Jimmy's blue eyes capered. This was American humor—the kind he was born to and could understand. Happiness and ease returned with it. If Susan could talk like that while looking like that—well, Susan was there! She was all right.
Within five minutes he was giving her a brief, comradely chronicle of the missing years, and when Phil got back it was to find them seated together, Susan leaning a little forward from the depths of a Morris chair to follow more attentively Jimmy's minute technical description of the nature of the steel alloys used in the manufacture of automobiles.
They rose at Phil's entrance with a mingling, eager chatter of explanation. Phil later—much later—admitted to me that he had never felt till that moment how damnably he was past forty, and how fatally Susan was not. He further admitted that it was far from the most agreeable discovery of a studious life.
"What do you think, Prof. Farmer," exclaimed Jimmy, "of our meeting again accidentally like this—and me not knowing Susan! You can't beat that much for a small world!"
Phil sought Susan's eye, and was somewhat relieved by the quizzical though delighted gleam in it.
"Well, Jimmy," he responded gravely, "truth compels me to state that I have heard of stranger encounters—less inevitable ones, at least. I really have."
"But you never heard of a nicer one," said Susan. "Haven't I always told you and Ambo that Jimmy would be like this?"
"Sort of foolish?" grinned Jimmy, with reawakening constraint. "I'll bet you have, too."
Susan shook her head, solemn and slow; but the corners of her mouth meant mischief.
"No, Jimmy, not foolish; just—natural. Just—sort of—you."