sea call, nor the sky, nor the hills; I was home again, for ever and for ever, so I hoped.
And then I glanced up from my reverie to behold a woman, fair, fat and forty-eight, seat herself breathlessly on the far end of the bench. I recognized her instantly: she had been one of the salient features of my childhood, only a little farther removed than my mother herself. She was florid in her October years; twenty years ago she had been plump and pretty; now she was only pretty plump. But a rollicking soul beamed from her kindly eyes. So I bethought me of the slipper, dragged it forth, rose and approached.
"Madam," said I gravely, "are you Cinderella?"
She balanced her lorgnette and stared, first at the slipper, then at me.
"Young man, don't be silly. Do I look like a woman who could wear a little thing like that? Run along with you, and don't make fun of poor old women. If there is any Cinderella around here I'm only her godmother."
For a moment I stood abashed. Here was one who had outlived vanity, or at least had discovered its worthlessness.
"Have you no vanity, madam?" I asked solemnly.