to them yet. If I see a child crowing in his mother's arms, I seem to
myself to remember making precisely the same noise in my mother's
arms. If I see a youth and a maiden looking into each other's eyes, I
know what it means perhaps better than they do. But I say nothing. I
do not even smile; for my face is puckered, and I have a weakness
about the eyes. But all this will be proof enough that I have not
grown very old, in any bad and to-be-avoided sense, at least.

And now all the glow of the Christmas time was at its height in my
heart. For I was going to spend the Day, and a few weeks besides, with
a very old friend of mine, who lived near the town at which we were
about to arrive like a postscript.--Where could my companion be going?
I wanted to know, because I hoped to meet him again somehow or other.

I ought to have told you, kind reader, that my name is Smith--actually
_John_ Smith; but I'm none the worse for that; and as I do not want to
be distinguished much from other people, I do not feel it a hardship.

But where was my companion going? It could not be to my friend's; else
I should have known something about him. It could hardly be to the
clergyman's, because the vicarage was small, and there was a new
curate coming with his wife, whom it would probably have to
accommodate until their own house was ready. It could not be to the
lawyer's on the hill, because there all were from home on a visit to
their relations. It might be to Squire Vernon's, but he was the last
man likely to ask a clergyman to visit him; nor would a clergyman be
likely to find himself comfortable with the swearing old fox-
hunter. The question must, then, for the present, remain
unsettled.--So I left it, and, looking out of the window once more,
buried myself in Christmas fancies.