"I took her to the theatre with me to see Julius Caesar and then I left her home. She lives up near the Lagan ... out Stranmillis way!..."
"I know it well," said Uncle Matthew. "Is she a fair girl or a dark girl?"
"She has the loveliest golden hair you ever clapped your eyes on. It was that made me fall in love with her!..."
"You're in love with her then! You're not just going with her?"
"Of course I'm in love with her. I never was in the habit of just going with girls. That's all right, mebbe, for Willie Logan, but I'm not fond of it," said John indignantly.
"You fell in love with her in a terrible great hurry," Uncle Matthew exclaimed.
"Aye," said John laughing. "It was queer and comic the way I fell in love with her, for I had no notion of such a thing when I went in the shop to have my tea. She's in a restaurant off High Street. I'd been to the Royal to see Romeo and Juliet, and I was full of the play and just wandering about, not thinking of what I was doing, when all of a sudden I saw this place fornent my eyes, and I just went in, and she was there by her lone. The woman that keeps the place had gone home with a sore head, and left her to look after it!"
"What's her name?"
"Maggie Carmichael. It's a nice name. They don't do much trade on a Saturday, and her and me were alone in the shop by ourselves so I asked her to have tea with me, and then I asked her to go to the Royal, and she agreed after a while, and when it was over, I took her home, and that's why I missed the train and had to tramp it the whole way home. She's older nor I am. She says she's twenty-two. She was codding me for never having kissed any other girl but her!..."
"You got that length, did you?"