He stares at her in unspeakable surprise for a moment, and then says:
"My dear girl, what is the matter—what has excited you so? Is not this your twenty-first birthday? Yes? What mystery surrounds it? Why do you think it strange I should be aware of the fact?"
"I will tell you," she says hotly, "I will tell you. It startles—it surprises me, because you—you are the only person in the world who has remembered the fact—you, who, as I say, did not know my name was 'Addie' this time last year. I—I was crying here twenty minutes ago because every one had forgotten me for the first time in twenty years; my brothers, my sisters, my old nurse, who always met me on my birthday morning with warm kisses, glad wishes, even little worthless presents manufactured in stealth, did not give me one kind word this year—not one."
"My dear child, why should you mind that? It was only through inadvertence; they were so occupied with these theatricals and other things—"
"I know—I know the omission was not willful; why should it be? But it pained me all the same; it made me feel so sad and blank, that and—and other things, that I—I took it into my head I should never see another birthday unless some one broke the spell. I never thought of you. Give me back my present—quick! It is the loveliest, the sweetest thing I ever saw. I'd rather have a bracelet than anything you could give me. How did you guess my taste—how? How did you know I was dying for a bracelet just like this? Fasten it on my arm, Tom"—baring her pretty wrist eagerly—"so. How it sparkles! Now wish me a happy birthday, please."
He does so, smiling a little sadly.
"Not one, not one, Tom, but ten, twenty, thirty birthdays. Wish them to me with all your heart, your whole heart, Tom, for I feel I do not want to die for ever so long. I do not look like a person likely to die young, do I—do I?"—peering into his face with wistful pathos, her eyes swimming in unshed tears.
"Addie, what has put death into your thoughts to-day, you silly little girl? To-day of all days, when you are supposed to cast aside the fears and frivolities of girlhood and cut your wisdom-teeth."
"Then you do not think I look like a girl who would die young?" she persists, clinging to him.
"I do not know," he answers, banteringly, smoothing away the hair from her hot face. "If a blushing Hebe, for instance, be considered a candidate for the tomb, I may have a prospect of widowhood; but otherwise, Addie, otherwise, no—I cannot say you look or feel like a person who would die young"—touching the white shapely arm that rests on his knee.