“I can’t guess.”
“You must!”
“I give it up.”
Mary refused to let me give it up. She helped me by another hint.
“What did you once say you wished you had in your boat?” she asked.
“Was it long ago?” I inquired, at a loss for an answer.
“Long, long ago! Before the winter. When the autumn leaves were falling, and you took me out one evening for a sail. Ah, George, you have forgotten!”
Too true, of me and of my brethren, old and young alike! It is always his love that forgets, and her love that remembers. We were only two children, and we were types of the man and the woman already.
Mary lost patience with me. Forgetting the terrible presence of her grandmother, she jumped up, and snatched the concealed object out of her handkerchief.
“There!” she cried, briskly, “now do you know what it is?”