Maggie and I walked to the garden gate with him when he went away. And we talked of the time when he would come home again, and we should spend our days together as we had always done in the holidays. Then he went out, and the gate closed after him, and Maggie and I watched him down the road, and she waved her handkerchief to him till he was out of sight. And then we went back to the house, and I counted how many weeks must pass before the term would be ended, and Claude would be with us again. But a very short time after, Mr. Ellis, Claude's father, was taken ill, and the doctor ordered him to go abroad for the winter. So Claude spent his Christmas vacation at Mentone instead of at home. And then we looked forward to Midsummer. But Claude did not return home until the greater part of the long vacation was over. He was in Cornwall with a reading party, and did not come to the Parsonage until about three weeks before his return to Oxford. And so it came to pass, that Claude Ellis and I had not met for nearly a year. "Claude is at home," said my father, one morning at breakfast. "Oh, is he?" said little Maggie. "How nice!" And I was very pleased also. I expected to see exactly the same Claude as I had parted from at the garden gate, a year ago; and I thought that all would go on just as it had done when he was a boy at school, and came home for the holidays. So when I saw him coming up the road, I ran into the garden to meet him. "Oh, Claude, I am glad to see you!" I cried, as soon as he opened the gate. And then, in a moment, I stopped short, and went up to him quite quietly, and giving him my hand, said in a very different voice: "How do you do, Claude; when did you come home?" For in a moment it flashed across me that Claude Ellis and I were not the same as we were when we had parted at that very gate a year ago. We were both older than we were then; our childhood was a thing of the past. Claude and I had grown out of the boy and girl into the young man and woman since we had last met. All this flashed across me in a moment, as I noticed the difference in Claude's dress, manners, and appearance, as he came in at the gate. And a chill came over me as I noticed it, and I wished that I had not run to meet him quite so eagerly. And yet, when he began to talk, I felt that he was in many ways the same Claude still, the same, but changed. Was he changed for the better? In many ways he was. He was more manly, and more gentleman-like, and had much to tell us of his college friends, and college life, which made him a more amusing and pleasant companion than before. And yet, there was another change in Claude, which I could not help noticing, in spite of my efforts not to do so. Claude Ellis was more of a man, more of a gentleman; but he was, yes, he certainly was, though I tried to persuade myself to the contrary, less of a Christian.