He arrived at home to hear that his dear little comrade of earlier days, May Nell Smith, had been hurt and was coming home.
CHAPTER IV
ERMINIE THE UNCERTAIN
A FEW days later May Nell came, and Billy went to see her. On the way, and while waiting in the parlor of her imposing home, he recalled the April evening she had come into Vina on the refugee train from San Francisco, a homeless waif. Driven right into his arms he believed, by the catastrophe, he had led her to his mother’s door; and the little girl had walked into their hearts, never to be forgotten.
Yet now she seemed remote,—very young, and out of Billy’s life, if not out of memory. He had not seen her since they separated after the summer together at Lallula; and that was far away, a part of another life.
May Nell had never been robust since the terrifying days and nights of the great fire; and her parents sent her to a girls’ school in a neighboring town, where health was the first consideration.
The maid came interrupting his memories, and he followed her.
“Come up, Billy!” May Nell called in the well remembered melodious voice.
He was unprepared for the change in her. She had been only slightly hurt in the foot in an automobile accident, and now showed almost no ill effects from it. She seemed no older, no larger, yet different, in a way that Billy could not explain to himself. As she rose impulsively to greet him, leaning gracefully on her cane, he felt in full force once more her charm, her otherworldliness.
Her face had rounded and taken on richer tints; and the gold of her hair and the blue of her eyes were almost ethereal. She was like a beautiful dream, or like some little princess of bygone years stepped from the canvas of an old master.