There was no effusiveness of
greeting--we just fell at once into the old familiar talk.
"You are just the same," I said to him, looking at the burly figure, the
big, almost clumsy, head, and the irradiating smile. His great charm had
always been an entire unworldliness and absence of ambition.
He smiled at this and said:
"Yes, I am afraid I am too easy-going." He had never cared to talk about
himself, and now he said, "Well, yes, I go along in my old prosy way.
It is just like the old schooldays, with half the difficulties gone. Of
course the children are not always good, but that makes it the more
amusing; and one can see much more easily what they are thinking of and
dreaming about."
I found myself telling him my adventures, which he heard with the same
quiet attention and I was sure that he would never forget a single
point--he never forgot anything in the old days.
"Yes," he said at the end, "that's a wonderful story. You always had the
trouble of the adventures, and I had the fun of hearing them."
He asked me what I was now going to do, and I said that I had not the
least idea.
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