"Now, Jerry, how silly you are!" she says, looking carefully to see if I am teasing her or by any chance in earnest.
"How can I marry a young sprig, when I am going to marry you?"
"Since when?" I inquire sardonically.
Her big eyes open wide, she plants herself before me and stares accusingly.
"You know very well—you can't have forgotten? You and I and little Jerry and Miss Jencks are going round the world when I am sixteen! To Japan, and see the wistaria and the cherry blossoms and the five hundred little stone Buddha-gods that get all wet with spray and the red bridge nobody may walk on!"
"Anywhere else?"
"Yes, to Vevay and see where Mr. Boffin used to live and old Joseph that told you when you were all grown big and went back,
"C'est moi, Monsieur, qui suis Joseph: j' ai nettoyé les premières bottes de Monsieur!"
How well I remember those first formidable boots, and my manly feelings when I clumped them down in the hall before my door for Joseph to clean! Jerry and Peggy and I are going over every foot of the old grounds—the school, where the little fellows still sport their comfortable, round capes; the way, well trodden still, I'll wager, to the old patisserie with its tempting windows of indigestible joys; the natatorium where we dived like frogs; the English church where we learned the Collects and eyed the young ladies' school gravely till it blushed individually and collectively; the famous field where I fought the grocer's boy who cried "à bas les Anglais!" three days running. (He beat me, incidentally.)