'Yes, yes, go on,' she said impatiently.
'Dear me, there's nothing worth telling. It was a few weeks after my grandmother's death. We were going to Paris the next day. Her father drove over, with her, to say good-bye. Whilst he was with my people in the drawing-room, she and I walked in the garden.—I say, this is going to become frightfully sentimental, you know. Sure you want it?'
'Go on. Go on.'
'Well, we walked in the garden; and she was crying, and I was beseeching her not to cry. She wore one of her white frocks, with a red sash, and her hair fell down her back below her waist. I was holding her hand. "Don't cry, don't cry. I'll come back as soon as I'm a man, and marry you in real earnest!" I promised her.' He paused and laughed.
'Go on. And she?'
'"Oh, aren't we married in real earnest now?" she asked. I explained that we weren't. "You have to have the Notary over from Bayonne, and go to Church. I know, because that's how it was when my cousin Elodie was married. We're only married in play?" Then she asked if that wasn't just as good. "Things one does in play are always so much nicer than real things," she said.'
'Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings! She had a prophetic soul.'
'Hadn't she? I admitted that that was true. But I added that perhaps when people were grown up and could do exactly as they pleased, it was different,—perhaps real things would come to be pleasant too.'
'Have you found them so?'
'I suppose I can't be quite grown-up, for I've never yet had a chance to do exactly as I pleased.'