“No?” said Jennie interrogatively.
“Our regard for each other,” Jennie noted most pointedly his word “regard”—“must be the continuation of the old regard.”
“I hardly know what you mean,” said Jennie.
Jim reached over and possessed himself of her hand. She pulled it from him gently, but he paid no attention to the little muscular protest, and examined the hand critically. On the back of the middle finger he pointed out a scar—a very tiny scar.
“Do you remember how you got that?” he asked.
Because Jim clung to the hand, their heads were very close together as she joined in the examination.
“Why, I don’t believe I do,” said she.
“I do,” he replied. “We—you and I and Mary Forsythe were playing mumble-peg, and you put your hand on the grass just as I threw the knife—it cut you, and left that scar.”
“I remember, now!” said she. “How such things come back over the memory. And did it leave a scar when I pushed you toward the red-hot stove in the schoolhouse one blizzardy day, like this, and you peeled the skin off your wrist where it struck the stove?”
“Look at it,” said he, baring his long and bony wrist. “Right there!”