"Oh, how glad I am to see you!" she said quite naturally. "I've heard from the captain about you often; you know he's never tired of talking of you. And you know we haven't really met--you and I--since we were children, for when you came here five years ago we only saw each other for a day or two, and I scarcely remember what you were like, or what we said to each other."
"That's just the thought I have of you," said Comethup. "I seem to have known, somehow, just what you would look like as a woman; but it's the little ghost in the garden--this garden--I remember best. Do you remember that?"
She seemed to shudder a little as she looked about her. "Ah, the ghost!" she said. "Yes, I remember that; I remember how you came into the garden to find me. What a frightened baby I was then, to be sure--what a frightened, desolate baby!" She linked her hand in his arm and drew him with her along the path in between the trees. "Come," she said, "walk with me here, as you did when we were little mites. Oh, it's good to see you again; it's good to look upon the face of a friend." Something in her tones struck him to the quick; she seemed almost on the verge of tears. "Have you no friends, then?" he asked gently.
She looked up at him with a faint smile. "Well, the captain--and--and Mrs. Dawson--my governess, you know. I think that's all. You've been all over the world, haven't you?" she added suddenly.
"Not quite all of it," he replied, "but a great deal. It makes me feel--well, like a blackguard, when I think that you've been here in this dull house all this time--five years, isn't it?--while I've been running about and having a good time. It doesn't seem fair, does it?"
She looked round at him again with a smile. "That's nice of you," she said. "But, you know, we can't all have the good things in this world--can we? Still, I must confess it's been rather dull; one sees the same houses and the same faces, and one does the same things day after day, summer and winter, for years. I'm only glad to take things as they come, and not to think. But I think sometimes--of course, I don't know--I'd rather be desperately unhappy with some real sorrow than just exist like this. If one had a real sorrow one could fight it and live it down and do all sorts of things; but here"--she made a little despairing gesture with her hand--"there's simply nothing to fight, nothing to do."