“Where did you get that?” he asked in quite a feirce voice.
I told him, but not quite all. It was the first time I had concealed an amour from my parents, having indeed had but few, and I felt wicked and clandestine. But, alas, it is the way of the heart to conceal its deepest feelings, save for blushes, which are beyond bodily control.
My father, however, mearly sighed and observed:
“So it has come at last!”
“What has come at last?” I asked, but feeling that he meant Love. For although forty-two and not what he once was, he still remembers his Youth.
But he refused to anser, and inquired politely if I felt to much grown-up, with the Allowence and so on, to be held on knees and occasionaly tickeled, as in other days.
Which I did not.
That night I stood at the window of my Chamber and gazed with a heaving heart at the Gray residense, which is next door. Often before I had gazed at its walls, and considered them but brick and morter, and needing paint. Now my emotions were diferent. I realized that a House is but a shell, covering and protecting its precious contents from weather and curious eyes, et cetera.
As I stood there, I percieved a light in an upper window, where the nursery had once been in which Tom—in those days when a child, Tommy—and I had played as children, he frequently pulling my hair and never thinking of what was to be. As I gazed, I saw a figure come to the window and gaze fixedly at me. It was he.
Hannah was in my room, making a list of six of everything which I needed, so I dared not call out. But we exchanged gestures of afection and trust across the void, and with a beating heart I retired to bed.