But to-day her eyes and thoughts were fixed on Gavan; and when the lime-drop was in her mouth she crunched it mechanically and heedlessly: how he held his prayer-book, his pallid, melancholy profile bent above it, how he sat gravely listening to Mr. MacNab, how he prayed and sang. Only toward the end of the sermon was the tension of her spirit relieved by seeing humanizing symptoms of weariness. She was sure that he was hearing as little as she was--his thoughts were far away; and when he put up a hand to hide a yawn her jaws stretched themselves in quick sympathy. Gavan’s eyes at this turned on her and he smiled openly and delightfully at her. Delightfully; yet the very fact of his daring to smile made him more grown up than ever. Such maturity, such strange spiritual assurance, could afford lightnesses. He brought with him, into the fresh, living world outside, his aura of mystery. Eppie walked beside her uncle and still observed Gavan as he went before them with the aunts. “How do you like your playmate, Eppie?” the general asked. “He isn’t a playmate,” Eppie gravely corrected him. “Not very lively? But a nice boy, eh?” “I think he is very nice; but he is too big to care about me.” “Nonsense; he’s but three years older.” “Four, Uncle Nigel. That makes a great deal of difference at our ages,” said Eppie, wisely. “Nonsense,” the general repeated. “He is only a bit down on his luck; he’s not had time to find you out yet. To-morrow he joins you in your Greek and history, and I fancy he’ll see that four years’ difference isn’t such a difference when it comes to some things. Not many chits of your age are such excellent scholars.” “But I think that we will always be very different,” said Eppie, though at her uncle’s commendation her spirits had risen. III Greek and history proved, indeed, a bond. The two children, during the hours in the library, met on a more equal footing, for Gavan was backward with his studies. But the question of inequality had not come up in Gavan’s consciousness. “I’m only afraid that I shall bore her,” he hastened, in all sincerity, to say when the general appealed to a possible vanity in him by hoping that he didn’t mind being kind to a little girl and going about with her. “She’s the only companion we have for you, you see. And we all find her very good company, in spite of her ten years.” And at this Gavan said, with a smile that protested against any idea that he should not find her so: “I’m only afraid that I’m not good company for any one. She is a dear little girl.”