She was fifteen years old before she saw him again. His strap-watch
was still on her wrist; his memory, unfaded, still enshrined in her
heart of a child, for she was as yet no more than that at fifteen. And
the moment she saw him she recognised him.
It was on the Sixth Avenue Elevated Station at Twenty-third Street one
sunny day in April; he stood waiting for the downtown train which she
stepped out of when it stopped.
He did not notice her, so she went over to him and called him by name;
and the tall, good-looking, fashionably dressed young fellow turned to
her without recognition.
But the next instant his smooth, youthful face lighted up, and off
came his hat with the gay college band adorning it:
"Athalie Greensleeve!" he exclaimed, showing his pleasure
unmistakably.
"C. Bailey, Junior," she rejoined as steadily as she could, for her
heart was beating wildly with the excitement of meeting him and her
emotions were not under full control.
"You have grown so," he said with the easy, boyish cordiality of his
caste, "I didn't recognise you for a moment. Tell me, do you still
live down--er--down there?"
She said:
"I knew you as soon as I set eyes on you. You are very much taller,
too.... No, we went away from Spring Pond the year after my father
died."
"I see," he said sympathetically. And back into his memory flashed
that scene with her by the stove in the dusky bar. And then he
remembered her as she stood in her red hood and cloak staring at the
closed door of the room where her dead father lay. And he remembered
touching her frosty little hand, and the incident of the watch.
"I never went back there," he mused, half to himself, looking
curiously at the girl before him. "I wanted to go--but I never did."
"No, you never came back," she said slowly.
"I couldn't. I was only a kid, you see. My mother wouldn't let me go
there that summer. And father and I joined a club down South so we did
not go back for the duck-shooting. That is how it happened."
She nodded, gravely, but said nothing to him about her faith in his
return, how confidently, how patiently she had waited through that
long, long summer for the boy who never returned.
"I did think of you often," he volunteered, smiling at her.
"I thought of you, too. I hoped you would come and let me teach you to
sail a boat."
"That's so! I remember now. You were going to show me how."
"Have you learned to sail a boat?"
"No. I'll tell you what I'll do, Athalie, I'll come down this
summer--"
"But I don't live there any more."
"That's so. Where do you live?"
She hesitated, and his eyes fell for the first time from her youthful
and engaging face to the clothes she wore--black clothes that seemed
cheap even to a boy who had no knowledge of feminine clothing. She was
all in rusty black, hat, gloves, jacket and skirt; and the austere and
slightly mean setting made the contrast of her hair and skin the more
fresh and vivid.
"I live," she replied diffidently, "with my two sisters in West
Fifty-fourth Street. I am stenographer and typewriter in the offices
of a department store."
"I'd like to come to see you," he said impulsively. "Shall I--when
vacation begins?"
"Are you still at school?"
He laughed: "I'm at Harvard. I'm down for Easter just now. Tell me,
Athalie, would you care to have me come to see you when I return?"
"If you would care to come."
"I surely would!" he said cordially, offering his hand in adieu--"I
want to ask you a lot of questions and we can talk over all those
jolly old times,"--as though years of comradeship lay behind them
instead of an hour or two. Then his glance fell on the slim hand he
was shaking, and he saw the strap-watch which he had given her still
clasped around her wrist.
"You wear that yet?--that old shooting-watch of mine!" he laughed.
She smiled.
"I'll give you a better one than that next Christmas," he said, taking
out a little notebook and pencil. "I'll write it down--'strap-watch
for Athalie Greensleeve next Christmas'--there it is! And--will you
give me your address?"
She gave it; he noted it, closed his little Russia-leather book with a
snap, and pocketed it.
"I'm glad I saw you," said the girl; "I hope you won't forget me. I am
late; I must go--I suppose--"
[Illustration: "'I'm glad I saw you,' said the girl; 'I hope you won't
forget me.'"]
"Indeed I won't forget you," he assured her warmly, shaking the
slender black-gloved hand again.
He meant it when he said it. Besides she was so pretty and frank and
honest with him. Few girls he knew in his own caste were as
attractive; none as simple, as direct.
He really meant to call on her some day and talk things over. But
days, and weeks, and finally months slipped away. And somehow, in
thinking of her and of his promise, there now seemed very little left
for them to talk about. After all they had said to each other nearly
all there was to be said, there on the Elevated platform that April
morning. Besides he had so many, many things to do; so many pleasures
promised and accepted, visits to college friends, a fishing trip with
his father,--really there seemed to be no hour in the long vacation
unengaged.
He always wanted to see her when he thought of her; he really meant to
find a moment to do it, too. But there seemed to be no moment
suitable.
Even when he was back in Cambridge he thought about her occasionally,
and planned, vaguely, a trip to New York so that he might redeem his
promise to her.
He took it out in thinking.
At Christmas, however, he sent her a wrist-watch, a dainty French
affair of gold and enamel; and a contrite note excusing himself for
the summer delinquencies and renewing his promise to call on her.
The Dead Letter Office returned watch and letter.