Page:In the days of the comet.djvu/80

 gs, we stamped out our feelings with clumsy stereotyped phrases; you who are better taught would fail to catch our intention. The effect would be inanity. But our first words I may give you, because though they conveyed nothing to me at the time, afterwards they meant much.

"You, Willie!" she said.

"I have come," I said -- forgetting in the instant all the elaborate things I had intended to say. "I thought I would surprise you "

"Surprise me?"

"Yes."

She stared at me for a moment. I can see her pretty face now as it looked at me -- her impenetrable dear face. She laughed a queer little laugh and her colour went for a moment, and then so soon as she had spoken, came back again.

"Surprise me at what?" she said with a rising note.

I was too intent to explain myself to think of what might lie in that.

"I wanted to tell you," I said, "that I didn't mean quite . . . the things I put in my letter.

4

When I and Nettie had been sixteen we had been just of an age and contemporaries altogeth