There was a strange look as of a misty uncertain pleasure in his eyes. I gave him my small hands, for they were small when he had gathered them into his, and we looked at one another in silence for a few moments.
"Come here and sit down beside me little one," he said in his old affectionate way. "How you have grown!" he exclaimed, moving one end of the rustic seat to let me pass. I had forgotten all about Mr. Haliburton or any one else but Mr. Dalton; the glad surprise of seeing him absorbed every other consideration.
"Yes, but not changed, am I?" I put in, eagerly, sitting down beside him and looking earnestly into his gravely glad face.
"Yes, you are very much changed Amey," he said in a serious yet tender voice, "but," he continued slowly, "I should recognize you all the better for the change." His words were meaningless to me, but then they had always been so when we were friends long ago. "You are changed too Mr. Dalton," I retorted reciprocatingly. "At first I did not know you at all, and it was only by rude staring that I managed to remember you. Where have you been all this time, that I have never seen you?" I asked.
"Rambling all over the world," he answered dreamily. "And so you missed me, did you?" he added, changing his tone to one of playful enquiry. "Well, Amey, so have I missed you, at least I have often thought of you in my travels and wondered how you were getting on. I need not tell you," he continued teasingly, "how often I have been haunted by the dreadful threat you made when I saw you last about—"
"Now, don't say any more," I interrupted, "I remember all that well enough. We are all a little silly sometime in our lives," I alleged in self defence.
"Poor Amey!" he said almost in a whisper, "you do not know how prone human nature is to folly—yet, when you are as old as I, you will have learned something of it."
"You speak as if you were very ancient," I exclaimed, making little of his serious talk.
"Well," he broke in slowly, "I can't be very young now, when I had Amey Hampden on my knee some fifteen years ago, but do not tell that of me, like a good child," he added in playful eagerness "for, being a bachelor yet, you see, it might harm me."
"Do you mean that it would excite formidable jealousies?" I asked rising, and laughing carelessly, and then, half sorry for having uttered these words I diverted his attention from them by announcing my wish to go inside.