Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/53

 She told him of her studies in the boarding-school for girls, in which she was a day scholar; and he described his own class-room life. They talked as eagerly, and listened as hungrily, as if the trivial experiences of their small days were great and moving events. "I often wondered what you were doing," she confessed. "There was a boy at home reminded me of you—a little."

Don was afraid to acknowledge that he had made an imaginary playmate of her; indeed, he remembered it only dimly. "I didn't think I'd ever see you again," he said. "I didn't know where you'd gone." The miracle of her return came strong on him.

"You didn't forget me, though," she said.

"No."

"Your cousin told me—how they teased you—about the photograph."

He laughed with a return of the shame which that teasing had taught him to feel in remembering the incident. "We had an awful fight," he recollected.

"You are good friends now."

"Yes."

"He hurried me right out here, as soon as he knew who I was." She smiled at the thought of Conroy's delighted eagerness to have her meet Don again. Then she leaned back against the birch, and gazed happily at the tangle of sunlit green branches and the bare, brown shadows underneath. It was just such a place as she would have expected to find the little boy whom she remembered. And he was the same boy, though evidently his books had taken the place of his make-believes, and he was more reserved.