"Oh yes, she did. You would not let her come?" with a sudden lighting up of the expressive face.
"I did not forbid her coming: I did not know that you were waiting for her."
Then with sudden boyish candor and a happy smile on his animated countenance "I thought you might have observed that I come here so often because I like to talk with Miss St. Clair. But you never can know how dearly I love her."
"I am sorry."
"Why?" with a naïve surprise.
"She is older than you."
"How old is she?"
"She will be twenty in May."
"And I am nineteen this very week. What is one poor little year?—not a year," gleefully.
"But the difference in religion?"