They crossed the garden
and were lost to view in the woods before Leila spoke. "We just did it.
Billy will have to go." They laughed merrily at their escape.
"Just think, John, how long it is since you came. It seems years. Oh, you
_were_ a queer boy! I just hated you."
"I do suppose, Leila, I must have looked odd with that funny cap and the
cane--"
"And the way you looked when I told you about swinging on the gate. I
hadn't done that for--oh, two years. What did you think of me?"
"I thought you were very rude, and then--oh, Leila! when you came up out
of the drift--" He hesitated.
"Oh, go on; I don't mind--not now."
"I thought you beautiful with all that splendid hair on the snow."
"Oh, John! How silly!" Whether or not she was unusually good to look at
had hardly ever before occurred to her. She flushed slightly, pleased and
wondering, with a new seed of gentle vanity planted in her simple nature,
a child on the threshold of the womanly inheritance of maidenhood.
Then he said gravely, "It is wonderful to me how we have changed. I shall
miss you. To think you are the only girl I ever played with, and now when
you come back at Christmas--"
"I am not to come back then, John. I am to stay with my uncles in
Baltimore and not come home until next June.
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