The Surveyor-General of schools gesticulated himself away. "Perhaps,"
said Lincoln, intercepting a casual glance, "you would like to know some
of these ladies?"

The daughter of the Manager of the Piggeries was a particularly charming
little person with red hair and animated blue eyes. Lincoln left him
awhile to converse with her, and she displayed herself as quite an
enthusiast for the "dear old days," as she called them, that had seen the
beginning of his trance. As she talked she smiled, and her eyes smiled in
a manner that demanded reciprocity.

"I have tried," she said, "countless times--to imagine those old romantic
days. And to you--they are memories. How strange and crowded the world
must seem to you! I have seen photographs and pictures of the past, the
little isolated houses built of bricks made out of burnt mud and all
black with soot from your fires, the railway bridges, the simple
advertisements, the solemn savage Puritanical men in strange black coats
and those tall hats of theirs, iron railway trains on iron bridges
overhead, horses and cattle, and even dogs running half wild about the
streets. And suddenly, you have come into this!"

"Into this," said Graham.

"Out of your life--out of all that was familiar."

"The old life was not a happy one," said Graham. "I do not regret that."

She looked at him quickly. There was a brief pause. She sighed
encouragingly. "No?"