That was a very cool statement for S. K. I didn’t understand it, and it hurt. And that and the feeling that perhaps our tight friendship was gone made me ache. Then I looked at him and saw that he felt badly too. He smiled as our eyes met, but not happily.
“I had planned this very differently,” he said. “We were going to be better friends all the time, you know, and then one day, when you were several years older and a little tired of a world that held only parties and fluffy frocks, I would tell you that I had liked you ever since you were a school-going youngster, and I liked to dream that you would find that I had come to mean something in your heart and that----” And then S. K. stopped abruptly and said: “Nat, I shouldn’t be allowed loose.”
I said: “Oh yes you should, S. K.!” And I found the greatest cure for a heartache, and that is finding someone you love suffering from the same thing. I immediately quite forgot mine and thought of S. K.’s. And I did something then that sounds silly, but which wasn’t, and didn’t seem so at the time. I moved closer to S. K. and rested my cheek against his coat-sleeve. He fumbled for my hand, and when he found it I squeezed his hard.
He said I was a “ripping little pal,” and his voice was not awfully steady, and so I think he really thought so. And in that position, where I did not have to meet his eyes, and yet where I was strengthened by his touch--for it did strengthen me--I told him how I felt.
“S. K. dear,” I whispered, “I want some more baseball, and not to have to think of love and such stuff.”
“I know, dear,” he answered.
And then I said: “This afternoon I felt as I did before I did my first really high dive. Wasn’t that silly? For there’s nothing to be frightened about.”
“Not a thing, dear,” he replied.
And then I told him about wanting my mother, and the garden, and how it made me feel, and that I had felt that way when I began to realize that afternoon how much I cared for him. And then he sat up suddenly, and I did too.
“Care?” he echoed. “Oh, my dear child!”