Upon the threshold there looked back at Hatton, and then beyond him, a girl whom the startled young men took at first to be a perfect stranger. She wore a plain blue serge suit, belted at the waist, with a white collar and jabot. A sailor hat, slightly rolled, crushed down the hair that still shone above the face whose remarkable beauty owed much to a certain quaintness of expression. She stood silently, without moving, for what seemed a long moment to them all, and then suddenly she spoke, breathlessly and with that little catch in her voice, and her tone, her look, her words, her quick motions so characteristic of the little girl they had known, broke the spell of silence and let loose a flood of such warm memories that all the mean and harsh and contemptible thoughts of but a moment since were dissipated forever.
They crowded about her, hanging upon and hungry for her unabashed and delighted words, and dazzled by the girl's uncanny loveliness.
"Jinx! Thad are you! I know you by your so nize fat!"
She had not lost her adorable accent. Indeed, if they could but have realised it, Sunny had changed not at all. She had simply grown up.
Jinx's soft hands were holding the two little fragrant ones thrust so joyously into his own. The fat fellow fought a sudden maddening desire to hug like a bear the girl whose bright eyes were searching his own so lovingly.
"Monty! Oh, you have grow into whole mans. How it is nize. And you still smile on me troo those glass ad you eye."
Smile! Monty was grinning like the proverbial Cheshire cat. That case of Circocele at Bellevue hospital had vanished into the dim regions of young Monty's mind. Anyway there were a score of other Internes there, and Monty had his permit in his pocket.
"Bobs! Is thad youself, wiz those fonny liddle hair grow om your mout'. How it is grow nize on you face. I lig' him there."
Any doubt that Bobs had experienced as to the desirability of that incipient moustache vanished then and there.
And Jerry! Jerry, for the last, to be looked at with shining eyes, till something tightened in his throat, and his mind leaped over the years and felt again that dizzy, tingling, electrical sensation when Sunny had asked him to kiss her.