“Dear, foolish child,” murmured Miss Sheila as she took off her entirely limp hat and ran her fingers through her hair which was kinking up in funny little curls all over her head.
Then she sat down on a lounge that stood to one side of the fire, and Mr. Wake sat down by her, and kept looking at her, and looking at her, and looking at her.
“Children,” said Miss Sheila, “I have a long story for you. . . . Once upon a time there were two foolish young people who were proud and stubborn, and who trusted the mails of Uncle Sam. . . . And they quarreled badly; and the man wrote but the young lady never got the letter, and the young lady—after long months that were filled with chastening and pride-shattering heartbreak—wrote the young man, but, ah, me, he had changed his name—”
“Just as you are going to change yours,” said Mr. Wake, and Miss Sheila laughed and nodded.
“And so,” said Miss Sheila, “the fates kept them apart, and her hair turned gray—”
“And he grew a tummy,” I put in, and Miss Sheila laughed again.
“And they were both lonely,” said Mr. Wake, “so miserably lonely; you were, Sheila?”
And she said, “Oh, Terry, I—” and then she remembered Sam and me, and stopped.
“Well?” I questioned.
“Well,” said Miss Sheila, “one fine day the lonely lady who had once been a happy girl grew so very lonely that she could not stand still, and so she met two nice children at a convent gate, and she said, ‘Let’s walk—’ and they looked at each other and smiled—and the way they smiled made her more lonely than ever—and they said ‘Yes,’ and so they all started down a hill—”