"It's hard to realize, I know," she said apologetically. She lifted the wonderful braids and bound them crownwise around her head, tying the ends together behind as if they were pieces of ribbon, and tucking them under with a comb, from behind one ear. She anchored them in front with the other comb, and smiled flashingly at him again. "Now it seems real, doesn't it? And now I'll tell you all about it—that is, if you have the time."
He looked again at the lovely, earnest little face under the crown of hair, and nodded gravely. She was not like any girl he had ever known.... She was like the girls you imagined might exist, sometimes, and wondered if you'd like them, after all, if they did. He wanted her to go on, at least, and felt stealing over him a conviction that she couldn't have done so particularly wrong.
Joy felt the lessened severity of his attitude, and took courage from it as she began.
"You remember that day you came to Grandfather's? You remembered my name, so I'm sure you do remember the rest. Well, that day I was especially unhappy because—well, it's hard to explain the because. Things were just as good as they always had been, really; only that day I couldn't stand them any more. You know things can be that way."
She looked at him expectantly, and he nodded again.
"It was a forlorn little life for a child like you—oh, I keep forgetting!"
He laughed.
"But even nineteen," he explained, "isn't particularly aged to an elderly gentleman of thirty-four."
"As old as that?" queried Joy.
She looked at him again in the light of new information, but she shelved it for the time, and went on with her defense.