"Why, Hugh John," she cried, "have you really come? How could you frighten us like that, you bad boy!"
And she kissed him—well, just as Prissy always did.
Meanwhile the young lady had turned partly away, and was pulling carelessly at a leaf—as if such proceedings, if not exactly offensive, were nevertheless highly uninteresting.
"Cissy," called Priscilla at last, "won't you come and shake hands with Hugh John."
The girl turned slowly. She was robed in white linen belted with slim scarlet. The dress came quite down to the tops of her dainty boots. She held out her hand.
"How do you do—ah, Mr. Smith?" she said, with her fingers very much extended indeed.
Hugh John gasped, and for a long moment found no word to say.
"Why, Cissy, how you've grown!" he cried at length. But observing no gleam of fellow-feeling in his quondam comrade's eyes, he added somewhat lamely, "I mean how do you do, Miss—Miss Carter?"
There was silence after this, as the three walked on together, Prissy talking valiantly in order to cover the long and distressful silences. Hugh John's usual bubbling river of speech was frozen upon his lips. He had a thousand things to tell, a thousand thousand to ask. But now it did not seem worth while to speak of one. Why should a young lady like this, with tan gloves half-way to her elbows and the shiniest shoes, with stockings of black silk striped with red, care to hear about his wonderful bat for the three-figure score at cricket, or the fact that he had won the golf medal by doing the round in ninety-five? He had even thought of taking some credit (girls will suck in anything you tell them, you know) for his place in his class, which was seventh. But he had intended to suppress the fact that the fifth form was not a very large one at St. Salvator's.