"I am sorry I missed him," he replied cautiously. "What a fine fellow
he is!"
"You always liked him," said Elspeth, clinging eagerly to that.
"No one could help liking him, Elspeth, he has such winning ways,"
said Tommy, perhaps a little in the voice with which at funerals we
refer to the departed. She loved his words, but she knew she had a
surprise for him this time, and she tried to blurt it out.
"He said something to me. He--oh, what a high opinion he has of you!"
(She really thought he had.)
"Was that the something?" Tommy asked, with a smile that helped her,
as it was meant to do.
"You understand, don't you?" she said, almost in a whisper.
"Of course I do, Elspeth," he answered reassuringly; but somehow she
still thought he didn't.
"No one could have been more manly and gentle and humble," she said
beseechingly.
"I am sure of it," said Tommy.
"He thinks nothing of himself," she said.
"We shall always think a great deal of him," replied Tommy.
"Yes, but----" Elspeth found the strangest difficulty in continuing,
for, though it would have surprised him to be told so, Tommy was not
helping her nearly as much as he imagined.
"I told him," she said, shaking, "that no one could be to me what you
were.
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