"When you get a colour," he said, "you look like a schoolgirl."
"As a matter of fact, I shan't see twenty again."
"Do you want to?"
"No," she replied candidly; "I'm as happy just now as ever I want to be. It'll always be something to look back upon."
"I wish," he said with earnestness, "that you wouldn't talk as though our friendship was only going to be temporary."
"We never know our luck," she remarked. "Aunt was saying only the other evening, 'Gertie,' she said—Now I've been and let you know my name."
He repeated it twice quietly to himself.
"Have you been fond of any one before this?" she asked. The girl had so many questions that her mind jumped from one topic to another.
"Oh yes," he answered. "When I was a schoolboy at Winchester I fell in love—deeply in love. She was a widow, and kept a confectioner's shop. Good shop, too."
"Nothing more serious than that?" He shook his head. "Glad I'm the first," she said. "And I wish my plan for getting you acquainted with aunt had come off the other night. It would have made it all seem more legal, somehow."