"Thank you very much," said the marshal. "It is getting very late, Sir Knight. I must really say good-bye."
"Good-bye, good-bye, Sir Marshal—till next May-day," cried Timothy. He stood still, looking after her tall, erect figure, as she made her way through the dwindling crowd.
Darkness had fallen quickly, and the space about him was almost deserted. The great grey buildings loomed up dimly in the twilight. A group of girls strolled past him, singing Islington, and the wind brought back the sweet, plaintive notes. Timothy still saw beside him the quaint figure of the marshal, the curls flying out from beneath her rounded cap, her eyes looking up at him as she explained the May-day sights and sounds. It seemed hardly possible that she was not a reality, that he could stretch out his hand and not touch her. But he would see her again; Philadelphia and Bryn Mawr were not far apart. The distant train whistled, and gave a few warning puffs, which rapidly increased in number as it drew out of the station. Timothy leaned against a tree and indulged in dreams.
Two foresters were standing near by, talking eagerly. But it was some time before Timothy realized the purport of their words.
"It was the funniest thing you ever heard of," one of them was saying. "Poor Eleanor! I saw her with him some time ago, and now she has just told me what happened. You see I asked her to take care of Jack for me, and keep him from finding me—why, yes, of course I had my reasons—and somehow she got hold of the wrong man. She has kept this creature with her all the afternoon, all the afternoon, my dear, thinking he was Jack! And she says he is the most awful stick, and has bored her to death, poor dear! Isn't it a joke on her? It is a good joke on me, too, because I was so sure that Jack would come. I wonder why he didn't!"
Lights were beginning to twinkle in the windows. The chorus of Islington still came back on the breeze, but it sounded quite different to Timothy. Somehow everything had suddenly become commonplace.
"I think," he said, with a deep breath, "it was a pretty good joke on me."
Then he pulled down his hat, buttoned his coat, and set off towards the station, with all possible speed.
Anne Maynard Kidder, 1903.