'"Oh, please, Mr. Soldier," she said, "will you tell me your name, so that mamma can write to thank you?"
'He laughed, but he was already in the saddle, and all she heard was the one word, "Jack."'
Mamma stopped when she got to this. I waited an instant to see if she was going on again. I felt a little puzzled, though I thought the story so interesting.
'That isn't all, is it, mamma?' I said. 'I do so like it, but—didn't you say—something about papa—and you and the sea, being mixed up?'
Mamma smiled; her pretty blue eyes were fixed on the water below us; they and it seemed almost the same colour this afternoon.
'No,' she said, 'that isn't all. It was many, at least several—nine or ten or so years later, that the story goes on again. The boy officer had been out in India and seen fighting and many other things that come into soldiers' lives. But now that was over for him. Other duties had come into his life and changed it. Well—he was staying near the sea, with his mother and sisters, and one day, after a boating expedition,—it was a picnic to a picturesque island not far off,—he was introduced to a girl who had come with some other acquaintances. And they walked up and down the sands for a little. He kept looking at her in rather a curious way, and she wondered why, till at last he said—
'"I have the strangest feeling that I have seen you before, but I cannot tell where or when. And your name does not help me to remember."
'Then the girl looked at him in her turn very carefully. And a sudden rush of remembrance came over her.
'"Is your name," she said quite eagerly,—"is your name—your first name 'Jack'?"