Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/213

Rh "Old!" I say in astonishment. "Old! did you say? He cannot be much past thirty."

"That is a good deal," says George, with all a young man's impertinence; "why, you were only a child when you first knew him, Nell?"

"Yes, I was only a child!"

"And I can't imagine how you recollected him when you ran up against him in that field."

"It is not a face one could possibly forget," I say, rather tartly; "Paul Vasher is the handsomest man I ever saw!"

George stares at me blankly; he does not mind my not appreciating his good looks, but it cuts him for me to place another man before him.

"You always admired dark men," he says, with a fall in his voice.

"Always!" I say, beginning to laugh. "Do you know what I am laughing at?"

"No."

"I was thinking of that day when you were so angry, and walked off in a huff, and never turned your head once. I have so often thought since, that—that if you had only looked round, you would have seen how silly I looked when I ran into Mr. Vasher, and the moral I deduced was, 'never turn your back on your friends, but keep your eyes wide open to see when they make fools of themselves!" And I laugh heartily; I always had a bad knack of laughing more amusedly at my own small jokes than those of anybody else.

We are in the orchard now, and the Mummy is beckoning from afar to George to accompany him home to luncheon, for above all earthly considerations does he place his stomach and the comfort thereof.

"Good-bye," says George, standing bare-headed under the trees,