‘I was very presuming to ask that of you about the chairs,’ he said. ‘I don’t know that I ever fully understood it before to-day. I am sure you will consider how young I was, Miss Spencer, only a boy——’
‘Miss Spencer!’ she cried. ‘Jack, is that my name?’
‘I suppose it must be,’ he said. ‘To come back and find you—as you are: after being so silly as to hope that we should meet just the same as ever, and that I should find you a child still——’
‘Then you were disappointed in me, Jack?’ she said, in a low tone.
‘Disappointed!’ he cried. Then, after a pause: ‘Of course, it comes to the same thing. You are a young lady now; you’re not my old schoolfellow. I daren’t speak to you as I used, or think of you as I used. Many a dreary time, when I’d nothing else to be a little comfort, I’ve thought of what you said, that you would learn your algebra under the pear-tree and think of me.’
John was sad enough, for all the differences rushed upon his mind, and seemed to push him away from her side; and yet he could not but smile, thinking of the algebra which Elly never could learn. She understood him, for she smiled too.
‘I gave up the algebra a long time ago,’ she said, ‘almost as soon as you went away—for how could I learn it without you to help me? But I still kept going to the pear-tree all the same, and—thinking of you.’
‘That was very good of you, Elly.’
‘Ah, come, that’s something like,’ she cried. ‘Do you think, Mr. Sandford, whatever happened, I should ever call you anything but Jack?’
‘That’s another thing—that’s natural; what could I be else? You may call me Jack, Jack, like a dog, if you please; but that doesn’t mean that I should be wanting in any respect to you.’