"I know; and I'm doing my best," she said. "I try to go to bed every night with your name on my lips, but more frequently I go with a yawn. All for the sake of the 'dear dead days beyond recall.'"
"Which ones especially?" Cameron inquired.
"When I was five and you were nine, and we were all the world to one another."
"In the days of my 'dim and distant' youth I learnt a rotten poem, from dire necessity, not choice, you bet. About some bore of a Scotch king and a spider, and the chorus or the moral, I've forgotten which, ran, 'If at first you don't succeed, try again.' Perseverance, Pansy. It's a wonderful thing. You'll find yourself there in the end."
Pansy smiled a trifle wistfully at the boy she had known all her life, who always gave her nonsense for nonsense, and, incidentally, his heart.
"Bob, I wish I could love you," she said, suddenly grave.
Smiling at her, he started juggling with the two balls.
"So the spirit is willing, etc.?" he responded. "Well, I shall go on hoping for a triumph of mind over matter."
For some reason Pansy felt intensely sorry for her old playmate.
She caught herself making comparisons, and something within her suddenly whispered that they would never be more than friends, something she did not quite realise—some change that had taken place within herself since they had parted in Teneriffe only a week before.