hy than a volume of words. "You must
not think us so heartless as we seemed in leaving you so by yourself. I
scarcely slept last night, for thinking how strange your waking would
be this morning; but father said you would sleep till late. He said
that it would be better not to show too much sympathy with you at
first, but to try to divert your thoughts and make you feel that you
were among friends."

"You have indeed made me feel that," I answered. "But you see it is a
good deal of a jolt to drop a hundred years, and although I did not
seem to feel it so much last night, I have had very odd sensations this
morning." While I held her hands and kept my eyes on her face, I could
already even jest a little at my plight.

"No one thought of such a thing as your going out in the city alone so
early in the morning," she went on. "Oh, Mr. West, where have you been?"

Then I told her of my morning's experience, from my first waking till
the moment I had looked up to see her before me, just as I have told it
here. She was overcome by distressful pity during the recital, and,
though I had released one of her hands, did not try to take from me the
other, seeing, no doubt, how much good it did me to hold it. "I can
think a little what this feeling must have been like," she said. "It
must have been terrible. And to think you were left alone to struggle
with it! Can you ever forgive us?"

"But it is gone now. You have driven it quite away for the present," I
said.

"You will not let it return again," she queried anxiously.

"I can't quite say that," I replied. "It might be too early to say
that, considering how strange everything will still be to me."

"But you will not try to contend with it alone again, at least," she
persisted. "Promise that you will come to us, and let us sympathize
with you, and try to help you. Perhaps we can't do much, but it will
surely be better than to try to bear such feelings alone."

"I will come to you if you will let me," I said.

"Oh yes, yes, I beg you will," she said eagerly. "I would do anything
to help you that I could."

"All you need do is to be sorry for me, as you seem to be now," I
replied.

"It is understood, then," she said, smiling with wet eyes, "that you
are to come and tell me next time, and not run all over Boston among
strangers."

This assumption that we were not strangers seemed scarcely strange, so
near within these few minutes had my trouble and her sympathetic tears