"Say, you look something like an old sweetheart—er—friend—of mine. Were you ever in Brattleboro, Vermont?"
A flush warmed her cheek, and a sense of home warmed her prim speech, as she confessed:
"I came from there originally."
"So did I," said Ira Lathrop, leaning closer, and beaming like a big sun: "I don't suppose you remember Ira Lathrop?"
The old maid stared at the bachelor as if she were trying to see the boy she had known, through the mask that time had modeled on his face. And then she was a girl again, and her voice chimed as she cried:
"Why, Ira!—Mr. Lathrop!—is it you?"
She gave him her hand—both her hands, and he smothered them in one big paw and laid the other on for extra warmth, as he nodded his savage head and roared as gentle as a sucking dove:
"Well, well! Annie—Anne—Miss Gattle! What do you think of that?"
They gossiped across the chasm of years about people and things, and knew nothing of the excitement so close to them, saw nothing of Chicago slipping back into the distance, with its many lights shooting across the windows like hurled torches.
Suddenly a twinge of ancient jealousy shot through the man's heart, recurring to old emotions.