“Nick and Nan would come to tea with me.”
He was an ambitious lad and wanted, when he was grown quite to man’s estate, to be something better than the promise of his surroundings held out. He did not know exactly how to put in words his ideas of what he wished to be, for they were crude and unformed, but the yearning was in him.
“And whatever I become,” he said, “Nan is to be with me always, and to share my lot. It may be good, it may be bad, but we are to be always together.”
“Yes, Nick,” said Nan, softly, “I could not be happy without you.”
“Nor I without you, Nan,” he said, with serious tenderness.
They were approaching that wonderful change in life, when the boy realizes that he is a man, and the girl that she is a woman. Then the world takes a different colour.
There is a new light in the sky, a new meaning in the song of birds and the kiss of the summer’s breeze. All that is brightest and most beautiful rises to the surface, and stirs with solemn significance the pulses of those whose hearts are attuned to what is highest and best in Nature. It is not all joy; touches of sadness come in when we begin to understand things aright; and it is out of those new experiences that the angel of Pity is born.
It was so with Nick and Nan. I bring to mind the last Christmas Eve we spent together. Before another Christmas came round, there was a woeful change in their fortunes, and dark clouds had settled upon their young lives.
I had called the hour—eleven o’clock—when Nick and Nan joined me unexpectedly.
“Christmas Eve, Mr. Dix,” said Nick.